The pleasure of eating on the street.
Rome is the beginning and the end . She gives meaning to our existence, she is a trick of life, an upholstered mess of ingenuity and dissimulation. She is old, but she represents an eminently young country (little more than 150 years of life), a place that rationalizes passions and has decided to become childish (they invented **Micky Mouse and Nutella)** in order to live and withstand the blows. Because eating and drinking everything is much more bearable.
The route starts at Ponte Milvio Square , which receives its name from the bridge that guards it, one of the oldest and most important that crosses the Tiber. He welcomes us with a declaration of intent: "We don't have Wi-Fi, talk to each other" . Probably addressed to those people who have definitively abandoned communication, to those people who come here (it is the trendiest area of Rome today ) to feign and camouflage poverty and insecurities, the beautiful figure.
The wonders of the Trapizzino.
That point of no return that we all have flooded my mind when I tasted those mini sandwiches in the shape of a sandwich (tramezzino) but with pizza dough and stuffed with octopus in sauce , cuttlefish with peas, broccoli with sausages, aubergine with Parmesan, meatballs, oxtail with Roman vegetables, veal with green sauce and chicken alla caciatora (oil, garlic, white wine and rosemary) . Recipe devised in the past by hunters who, faced with needs, sharpened their ingenuity by creating this ephemeral work of art as they walked home with their prey, and their few lire in their pockets.
In the same place; which in the past was one of the port areas of the city , and as such it was full of mosquitoes, rats, diseases and dirt; appear Ippo Pizza , which also offers street food unique miniature pizzas with ingenious flavours, see boletus with truffle . Nothing to do with i fritti di Sara Milvia , ranging from the classic olives stuffed with meat (olive ascolane) to the flower of zucca: courgette flower stuffed with mozzarella with anchovies, battered with flour and beer. Very practical, eminently manageable with one hand, leaving the other to unleash histrionic Italian gestures accompanied by sympathy, nervousness and mockery.
Baccala and Pannele
To drink fish at a good price; remember that in Rome the perfect day is the Friday for religious reasons; are essential cod fillets in Da Benito (Jewish Ghetto), Remo, but above all in Dar Filettaro, a stone's throw from Campo de' Fiori, the only secular square in Rome , where he also always watches Giordano Bruno , burned right there by the Inquisition. All are usually accompanied by Castelli white wine. The tasting caused me a small identity crisis, existential. There I discovered that, for me, God does not exist . There I rediscovered that part of me that was skeptical, scared, obsessive, tormented and excited in equal parts. Which, furthermore, is directly proportional to that self that must not be eliminated, but simply learned to live with it. Otherwise, it would be like giving up a part of yourself because of acceptance issues.
Dar Filettaro, a stone's throw from Campo de' Fiori.
Like in Via del Boschetto , where Gaudeo offers sandwiches with burrata (fresh cheese) and anchovies, and with le panelle, typical of Palermo , which consists of square and crunchy layers **(the sound is poetry) ** based on chickpea flour with spices and sesame. It's one of the few things that leads to the past in a cool place ( Rione Monti ) whose native people live in permanent anxiety lamenting an era, brothels, singular smells and tangerine above the stoves as an air freshener, which no longer exists. Yes, that nostalgia for staining your fingers with grease while eating in the street, a possibility that offers you Il Matarello D'oro , which for €1.5 sells you the best 'supplis' in the city . Is giant croquette, stuffed with mushrooms, rice and mozzarella , anchors Via della Bufalotta to the past. Its length is kilometer, as the Prenestina, the Salaria, the Casilina, the Appia or the Cassia. The contact of this culinary icon with the palate reminds me of this idea that everything leads to rome . That I am here for a reason already written, I only have to live to find it. Or die trying, depending on how you look at it.
Gaudeo's sandwiches.
Jews and religious
eating on the street is a pleasure that is being developed in a capital that is not conducive to evolution. That is why even the Romans, always afraid of changes, need it to be progressive to sweeten the impact. the s newspaper napkins , like churros in Spain, give that archaic touch to the new fashion. Also they green checkered tablecloths, fragile even before a drop of water, but that is another story.
The current one, to complete this puzzle, leads us to Piazza Bologna , other important redoubt of the resident Jews here. Did you know that, despite not being a central location, a flat there does it cost the same as in Piazza de Spagna? Money breeds monsters. But also delicacies, like le arancine di Mizzica. Also from Sicily, they are like battered tennis balls stuffed with peas, rice and ragout . Living it in the first person you realize how man, in his sickly imperfection, is always curious about power, and eroticizes it to the point of generating syndromes (Stockholm). On the contrary, Why am I in love with all that lost atmosphere?
The best 'supplis' in the city.
But the individual also has a good side, very good. In my case, the empathy, generosity and knowing how to forgive . I found him down the stairs Dolce Maniera , a magical place, almost clandestine, in the Vatican Zone that is open 24 hours a day , Every day of the week. Legend has it that Pope Francesco, when he manages to distract the Gendarmerie and the Swiss Guard, escapes at dawn to eat sweets and small sandwiches with salmon and gorgonzola. I want to believe it, because I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible. Otherwise, unleashing my demons of distrust, I would end up with no one around. And I would have to go to street food alone, without being able to talk to anyone and without Wi-fi to connect to. Also, I don't have internet on my mobile.
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