A few weeks ago, the New York Times posted an article titled, “Best Trattoria in Rome?  Let the Debate Begin.”  We’ve not talked about the article on eCool because we take issue with it in several regards.

First, we simply don’t believe (as the author asserts) that the bread in your local trattoria must be stale.  Ridiculous.

Second, we’re having trouble wrapping our mind around the fact that a trattoria connoisseur would pay 80 euro for a meal that consists of 2 plates of pasta, 2 salads, and a dessert or two (as the author says that she did at Da Felice in Testaccio).  Are you kidding?  80 euro?  Those aren’t trattoria prices!

Third, we believe that the title “best trattoria” is something personal.   One’s “favorite trattoria” should be one’s second home, a place chosen on the basis of any number of subjective criteria. Ideally, it should be located near enough your house that you can dash out for dinner when it becomes apparent that you’re not going to cook and that no one else in the house is either.  When you arrive, you should be treated well by a staff that recognizes you and wants to take care of you.  And your trattoria should serve traditional dishes (at a reasonable price) that you swear cannot be equaled by any other of the trattorie in town that serve the same dishes.

We could go on….

Instead, however, we give you a photo.  Today, Susan Sanders brings you a snap of the very best trattoria in the small town of Fondi, just an hour’s ride from Rome.  If you’re really nice to us, we’ll give you their phone number and address.  It’s very close to the train station.

For more photos by Susan, visit her blog: Rome With A View.

Today, on a wet and cool Photo Friday, Susan Sanders brings us photos of a favorite restaurant in Trastevere.  The images warm our hearts and make our stomachs rumble!

Now that summer is over (and boy oh boy is it over — it rained a week ago and it’s been autumn ever since) and the Romans have returned to their regular routines, it’s time to make the rounds and see just how tan everyone got on their August vacation.

For Susan, the first stop on any such meet-and-greet expedition is Le Mani in Pasta, a beloved trattoria on Via Genovese in Trastevere.

Run by a crew of hardworking ragazzi, Le Mani in Pasta turns out some of the best food in the neighborhood, day after day and night after night.  Ivano the cook (seen in both photos above) cheerfully slaves over blazing fires, and in doing so manages to produce a host of pastas sauced in the traditional Roman style, as well as a mean saltimbocca and some extremely fine grilled fish.

The glassed-in kitchen is visible from the dining room and a table near the chef means that all conversation will periodically come to an abrupt halt as guests become utterly engrossed in the kitchen ballet:  the choreography includes some dramatic wristwork as pasta is tossed with freshly prepared sauces, extended arm knife slashes worthy of a samurai as artichokes are cleaned and trimmed, exhibitions of brute force as lobsters are wrangled into steaming pots, and an infinite variety of pirouettes and twirls executed as Ivano moves deftly away from flames that blaze up every time he adjusts the ingredients in a scalding hot saute pan.

But what to order?  We’ve never met a Le Mani meal we didn’t like.  The antipasto del mare is a heaping fresh seafood salad that’s almost too beautiful to eat.  Of the fresh pastas, we especially love the rich fettuccine with ricotta and pancetta, the oh-so-Roman spaghetti cacio e pepe, and the less common spaghetti alla vernaccia.  After that it’s hard to decide between a saltimbocca that tastes like something your Italian grandmother made and the daily fish specials that are grilled or baked to perfection.  Don’t forget dessert.  We dream about the pear and caramel semifreddo.

For more photos by Susan Sanders, visit her website: Rome With A View

It’s Photo Friday! Here at the eCool Compound we’ve been hanging with Rachel Donadio, writer and editor at the New York Times Book Review and former resident of Rome (Rachel is seen on the right side of this photo taken by Susan Sanders). We’re excited to announce that she’s agreed to be our guest blogger for today! So, here’s the word on Rome from Rachel:

Buon giorno a tutti! Whenever I’m back in Rome, I try to visit a particular trattoria I used to frequent when I lived in Monteverde, a quiet neighborhood on the Janiculum Hill. Much about the restaurant is non-descript, from the florescent lighting to the peculiar wall decor. But one thing definitely stands out: Dorina, the proprietor, hostess and all-around cultural dynamo who runs the place (see photo above – Dorina is on the left). A ferocious consumer of culture who talks at approximately 45 rpm, Dorina is as likely to recommend books and movies as she is the specialties of the house. In both, her taste runs toward her native Sardinia. Dorina is an ardent champion of Sardinian writers, who have been experiencing a mini-renaissance in recent years. This time around, she suggested three books, all of which have been well received in Italy:

Sardinia Blues by Flavio Soriga, a post-modern novel that looks at the island known to the outside world mostly for its rough landscape, ricotta products, kidnappings and vacation homes.

L’Uomo che vuole essere Peròn by Giovanni Maria Bellu, a novel with three narrative threads: one set among Sardinian immigrants to Argentina in the late 19th century, the others in contemporary Sardinia.

La Questua by Curzio Maltese, an investigation into what happens to the public money — now 1 billion Euros a year — that the Italian state gives the Catholic Church each year. Under the Italian Constitution of 1946, the state pledged to give “otto per mille,” or 0.8 percent of personal income tax revenues, to the church. (In the 90s, the law was broadened to include the Jewish Community, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, Buddhists and others.) The book is based on Maltese’s articles in the center-left daily La Repubblica and remains on the Italian best-seller list.

The books sound intriguing, but I can’t say I’ve been doing much reading on my vacation. Mostly I’ve been busy eating, looking at art, catching up with friends, window shopping (thanks, lousy exchange rate!) and going to the movies. I recommend the two Italian films that just won prizes at Cannes: Gomorra, Matteo Garrone’s Altmanesque take on Roberto Saviano’s book about the Neapolitan Mafia, the Camorra; and Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino’s Tarrantino-influenced portrait of Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time prime minister nicknamed “il divo Giulio,” or the divine Julius, for his Classical forbear and his ability to emerge unscathed from many of Italy’s darkest legal thickets.

The endless complexities of Italian politics — so much intrigue, so much stasis, so much corruption! — are enough to give anyone a permanent headache and an even worse heartache. The more I understand Italy, the more it unsettles and disarms me. Luckily, many things help take the edge off. For every political failure, for every over-crowded bus and irritable shop clerk, for every late train and poorly marked route, for every ill-lit painting in every mismanaged public musuem, for every heat spell and sudden rainstorm, I recommend, in equal parts: coffee, pistachio gelato, pizza bianca, fresh cantaloupe, aranciata amara, mozzarella di bufala, the smell of jasmine, the sound of seagulls, umbrella pines, bougainvillea, seventeenth-century sunsets. Not to mention: the Pantheon, the view from the Fontanone on the Janiculum, the Caravaggios in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, the Via Giulia, and Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, where the young god forever pursues his beloved even as her fingers sprout into bay leaves before our very eyes, as cinematic a sculpture as was ever made.

Italy is in many ways the opposite of America. Everything is impossible here — except for pleasure.

Alla prossima!

How is it that no one’s shown up for Leonardo’s Last Supper? It seems they’ve all been tempted away by the sinful and gluttonous desire for a meal at Rome’s Taverna Lucifero. The devil must have prepared some pretty fabulous fare to bust up that apostolic guest list!

We haven’t been to this restaurant near Rome’s Campo dei Fiori, but in 2004 it was featured in a review by Irin Carmon, a Let’s Go writer and student travel columnist at the Boston Globe:

In search of citadels of the sinful and the sacred in the Eternal City, I came across Taverna Lucifero, a restaurant on a hidden block off Campo dei Fiori. Locals, brandishing cigarettes and attitudes that could be described only as devil-may-care, pack this unpretentious place, and are welcomed with a kiss by owner Francisco Perlini. It took some persuading to get a table in winter; would-be customers in high season are advised to call two weeks in advance. Who knew Lucifer’s den would be so hard to get into? Some clues as to why: fresh pasta, swathed in cream and topped with freshly-brushed truffles, homemade limoncello, and 400 varieties of wine.

LS&Partners in Rome are the creators of this humorous ad campaign The Creative Director was Luisa Scarlata, the Art Director was Simone Santese. The Copywriter was Daniele Papa and the ad was first published in September 2007

Looking to throw the ultimate theme party? Just dying to wrap up in a sheet toga-style and enjoy some honey-dipped dormice in the manner of the ancient Romans? We’re always up for a dining adventure here at EternallyCool and lately we’ve been entertaining ourselves by reading ancient Roman menus, for they offer culinary inspiration as well as the chance to shudder a bit when such delicacies as stuffed sow’s womb or peacock eyeballs are mentioned.

For example, we’ve just been perusing the Satyricon, a novel written in the second century AD which recounts an elaborate (and fictional) feast offered by a pretentious and wealthy Roman named Trimalchio. What was served up at this exaggerated extravaganza? The guests started the meal with wine, olives, dormice sprinkled with poppy-seed and honey, hot sausages, plums, and pomegrantate seeds.

From there they moved on to pea-hen eggs stuffed with fig-peckers surrounded by peppered egg yolks, a one-hundred year-old Falernian wine, a tray of nibbles featuring the signs of the zodiac and foods associated with each sign (ram’s vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, and so on), stuffed capons and sow’s bellies, and more.

Frankly, we’re glad to have missed that one, as Trimalchio was a difficult and demanding host. But we wish we’d been invited to the feast thrown for Macius Lentulus Niger, when, in 63 BC, he was made a Roman priest. His celebratory meal was attended by A-list religious officials, including Julius Caesar and the Vestal Virgins. And, while Roman banquets went on for hours and hours, one can imagine that everyone went home from this one quite sated, for the ancient writer Macrobius details the offerings:

Before the dinner proper came sea hedgehogs; fresh oysters, as many as the guests wished; large mussels; sphondyli; field fares with asparagus; fattened fowls; oyster and mussel pasties; black and white sea acorns; sphondyli again; glycimarides; sea nettles; becaficoes; roe ribs; boar’s ribs; fowls dressed with flour; becaficoes; purple shellfish of two sorts. The dinner itself consisted of sows’ udder; boar’s head; fish-pasties; boar-pasties; ducks; boiled teals; hares; roasted fowls; starch pastry; Pontic pastry.

If all this is making you hungry and you’re wanting to indulge in some good ancient Roman food, we recommend the following resources:

• Ancient Roman Recipes including a list of native Roman ingredients and measurement conversions
• Eight Roman Recipes from Patrick Faas’s fabulous book, Around the Roman Table. Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome.
• Information about garum, a fish sauce that was by far the most popular condiment in the Roman world. Don’t even try to stage a Roman banquet if you don’t have any garum.

Not looking to make your own Roman feast, but dying to delve into some of that irresistible ancient cuisine? You may want to pay a visit to Ars Convivialis, a restaurant in Rome that serves ancient Roman cuisine (they also cater), stages toga parties for groups, and offers a variety of ancient entertainment to accompany their feasts.

Or, if you’re really wanting to get a taste of antiquity, volunteer to be party of the Pompeii Food and Drink Project next summer. You’ll join a team of scholars as they analyze patterns of daily life in Pompeii by investigating structures and rooms used for the storage, distribution, preparation, serving, and consumption of food and drink

Italian chef Filippo La Mantia began his professional life as a news photographer covering Mafia crimes in Palermo, the city in which he grew up. But his life took an unexpected twist in 1986 when he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for involvement in the murder of a policemen. He was 26 years old at the time.

Eventually cleared of charges with the assistance of anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone (who was later assassinated), La Mantia says that the time he spent in Ucciardone, Palermo’s notorious jail, changed him forever, because it was there that he learned to cook.

His story has inspired a book, Maqueda, by Salvo Sottile, and a movie, Tutte le donne della mia vita.

La Mantia is now the owner of the ultra-hip Trattoria Restaurant in Rome (Via del Pozzo della Cornacchie 25, phone 06 683 01427) and he’s recently been getting a lot of press for joining the ranks of Italian chefs who choose not to use garlic in their food, choosing other natural ingredients such as citrus and herbs instead.

Like others who have joined the anti-garlic bandwagon, La Mantia says that garlic smells horrible and that it overwhelms delicate flavors. He claims that garlic is a leftover from the era when Italians were poor and needed something powerful to add flavor to their modest meals. Now, he claims, most Italians can and should afford to do without it. He gives his point of view explicitly on this CNN video.

His antigarlic movement has a powerful ally in former Premier Silvio Berlusconi whose has a well-known aversion to the stinking rose. Carlo Rossella, a news director for Berlusconi’s Mediaset has even started a list of garlic-free restaurants and is pushing for places that serve garlic to have separate, garlic-free menus.

But not all Italians are in agreement. Last year Italians ate 108 million pounds of garlic in 2006, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. And for some the snubbing of garlic is seen as culinary snobbery. Talking with NPR reporter Sylvia Poggioli, a vendor at the Campo dei Fiori outdoor market (whose stall features long braids of garlic nestled among colorful fruits and vegetables) asked, “What are we supposed to eat, shallots? Will that make us more elegant? More French?”

Summer in Rome means a switch from drinking the usual hot espresso, caffe latte, and cappuccino to freddo (or cold) versions of the same drinks. In recent years, however, the caffe shakerato, a more elegant and refined summer cooler has been gaining enormous popularity across the Eternal City.

Much simpler (and more beautiful, we might add) than its Starbucks ‘cino cousins, the caffe shakkerato is made by putting a shot of hot espresso, crushed ice, and simple syrup or white sugar into a martini shaker. The mixture is then shakerato-ed or shaken for about 30 seconds and poured into a martini glass. The result – a deeply refreshing, dark brown drink that is topped by a light brown foam – is the perfect pick-me-up on a hot afternoon.

We recently stopped for a caffe shakkerato in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, between Via del Corso and the Tiber River. Named for the Mausoleum of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, which is the untidy centerpiece of this urban space, the piazza was once off the beaten track, rarely visited by Romans or tourists.

All that has changed in past years, however. The transformation began in 1998 when Alessandra Marino and her husband, Alessandro Tudini, opened Gusto, an ultra-hip pizzeria, restaurant, and bar that they installed into unkempt buildings erected by the Fascist dictator Mussolini in the 1930s. An immediate hit with Rome’s hip and happening crowd, over the course of the past decade Gusto has become its own Roman Empire. Marino and Tudini have taken over vast tracts of Piazza Augusto Imperatore, adding to their territory an osteria, an enoteca, a cheese shop, a store selling chic kitchen wares and cookbooks, and most recently a cafe and a casual restaurant that specializes in fish and vegetables.

It’s in that new cafe (pictured above) that we indulged in our caffe shakerato. And having always been fans of Gusto’s pizza and of their weekend brunch (as well as the cleverness of the name which alludes both to Augustus and to the wonderful taste of all things served in the establishment), we’re more than happy to frequent this newest of provinces in the Empire of Gusto.