Our recent visit to Italy was a long time coming. Angela is a painter with a background in art history, and I am something of a food enthusiast. She had never been to Italy at all and I had only been to Venice. She hates sun and heat and I hate crowds, so we decided to go in January. Overall, I think this was the right call.
The cons: a number of restaurants and gelato places in Bologna were closed for a post-holiday break (coming in February instead would have made a difference here), and a large number of gelato places were closed in Florence. Pretty much everything in Rome and Napoli was open. Two of the hotels we stayed at were undergoing renovations, which was loud during the day but brought the price down and didn’t affect us very much. Some museums had partial closures, but generally nothing we cared about seeing. It was cold in Bologna, but mostly the weather was comfortable.
The pros: way, way, way fewer people. In Napoli and Bologna there were almost no other tourists around. Florence still managed to be annoyingly crowded in the touristy areas but I can only imagine how hellish it must be in the summer. Rome was fine aside from the Vatican Museum (which is apparently always at full capacity) and the Colosseum (which is ok as long as you prebook and go early in the day). The Trevi Fountain and the surrounding area were generally crowded and totally packed on weekends, but I didn’t enjoy that part of the city much anyways (full of instagrammers, luxury boutiques, bad food).
People will tell you that it’s hard to find a bad meal in Italy, but this was not my experience at all. Overall, I would say the food was hit or miss (and of course I did a lot of research in advance). Like most places, you can’t take recommendations from random people and expect them to reliably pan out. In Bologna, for instance, a trusted friend relayed a recommendation for Trattoria di Via Serra. I asked the hotel manager to call them and make a reservation for us and he flew into a rant:
“NO VIA SERRA. It is booked for two months. I know Via Serra. Is popular only because of TripAdvisor. On this street alone there are five restaurants that are just the same. Via Serra is far from city center. You should go to Biassanot. It’s very good. Biassanot!”
This sounded plausible to me in as far as I do believe that TripAdvisor and other online rating aggregators can tend to be reverse predictors, so I let him book us for Biassanot instead. But we also decided to walk over to Via Serra just before they opened and try to walk in for lunch. He was right about one thing (and only one thing): they were indeed booked out for weeks. But they keep four bar seats open for walk-ins and we were able to have lunch. Reader, it was tremendous. They served us some of the best food we had on the whole trip, and the rest of the menu was impressive (lots of snail symbols indicating the use of high-quality products certified by the Slow Food Alliance). Biassanot, on the other hand, was abjectly terrible (think lamb chops cut to very unevenly and served grey and well done, low quality charcuterie for premium prices, etc.). Biassanot was one of the most expensive meals we had the whole trip and easily the worst. To add insult to injury, we were seated next to a table of posh Brits who spent the meal pretending to know a lot about wine and repeatedly thanking each other for coming along on holiday.
The overall culinary winner was Napoli by a long shot (I’ll Anglicize the other cities but calling Napoli “Naples” just feels wrong). The abundance of extraordinary (and inexpensive) pizza and sfogliatelle is hard to compete with. Every city/region had notable highlights, however. I’m not going to do a complete recap, but will instead make some overall comments for each area and highlight the places that I’d recommend without qualification.
Bologna
Lots of closures in Bologna so I didn’t get to try a few promising places (like Grassilli). Contrary to what your hotelier may tell you, I would be highly suspicious of crowded places in the center of town.
Trattoria di Via Serra
Book far in advance (you have to call, but they speak English) or show up early to walk in. Totally worth it. The menu is representative regional food done extremely well with high quality ingredients. It’s a little bit of a walk from the city center but very doable.
Mò Mortadella Lab
Inexpensive lunch place with two locations. Made me moan with pleasure in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, embarrassing Angela. With mortadella this good, I think it’s more embarrassing to not moan. This is a can’t miss in my book.
Florence
I was the least impressed overall by the food in Florence. It’s very meat-heavy, and I’m sure if you shelled out big bucks for a thick dry-aged steak you could get a pretty good one, but that’s not really something I’m interested in. The problem I have is that the secondi are generally just piles of sliced meat or offal in sauce with nothing whatsoever to balance them. There are side dishes (“contorni”) on the menu but little effort is made to coordinate them with the mains and they are generally just potatoes or greens. The greens are usually watery and unsalted. It’s just not what I want with a big pile of offal. I want some damn pickles— something bright to cut through the richness. It wasn’t till Rome (see below) that I was actually offered something desirable as a side dish.
My favorite sit-down place in Tuscany was not in Florence, but rather in Siena (an excellent day trip):
Enzo e Sonia
We walked by this place and my spider sense went wild. I announced to Angela: “Good food here! I am having an intuition!”
Indeed it was so good (and the couple running it was so charming) that after having a terrific lunch I insisted at the end of the day that we hang out in the coffee shop across the street until they opened for dinner and then take the late train back. Beautiful food, warm hospitality. It’s the kind of fantasy dining experience you hope for when you plan a trip to Italy.
By far my favorite meals in Florence proper were inexpensive street food:
Panini at Semel
Can’t miss. This place is amazing. The paninis are five bucks and I ate three of them in ten minutes (venison with mushroom, cacio with truffle and pear, and anchovy with fennel). The guy slinging them is an old school icon, and when he asked me what I thought I gave him a big, enthusiastic chef’s kiss and blurted out every Italian superlative I could come up with, which pleased him greatly.
Sergio Pollini Lampredotto (aka Tripperia Pollini)
Around lunchtime in Florence you’ll see many of the tradesmen working in town head over to the lampredotto stands for a sloppy sandwich or a cardboard tray of stew with bread on the side. Lampredotto is part of the cow’s stomach, braised and served either in a tomato broth or with a salsa verde. Most stands also have stewed tripe. Pollini is the most famous stand and I liked it very much. Tender lampredotto with bright, spicy accompaniments. Angela isn’t the world’s biggest offal eater and even she was happy to wolf down a large portion. The guys who run the stand were a lot of fun as well, and very friendly. They gave me some stickers to advertise them in Montana. This was a five dollar lunch that I liked better than any of the more expensive restaurants we ate at in Florence.
Rome
Overall, we ate very well in Rome. It was still hit or miss, but there were some very solid hits.
You can throw a baseball and hit a good gelato joint, but I would recommend going out of your way to hit Gelateria Fassi, which was probably the best gelato we had the whole trip and is in a lovely building with very high ceilings (thanks to Sara Protasi for this rec). For a cheap bite, the ubiquitous pizza al taglio is generally very good (our favorites were hot slices at the crowded Roscioli bakery and the cold burrata-broccoli at the comparably crowded Il Forno Campo de’ Fiori). Suppli are consistently good, but heavily dependent on freshness. My favorite by far were at Suppli Roma, but they were much better piping hot on a busy Saturday than they were midweek, when they have a chance to sit around and cool down. Lots of places do a carbonara suppli, but here they actually put an entire yolk in the middle. And they offer a variation of cacio e pepe with candied lemon peel, which I much preferred to the unadorned version. Also would highly recommend Testaccio Market, where you’ll find clustered together a very nice cheese counter, a couple pizza al taglio places and the famous, unmissable panini place Mordi e Vai.
Another major highlight, which you absolutely should not miss, Is Love – Specialty Croissants. They are (believe it or not) very close to the Vatican Museum, and it would be sheer folly not to stop on the way there. They have exquisite Italian and French pastries—as good as I’ve had anywhere—and also world class espresso. Try the single origin espressos. They are so well-prepared that I stayed and ordered every single one of them (pleasing the barista greatly). Most of the espresso you’ll find across Italy is low quality and burnt, but along with this standout spot I also had terrific espresso at Marigold (thanks, Autumn) in Rome and a very good pourover at Ditta Artiginale in Florence (thanks again, Autumn).
We had a bunch of sit-down meals in Rome, and I would recommend two places highly:
SantoPalato
I almost skipped this because I was skeptical of the “updated classics” concept. Very glad I didn’t because this was some of the most thoughtful food I’ve had in a long time. I loved everything we were served except my rigatoni with goat ragu. The ragu was boring and the rigatoni was considerably more al dente than I prefer. Angela’s pasta e fagioli, on the other hand, was exquisite— easily the best version of this dish I’ve ever had, with a rich, complex broth and perfectly cooked pasta and beans. The pigeon dish was a masterpiece, and the only time in Italy I was served a pickle as an accompaniment to a main course. The breast was served rare with hazelnuts, jus, and pickled pumpkin, while the leg was served on a purée of sweet pumpkin and topped with a purée of the organs. There was also a strange and delicious breaded meatball of braised oxtail with a sauce of peanuts and lovage. I realized too late that they are famous for their carbonara, but it’s made with the same rigatoni that I found undercooked and the woman at the table next to us seemed disinclined to finish hers. It’s a great restaurant overall, and you should certainly make a reservation if you visit Rome.
La Tavernaccia Da Bruno
This place is a little off the beaten path and not cheap, but it’s reachable by bus and it’s great. It’s more as traditional than SantoPalato, and everything they served us was excellent. The menu was thoughtful and I overheard the servers steering other tables towards bright, acidic contorni to balance the meaty secondi. We had a beautiful orange and fennel salad alongside a juicy hunk of suckling pig. The pasta alla gricia was stunning, and probably my favorite pasta of the whole trip.
Napoli
Sweet, sweet Napoli. This is clearly one of the greatest food cities in the world. The pizza is so good and inexpensive and there are so many world-class pizzerias that we didn’t eat much else for dinner (I tried some fritto misto but wasn’t as enamored), though I would certainly recommend hitting a trattoria in the bustling Spanish quarter on a busy Friday or Saturday night for the cultural experience. We ate at Trattoria da Concetta. The scialatielli ai fruiti di mare was exceptional, but otherwise the food was just OK. The vibe, however, was magnificent. The waiters all learned my name and yelled “Matthew! Welcome! This way!” when I got up to look for the restroom. The place was packed with loud Italian families who clapped and sang along with the several street musicians who came in and performed. It was a whole scene.
Before discussing pizza, I want to report on the other god-tier category in Napoli: sfogliatelle. You’ll find great pastry all over Italy, but Napoli is at another level. There are a large number of variations available but for my money you can’t beat the basics: sfogliatelle riccia and sfogliatelle frolla, served hot. Look for a sign that says “sfogliatelle calda” and ask if you aren’t sure. The hot ones are held in a warm oven so it’s not always clear whether they’re available. Right by the train station you can get top notch versions of both at Sfogliatelle Attanasio. Note that Google maps is very wrong about where this place is located. It’s on a narrow slant street around the corner from McDonalds with a red and white “SFOGLIATELLE CALDA” sign. You’re going to be tempted by the decorated sfogliatelle. Trust me, they are not as good. The custard topping is too sweet and the cherries aren’t sour enough to balance it out. You lose a lot by letting them cool down. Stick to the basic hot variety. Both riccia and frolla are filled with a mixture of ricotta, semolina, sugar, cinammon, and citrus peel (usually orange, sometimes lemon). Frolla has a firm shortcrust, while riccia is like a laminated triangle with brittle, crispy layers. I wouldn’t want to part with either. The cinammon can be a little aggressive but usually it’s nicely balanced. I can’t remember which was which, but Mary’s Sfogliatelle did one with orange and very agressive cinnamon and one with milder spice and lemon.
The other pastry that blew me away in Napoli is called fiocchi di neve. You’ll find it here and there, but the original and by far the best version I tried is from Pasticceria Poppella. It’s an airy, soft yeast-risen bun filled with a light whipped ricotta cream. They do get soggy if you let them sit, so I would suggest just housing them right there in the street outside the bakery. There are also delicious pistachio and chocolate varieties, but the slightly savory original ricotta version is perfection.
It’s also very worth trying baba, which is pretty similar at most places. It’s a cake that’s been soaked with a rum syrup. I was hesitant to try it, as I do not consume alcohol, but I saw little kids eating it and decided to order a mini one to sample. The rum syrup is boiled thoroughly enough that I didn’t detect any hint of ethyl alcohol. Take care if this is something you’re sensitive to, but I found them very delicious.
So… about that pizza. I kind of went nuts on pizza. You may be familiar with this ranking: https://www.50toppizza.it/
I generally don’t put much stock in this kind of thing and actively avoid Michelin recommendations unless corroborated by a more trusted source, but this ranking is extremely legit. The good news is that you don’t have to go to Europe to try some of the best pizza in the world. I can confirm first hand that Una Pizza Napoletana in NYC is right up there. It’s a slightly different style than anything I had in Italy; the dough is softer and fluffier, more of a steamed texture, and it has more of a sourdough tang. But hot damn it is excellent. The downsides are that it is extremely hard to get in and you have to share space with some of the worst people in the world. This is the pizza place repeatedly featured on Billions, and it is indeed popular with hedge fund types who have their assistants secure reservations for them or stand on line for a walk in table. I found it impossible to get a four-top reservation (believe me, I tried), and the only way to get a two-top was to spam refresh and book a table within seconds of it becoming available (7am eastern time, I think a month out but I don’t recall exactly). It is possible to walk in but you have to be early. Still, it’s worth it.
In Italy I ate at: I Masanielli di Francesco Martucci, I Masanielli di Sasà Martucci, Diego Vitagliano (Bagnoli), Diego Vitagliano (Santa Lucia), Seu Pizza Illuminati (Rome), 50 Kalò (Napoli), Pizzeria Salvo, and Starita. They were all very good or better. One thing that I found interesting is that every menu has a range of very crispy deep fried options (sometimes stuffed, sometimes sparsely topped—“montanara”-style) that seemed quite popular with locals. Setting aside the fried category, most margherita and marinara pizzas are soupy in the middle (as one expects) but at the very high end places a noticeable effort has been made to protect the light crispness of the crust all the way to the center. (Note that even at these “high end” places a margherita pizza is still around 8 bucks).
I thought about ordering margherita pizzas everywhere to enable an apples-to-apples comparison, but in the end I decided to just order what I wanted to eat, because it seemed silly to limit myself to such a narrow perspective on the category for the sake of comparison. So, I can’t exactly rank these pizzerias, but I can divide them into tiers. I mostly agree with the pizza ranking above, though I did find Seu Pizza Illuminati a bit less impressive than they did. One note, however is that all of these places serve deep fried pasta as an appetizer, and Seu Pizza Illuminati had by far my favorite fried pasta: squid ink lasagna with squid meat. There was actually a pretty clear inverse relationship between the fried pasta and the pizza. My favorite pizza places had my least favorite fried pastas, for the most part.
Top tier: I Masanielli di Francesco Martucci, Diego Vitagliano (especially the Bagnoli location).
Most of the high-end places offer a tasting menu, which is generally a bad value, but it lets you try a larger array of pizzas. The only place I went for it was I Masanielli di Francesco Martucci, where you also get a few slices that are not on the regular menu. It was truly great, and the service was handled very well. They sat the two tables having the tasting menu directly next to the kitchen, so pies could be divided and immediately served at the correct temperature.
I would also include NYC’s Una Pizza Napoletana in this tier, with the caveat that the vibe is much worse. The other Diego Vitagliano location was comparable to Bagnoli food-wise, but the vibe was not as good.
Not far behind, I’d put 50 Kalò. I have no idea about the London or Rome locations, but the one in Napoli had a really nice sourdough tang (more so than any of the other places in Italy) and was overall delightful. It’s a bit annoying to get in and the service is impersonal and rushed (as one expects from places mentioned in recent Michelin guides), but I wouldn’t miss it.
I’m the lower tier, still very good but not quite as exceptional, I would include Sasà Martucci – Pizzeria I Masanielli (which lacked the thoughtful balance and textural contrast of the pies at his brother’s nearby restaurant and had a much less appealing vibe, but did have similarly great crust), Pizzeria Salvo (with nine margherita pizzas on the menu, it’s a little precious for me… the pizza is good but extra soupy and the vibe is pretty bad—in a huge, mostly empty restaurant on a Tuesday evening they sat us two feet from two salesmen having a business dinner and we had to endure every word of their conversation), Starita (more of an old school place—go on the weekend for an incredible vibe but prepare to wait up to an hour to get in), and Seu Pizza Illuminati (crust a little boring, margherita too soupy, fancier options have too many elements not quite singing in perfect harmony).
As a final note, I would mention the local gelato chain Mennella in Napoli. It competes with Fassi in Rome for my favorite of the trip. The texture is at the ideal level of softness and the rich dark chocolate flavor was especially mind-blowing.
STROHLTOPIA 