My First Real Italian Food

Out first night in Rome we all went out for a group dinner at Ristorante Strega. To get there we took the metro and then walked for another 10 minutes. The place was nestled at the end of a street and was surrounded by vines and lights. The first picture is looking down the table at part of my group. My roommate, Katherine, is the one in the tie-dye shirt on the left.


This is one of my professors on the trip, Dr. Witmore. He brought his wife and two kids, the oldest of which is two. Personally I think this is crazy, but they're doing pretty well so far. Only a couple of temper tantrums.


Here is the menu for the restaurant which we didn't need, though it was fun to look at. Our four course meal had already been planned for us.


First they brought out the Italian equivalent of chips and hot sauce. It was a big piece of crispy flat bread with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary on top. This did not count as one of the courses and we could have as much as we wanted.


The first course, called the antipasti, was prosciutto with lettuce and two balls of fresh mozzarella. For those of you who don't know what prosciutto is, it's very thinly sliced smoked ham and it was DELICIOUS. So salty and flavorful.


The next course, called the primi piatti, was two kinds of pasta. The bigger kind had a carbonara sauce, which is made of eggs and cream and has some bacon in it. The smaller kind had a pesto sauce, which is just ground basil in olive oil. That was the absolute freshest and most delicious pesto that I've ever had. As far as I can tell the primi piatti is always some kind of pasta.


The next course, called the secondi piatti is always some kind of meat. Ours was a thinly pounded pork chop with bacon and polenta on top. It also came with a side of lightly baked potatoes and some sort of vegetable which I did not eat (because I was getting full of course, not because it looked nasty). I really was getting full by this point, and even though this dish was delicious just like the others I only ate about half.


I got my second wind when I saw the final course which was a gorgeous little bowl of tiramisu. You have no idea how good this stuff was. I did get a bit of a shock though when I reached the bottom and hit a little pool of real Italian coffee. Whew!


Four courses is a lot of food and it was dark when we finished. I only had water to drink because anything else would have cost me extra, but if there's one thing I've learned on this trip so far it's that you can never have too much good cold water. We still had to waddle our way back to the metro and get back to the dorms, but it was worth it for this meal. Everything about it was delicious, and since then I have not had any Italian food that wasn't just to die for.