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Rome anniversary dinner suggestions

Rome anniversary dinner suggestions

Old Apr 30, 2015, 11:48 am
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Rome anniversary dinner suggestions

Mrs PBIFLYER and I will be in Rome on our anniversary. Need a great suggestion.
Long ago, we were in Rome and had a great dinner in a street side cafe in Trestavere. She loved that.
We aren't into stuffy, michellin rated restaurants that serve tiny fancy food.
Romantic, small, great view maybe? Outdoor, although sine it would be in July, maybe not.
All suggestions welcome.
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Old May 6, 2015, 2:47 pm
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http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/24776974-post12.html

they don't have outdoor seating though.
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Old Jun 15, 2015, 5:46 am
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Hi, I've heard that Felice a Testaccio offers great typical roman cuisine. I haven't been there so I don't know about the view, but here's the website http://www.feliceatestaccio.it/index-eng.html
and you could have a look at the reviews on the net and see what htey say
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Old Jun 15, 2015, 11:28 pm
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Originally Posted by pbiflyer
Mrs PBIFLYER and I will be in Rome on our anniversary. Need a great suggestion.
Long ago, we were in Rome and had a great dinner in a street side cafe in Trestavere. She loved that.
We aren't into stuffy, michellin rated restaurants that serve tiny fancy food.
Romantic, small, great view maybe? Outdoor, although sine it would be in July, maybe not.
All suggestions welcome.
Originally Posted by josephineperry
Hi, I've heard that Felice a Testaccio offers great typical roman cuisine. I haven't been there so I don't know about the view, but here's the website http://www.feliceatestaccio.it/index-eng.html
and you could have a look at the reviews on the net and see what htey say
In my opinion you can't rely on reviews on the net. Your asking American tourists where to eat in Rome. Ask them for directions to the Piazza del Popolo, and you're likely to get a blank stare. That's your least reliable type of information.

It's like asking an Italian tourist who just came back from three days visiting New York City in the Times Square neighborhood, two days in Chicago, and two days in San Francisco at Fisherman's Wharf, what the best places to eat are in those cities. Right now TripAdvisor is showing a gelato shop near the Spanish Steps that buys ice cream from a factory and sells it as gelato to tourists as being the #1 top rated restaurant in all of Rome. That's what you get when relying on reviews from the net.

I wondered why a query such as this only had two responses, when it seems that there would be dozens of recommendations for romantic, special occasion restaurants in Rome.

For me, I couldn't answer it because although I'm sure it wasn't OP's intent, as worded it seemed as if he was asking for a recommendation for a bad restaurant, not a good one.

I can't get around the "tiny portion" size comment. In Italy the portions are very small. That isn't regional. North, South, East, West, if the size of the dish isn't much smaller than what you would get in an "Italian" restaurant in the USA then you are eating junk food in a tourist trap. The location may be romantic, but the food will not be.

Italian food earned its reputation because of the quality of the ingredients. Quality ingredients means expensive. Therefore, to keep things affordable, good restaurants keep portions small. Tomatoes ripen in the summer. A good restaurant in Rome will source them from a local farm, probably picked that day or within the past day or two.

Fresh, local products is what makes Italian food rock. You can get fresh tomato based sauces at good restaurants the winter, but a good restaurant won't just buy industrial, canned tomatoes. They will be reliably sourced and preserved for off season use.

Fresh, locally produced food from a reliable source would not be cheap if served in Olive Garden or Cheescake Factory size portions. Even things as simple as a fresh tomato, fresh parsley (not the dried stuff from a jar), and parmigian or pecorino-Romano cheese grated on the pasta as soon as it comes out of the boiling water so that it melts and covers every strand, not the stuff grated days before and spooned onto semi-cold pasta at your table, can taste like food of the gods, if the ingredients are great.

High quality means small portions, or else a typical Italian resident wouldn't be able to afford to eat in their own neighborhood restaurant. Italians take their food seriously. If you get a large portion, you stepped into a tourist trap that is substituting quantity for quality.

There was a NY Times article peripherally related to this about six months ago. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/23...referrer=&_r=0

If you cook Italian food you know that a portion size of pasta is 100 grams. If you have a 500 gram box, you have enough for five. If cooking for two, you use 2/5ths of the box. On a Cheesecake Factory website they list their pasta portion size as 1000 grams. In other words if you eat there you get a portion size that feeds an Italian family of ten. Olive Garden lists their portion size as 500 grams, enough to feed a family of five.

If these places used the quality of ingredients that a good restaurant uses in Italy, those bowls of pasta would cost you $50-100 dollars. In the USA, from pizza to pasta, they generally serve gigantic portions by using the cheapest ingredients possible. And that largely accounts for the difference in taste between the unpalatable Italian food here, and the exquisite dining experiences in Italy.

Olive Garden was recently called out for not even salting the water they boil the pasta in just to save a few tenth's of a cent per plate by saving money on salt. Salt raises the boiling point of water so that the pasta can be cooked more quickly and not be water soggy and mushy from having too much immersion time. Salt in the water doesn't stick to the pasta and make it salty. It's just how an Italian chef increases the boiling point of water. Big plate restaurants get people to go there by serving enormous portions, but the higher the quality the smaller the portions will be.

Italian cooking doesnt spare the butter, oil, or cheese, and the typical Italian breakfast is pastry if anything, but italy doesn't have our obesity epidemic because they eat small portions, but of great stuff.

A person cannot say they want a recommendation for a great Italian restaurant in Italy, but they want a large portion. It's not in accordance withbitalian tradition. The competition between local, authentic restaurants is not about size, but about quality and preparation of ingredients.

If someone says they want a recommendation for a nice meal but they, "don't like tiny portions," as far as Italy goes, it's like asking someone to give them a recommendation for a bad restaurant.

It would help to know the area where OP is staying. The Testaccio neighborhood tends to be a good place to eat. It's a working class neighborhood, too far for almost all tourists who are staying in the historic center of Rome to walk to, so the the restaurants there mainly caters to locals.

Josephineperry' recommendation of Felice is an excellent one because it is one of the best restaurants in Testaccio. You can't go wrong there, but I don't think it's very romantic. Flvio, one of their top cooks left and opened his own place, Flvio al Velavalvedotto in the same neighborhood that is even better. Either one is worth the cab ride if you're not up to the walk through a sketchy neighborhood and the near certainty of getting lost on the way to find them.

Flvio has a nice outdoor patio, and in July it won't be too hot. During the Roman summer diners' preference at such places is for the outdoor, not the indoor seating because most local, neighborhood places don't have air-conditioning, and it's much cooler outdoors in the evening. Good restaurants don't open before 7- 8 PM, and it will have started to cool down, and the weather is usually perfect.

OP had a good experience at Trastevere but beware of eating there now without doing your homework. It is one of the most beautiful areas of Rome because it is so old, and it was virtually undiscovered in the 70's and 80's, but those days are over.

Now, most of the restaurants are the same type of tourist traps you find near the Colisseum, Fountain of Trevi, Spanish Steps, etc. Great restaurants are still there, but as in much of Rome, if you just wander into a place you will not find the great food that Italy is famous for. You have to do your homework.

In my opinion TripAdvisor should not be used to find restaurants, it should be used to exclude them. If TA rates a restaurant highly, with few exceptions, that's a strong reason not to go.

Also, it's almost as bad to use certain multi-country guidebooks like Fodor's, etc. Their writers are typically an American sent to a foreign city for a visit of a few days who writes about it, then goes off to another country. How does visiting a city for a few days make someone an expert on where to eat there?

There are great, independent food critics who haved lived in Rome for decades who write in English, who have eaten thousands of bad or mediocre meals in Rome, but who have also found hundreds of great ones. They have their fingers on the pulse of the city's restaurant scene. They do this for a living. There are great sources of information out there.

Elizabeth Minchilli and Katie Parla come to mind. You can download their apps or books for just a few dollars. It's worth doing that before wasting 25 times that amount eating a super-sized portion of food in a tourist trap. You can also go to their free websites and get lots of info.

Rome Digest is another website in English, written by Romans who are independent, that also comes to mind. Not in English but if you don't speak Italian you can cut and paste into Google Translate and try to make do, is the website, "Dissapore, Niente Sacro Tranne il Cibo." It means, "I disagree, nothing is sacred except for food." It is great not just for Rome, but for all of Italy, like where to eat in Milan if going to the Expo, etc. I'll admit it's not designed for tourists and can be difficult for non-Italian speakers, but it can be worth the effort. The reviews are by top food critics, not Joe who just got off of a cruise ship that stopped in Rome for two days and wants to tell everyone on TA what the best pizza is, "in all of Italy."

There are romantic, economical restaurants in Rome, suitable for an anniversary with roof top views overlooking the Colosseum or Forum that aren't "stuffy" budget-busting Michelin Star restaurants that you can go to, providing that as always in Italy, you have a reservation.

But I just don't know how to recommend them because the portion sizes are Italian, not American style, and that means small. I don't know how to respond to a query asking for a memorable restaurant that has great food in large portions, and that would be considered "stuffy" simply because it earned a Michelin star. Eataly in Torino is a food mall similar to a Macy's, and it has a Michelin star. Having great food doesn't mean you are stuffy.

There are many cozy, casual, budget-friendly restaurants with fantastic food, suitable for an anniversary in Rome, but not if portion size is a criterion standard for meaning good food, and good food is equated with meaning stuffy.
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Old Jun 16, 2015, 2:02 am
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^^^^^
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Old Jun 16, 2015, 6:22 am
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Perhaps I should clarify the small tiny portion comment. Sorry for your long post for something I did not clearly convey.
I was really referring the nouveau cuisine concept that is seemingly called outstanding.
When I was referring to tiny portions, I was referring to something like this:


and a dining experience like this is what I was trying to avoid:
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Old Jun 16, 2015, 6:33 am
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Thanks for the information. The rant portion was not really appreciated. Thanks for the unfair generalization. You completely misinterpreted my words, but you have furthered the generalization about snobby condescending Europeans.

Last edited by pbiflyer; Jun 16, 2015 at 9:08 pm
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 4:50 am
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Originally Posted by Perche
[...] I can't get around the "tiny portion" size comment. In Italy the portions are very small. That isn't regional. North, South, East, West, if the size of the dish isn't much smaller than what you would get in an "Italian" restaurant in the USA then you are eating junk food in a tourist trap...

[...] Therefore, to keep things affordable, good restaurants keep portions small. Tomatoes ripen in the summer...

[...] If you cook Italian food you know that a portion size of pasta is 100 grams...
Allow me a differentiated thought on that particular matter: Italians often first eat antipasti followed by a primo and then by a secondo (plus contorno), and a desert is the final touch. In many other countries including the US, a standard dinner consists of one main course. If the portions in Italy were the same size like in the US, you'd have several people suffering from severe cases of indigestion! Mind you, in the last years more and more Italians start reducing the restaurant meals to "only" two dishes.

Other than that, I agree fully with everything you wrote, and (sorry pbiflyer), although it may sound to some as "politically incorrect", what you wrote is a description of the differences between two worlds.
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 10:09 am
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Originally Posted by pbiflyer
Perhaps I should clarify the small tiny portion comment. Sorry for your long post for something I did not clearly convey.
I was really referring the nouveau cuisine concept that is seemingly called outstanding.
When I was referring to tiny portions, I was referring to something like this:


and a dining experience like this is what I was trying to avoid:
Originally Posted by pbiflyer
Thanks for the information. The rant portion was not really appreciated. Thanks for the unfair generalization. You completely misinterpreted my words, but you have furthered the generalization about snobby condescending Europeans.

Sorry if my reply was off-base, and that it was long. I was stuck on a plane with nothing else to do. I've never seen food in Italy that looks like the food in your picture, and I've never seen a a person eating in a restaurant that looks like that. Perhaps you have a tendency to generalize about europeans?

All that I'm saying is that there are great restaurants with small portions, bad restaurants with small portions, and bad restaurants with large portions. There is no fourth category, good restaurants that serve large portions. For example, if you want good food and insist on using the internet such as TripAdvisor for opinions you should eliminate any place in Italy where the reviewer makes the comment, "great food, and the portions are huge!"

Again, I'm sorry if it sounded unreasonable, but small portions do not mean that you are eating in some hoity-toity place. Large portions mean that you are eating at a tourist place. You haven't said what part of Rome you are staying at. It's a big, spread out town.

If you are staying in the historic center and want to celebrate a romantic anniversary, why not start by going to the Hotel Forum a little before sundown. It has a very fancy restaurant, with white coated waiters, but if you take the elevator up to the top floor and go through the restaurant there is a small outside bar on a terrace overlooking the Forum and the Campidoglio and Palatine Hills. In the summer towards sunset the famous swallows of Rome fly right by the terrace. You can start off the anniversary there by looking over the Forum towards twilight, having a nice Italian cocktail at the bar before heading somewhere else for dinner.

Don't be put of by the fact that the bar at Hotel Forum is called American Bar. They serve great Negronis, spritz, etc, and the view is utterly romantic.
http://www.hotelforum.com/eng/ancient-centre-rome-hotel.html#prettyPhoto[gallery6726]/9/

http://www.hotelforum.com/eng/ancient-centre-rome-hotel.html#prettyPhoto[gallery6726]/10/

http://www.hotelforum.com/eng/ancient-centre-rome-hotel.html#prettyPhoto[gallery6726]/13/

http://www.hotelforum.com/eng/ancient-centre-rome-hotel.html#prettyPhoto[gallery6726]/12/

If you don't like that, consider going to another bar that has stunning sunset views of the city, Bar La Terraza in the Hotel Eden. They have romantic piano music every evening. Views are to die for. One warning, the restaurant at the Hotel Eden has a Michelin star. That takes it out of my price range, but the bar is not expensive, and the view over the Roman Gardens at Sunset makes the price of a drink worth it. http://www.dorchestercollection.com/...r-la-terrazza/

Stopping at one of these bars to start off a romantic evening with a Prosecco or a negroni, instead of at a random bar in Trastevere that these days is often a place that serves vodka infused jello cubes to American students spending their third year abroad, would be very romantic. These are casual bars with stunning views, and they have the class fitting for an anniversary, or for someone making a proposal of marriage. The prices for a drink are 10-15 euros, somewhat less than what a drink costs in New York City.

I like to stay near the Pantheon on short trips, and if that's where you're staying you might want to kick off your anniversary at the Minerva Roof Garden Bar. It's right on the square where the Pantheon is. It has one of the best views in the city. Start your anniversary by getting a prosecco there around sunset. http://www.minervaroofgarden.it/mine...arden-rome.htm

Then you can move on to Rome's superb restaurants, depending on where you are staying, your willingness to take a cab or a tram, etc, which you haven't yet mentioned. You would get small portions, but as KLouis said, you start with an antipasto, move onto a pasta, then a main course accompanied by a side dish, then a desert, then a coffee, then a grappa. A good roman restaurant will allow you about 20-30 minutes between each so that you can enjoy conversation, the environment, and digest the food, so it will take 3-4 hours. The tourist will experience that and write a review on the internet saying, "small portions, and terrible service." There is no rush in and rush out at a good restaurant in Italy. The portions will be small, and you will be glad for that.

Last edited by Perche; Jun 17, 2015 at 10:31 am
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 10:17 am
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Originally Posted by Perche
There are great, independent food critics who haved lived in Rome for decades who write in English, who have eaten thousands of bad or mediocre meals in Rome, but who have also found hundreds of great ones. They have their fingers on the pulse of the city's restaurant scene. They do this for a living. There are great sources of information out there.

Elizabeth Minchilli and Katie Parla come to mind. You can download their apps or books for just a few dollars. It's worth doing that before wasting 25 times that amount eating a super-sized portion of food in a tourist trap. You can also go to their free websites and get lots of info.
We spent several days in Rome earlier this month and used the information from Katie Parla's book. It was very helpful and we had some great meals, none of which I would characterize as "romantic". For us romance was very small restaurants surrounded by few locals and an atmosphere that focused on food and not ambience. For the most part they were meals we will remember for quite some time to come.

We did our best to avoid major streets in tourist areas lined with restaurants and set a policy that if someone was out front trying to wave us in like a used car salesman, that wasn't the place for us.

Everyone has their own definition of a great meal and what a romantic evening is. Take a look at what Elizabeth and Katie have to say and then do your own research. See if you can find photos or a menu online and determine if that's what you had in mind.

Don't forget to make a reservation about 1 to 2 weeks out or you will likely be disappointed that they don't have a table for you. If they do have a table at dinner without a reservation, you are either very lucky, or likely didn't want to eat there anyway.

Have fun, relax, enjoy the food, and happy anniversary.
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 10:29 am
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Originally Posted by WestCoastFlyer
We spent several days in Rome earlier this month and used the information from Katie Parla's book. It was very helpful and we had some great meals, none of which I would characterize as "romantic". For us romance was very small restaurants surrounded by few locals and an atmosphere that focused on food and not ambience. For the most part they were meals we will remember for quite some time to come.

We did our best to avoid major streets in tourist areas lined with restaurants and set a policy that if someone was out front trying to wave us in like a used car salesman, that wasn't the place for us.

Everyone has their own definition of a great meal and what a romantic evening is. Take a look at what Elizabeth and Katie have to say and then do your own research. See if you can find photos or a menu online and determine if that's what you had in mind.

Don't forget to make a reservation about 1 to 2 weeks out or you will likely be disappointed that they don't have a table for you. If they do have a table at dinner without a reservation, you are either very lucky, or likely didn't want to eat there anyway.

Have fun, relax, enjoy the food, and happy anniversary.
Good advice.
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 10:37 am
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Originally Posted by Perche
Sorry if my reply was off-base. However, I've never seen food in Italy that looks like the food in your picture, and I've never seen a a person eating in a restaurant that looks like that.
Then it seems you've never been to Metamorfosi:

http://metamorfosiroma.it/

Originally Posted by Perche
Perhaps you have a tendency to generalize about europeans?
The OP merely said that he wasn't into nouvelle cuisine as depicted in the pictures he shared. And nouvelle cuisine is not only found in Europe. Again you inferred something not stated by the OP.

Originally Posted by Perche
All that I'm saying is that there are great restaurants with small portions, bad restaurants with small portions, and bad restaurants with large portions. There is no fourth category, good restaurants that serve large portions. For example, if you want good food and insist on using the internet such as TripAdvisor for opinions you should eliminate any place in Italy where the reviewer makes the comment, "great food, and the portions are huge!"
The OP never said he wanted large portions. He said he wasn't into "tiny fancy food".

The OP never mentioned TripAdvisor.

If anyone is generalizing about a nationality, it's you generalizing about Americans.
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 12:22 pm
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We are staying at the Westin Excelsior. We are very mobile, willing to take cabs, subway, buses.
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 12:29 pm
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I actually could recommend some good restaurants in Italy that serve large portions, but they're all around Florence where Bistecca is ordered by the kilogram

I think what OP is after is traditional Roman cooking. Something without foams and powders, and not within 1500 miles of Wylie Dufresne's skullet. I haven't been to Rome in a number of years now, so I don't want to throw out names of places that were good when I last visited. However, this caught my eye, Katie Parla's recent column for Bon Appetit on the best pasta dishes in Rome:

http://www.bonappetit.com/restaurant...nts-rome-italy

I happen to agree with her tastes when she writes about cities and restaurants I've spent more time in, so I'd be inclined to trust her.
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Old Jun 17, 2015, 6:08 pm
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Originally Posted by pbiflyer
Thanks for the information. The rant portion was not really appreciated. Thanks for the unfair generalization. You completely misinterpreted my words, but you have furthered the generalization about snobby condescending Europeans.
Hear, hear.
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