Perche

There are many websites where people have written they “ate where the locals eat, because everyone around us was speaking Italian, so the food had to be good.” I've always been skeptical of that. Although I can’t seem to find the post, someone even mentioned in a great trip report about Venice last fall that he was surprised; he thought Italians really valued food, but saw many “locals” eating obviously bad food.

I think when people at other tables are speaking Italian it doesn’t mean they are local. Locals eat out of course, but they mainly eat at home. A large percentage of the people are probably Italian tourists. Italians on vacation might wish they were going to Chicago, but most have to vacation in Italy, just like most Americans go on vacation somewhere in the USA.

Based on hotel registry data, about one-third of the tourists in Italy are from Italy. Those are the Italians most likely to eat out, not the locals. It is that way even on cruise ships. The passenger list of the Costa Concordia, the fatal shipwreck that occurred off the Tuscan Coast in 2012, had 3,078 passengers (not crew). Of these, 989 or about one-third, were Italian citizens. That’s on a cruise ship to super-touristy Tuscany.

I don’t believe that Italian tourists are interested in finding great Italian food. They can do that at home. They just want to eat close to where they are staying, see the sites, and stay within their budget. That’s different from a tourist visiting from abroad for a week that doesn’t want to waste one dinner on an average meal, and does some research to find a fantastic place.

That’s probably why at great restaurants like Roscioli in Rome it is unusual to find a Roman, and at Al Covo in Venice it is unusual to find a Venetian. If a local is eating out it is usually because they don’t want to cook dinner that night, not because they are looking for a great meal.

I think that's the way it works everywhere. There are great restaurants in San Francisco, but I generally don’t go to them unless it's a special occasion. If I’m out and I get hungry, I just look for a reasonable place to eat. That's how I eat when I’m traveling in the USA. Unless it's a special occasion I just look for a decent looking place, and I probably pass for a local.

My impression is that it’s difficult to find out where the locals eat because you’ll probably have to take a train or a bus to get there, and when Italian is being spoken, in major cities there’s a good chance they are Italian tourists. I had a discussion about that with half a dozen friends today, all of whom are professionals working in central Rome. None live in the city center. One said that even if they offered her an apartment in Piazza Navona, she wouldn’t trade it for her apartment in Rome at one of the last stops on the B Metro line, because it's too touristy. None of them could remember the last time they ate in downtown Rome, except to grab a sandwich or a coffee.

I didn't want to eat well last night. I just wanted a panino (sandwich). I'm staying in a wonderful, non-touristy neighborhood in Rome, Rione Monti. It's very close to the Forum and Coliseum but you wouldn't know it because it’s quite tucked away and hidden, with a lot of neighborhood shops. There’s a hole in the wall around the corner that makes great Panini. That’s where the locals eat. There is a fast food pasta place a few doors down. That’s where the locals go too, because it doesn’t cost more than 5 euros to eat at either place.

As I was eating my sandwich a woman finished her's, stood up to leave, and in a British accent said to the owner standing behind the counter that she works for a magazine, and was doing a review. She said she was going to write that the place made excellent sandwiches.

The owner didn't speak much English but asked, "Why didn't you tell me you were doing a review when you came in? I would have given you better treatment!" She responded, "That’s why I didn’t tell you." The owner then asked, "Where are you going next?" She responded, "I can't tell you that either because you’ll call them, then they’ll treat me differently."

I turned around and asked her in English, "Who are you working for?" She said, "Lonely Planet." I don't know what to think about that. She seemed to be about 25 years old, didn't speak any Italian, and was supposed to write an article on where to eat in Rome based on her weekend trip here. That's pretty hard to do. Still, it seemed nice that she found the great hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop off the beaten path.

My general impression has always been that because you hear the people at the tables around you speaking Italian, that doesn’t mean that you are eating with the locals, or that you are going to eat well. In the heart of the major cities many of the people speaking Italian are probably tourists too.

obscure2k

Thanks for that great post, Perche ^

Perche

This was a great trip report. I hear Italian spoken at the tables around me all the time. Hearing the conversations, I generally don't take them to be locals if I'm anywhere near the center of the city. Most of the time they are clearly Italian tourists.

As OliverB also said in his trip report to Venice last Fall, "I should take it as a compliment that we've been stopped at least 4 times this past week by older well-dressed Italian gentlemen amidst throngs of pedestrians, asking for directions in Italian- assuming we weren't American."

I think that happens because a substantial number of people speaking Italian in Italy are tourists too, and they are just as lost as anybody in terms of finding their way around, or figuring out where to eat. The streets of Rome, Venice, and Florence, are full of Italians trying to read their maps.

ckendall

I will note that I have numerous Italian friends in Milan with whom I often eat at the very local pizza/burger (yes)/Chinese place, because it's really close to their home and not that expensive and the places are full of Italians (I cannot recall hearing English spoken in any of them). Yes we sometimes dine out at nice places, but many Italians eat within a few hundred meters of their homes at places that serve simple food.

[See here for the 10 best burgers in Milan: http://www.dissapore.com/grande-noti...migliori-2015/ ]

PWMTrav

Eating with the locals is hit or miss. I've seen Italian tourists at terrible restaurants, right there with me, regretting it! But as Perche mentioned, those aren't really locals.

What helps are recommendations from locals, where they'd go for a special meal, and also where they consider to be a good value (lots of emphasis on value by Italians).

yurtripper

Given some of the notoriously bad and downright lazy reviewers Lonely Planet has had over the years I'd say she might even be overqualified.

Perche

A few months ago Lonely Planet published that Venice was the world's 4th most economical travel destination for 2017, after 1. Nepal (obviously not a city); 2. Namibia (not a city); 3. Porto, Portugal; 4. Venice. At the same time, their competitor Rough Guides wrote that Venice is "eye-gougingly expensive."

Fodor's, the original guidebook first published almost 90 years ago, filled a valuable niche because few people had ever traveled back then. Now, it's understandable that these guide books are useless to downright misleading. The Lonely Planet website says, "We hire all of our contributors on a freelance basis... We don’t employ writers or photographers."
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/careers/...-a-contributor

The typical writer is an unemployed, just-out-of-college student. I knew one who was in college and often took 3 day weekends to fly to cities he'd never been to before, then he'd write about it and get it published in one of these travel books as an "expert guide to..." wherever. Once he went to London for the weekend to watch a soccer game on a free plane ticket because his father was a pilot for the airline. He flew right back after the game and never went into London, but that didn't stop him from being enterprising and writing London restaurant reviews and selling them to a travel magazine.

Last month I was staying at a B&B in Lecce, Puglia. It was early January and I was the only guest. After a few days the owner said that another American was coming, a journalist from San Francisco. I thought that him being from San Francisco, maybe we'd explore the city, have lunch, or do something together. He turned out to be from London, writing for the in-flight travel magazine of British Airways.

He was there to review one specific restaurant called "Bros," located on the same block as the B&B. He was always gone the whole day, even though the restaurant didn't open until 8PM. At breakfast I'd ask him how his day went. It was always something like, "the owners took me out to a fancy dinner in Taranto," or "They took me out to have fantastic sea urchin in Brindisi. Do you like sea urchin?" "Today we are going to have lunch at the owner's winery."

On my last morning I asked him how the food in the restaurant was, because I hadn't eaten there yet. I walked by it a few times a day but the menu in the window indicated that the prices were about 3X's higher than anywhere else. He said he didn't know, he hadn't eaten there yet either, but he was sure it was great.

The only thing that could be sillier than relying on these books and magazines would be relying on TripAdvisor.

KLouis

Oh, I love it but it's no longer allowed to have it over here due to conservation purposes (overfished). Rather than all fish-serving restaurants having it in Heraklion, nowadays only ~50% serve it (illegally of course). Still, excellent taste, one of the best sea food around the Mediterranean...

PS Sorry, OT but this was stronger than me

Perche

The restaurant owners in Lecce wined and dined the critic for the BA in-flight magazine for at least three days, because when I left our stay had overlapped by that much and he still hadn't eaten there yet. The young woman from Lonely Planet who went to the sandwich place in Rome couldn't have had much experience, but at least she refused to be influenced by not revealing that she was there to do a review. I don't have any conflicts of interest with magazines, websites, or anything whatsoever, but this sounds crazy to me.

My trip last month was an AA miles redemption on BA in F. I always thought the inflight magazine's restaurant and hotel reviews about italy were ridiculous. On my return flight, having had breakfast for three days with one of the gentlemen who writes the articles, I understood why. Also, since my dorm mate used to fly for free because his father was a pilot, and would go to places and come back and sell restaurant reviews to Lonely Planet, that made me give up on books on the other end of the price scale.

TripAdvisor makes even less sense to me. Why would someone expect a tourist who is staying in Venice for 36 hours to know where to find the best, exquisite, hidden locations, when that tourist will need to ask for directions several times to get back to their hotel a half a mile away?

I don't believe in, "eating where the locals eat." Last week I was in Rome at a restaurant, and at the next table there was a couple speaking in a low voice. I couldn't hear them well, but I thought they were locals, speaking Italian. Since about 85% of the words in Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are shared words with Latin roots, I could get a vague sense of what they were saying, even though I wasn't eavesdropping, but I couldn't quite get it. Then when it was time for them to leave, the waiter handed them their coats and I heard lots of, "Merci, beaucoup," and it was obvious that they were French tourists I had mistaken for locals.

I was in Rome taking a two-week course to prepare for a tough upcoming 4 hour oral exam given in Italian. Yet, I couldn't tell if the couple sitting next to me were even speaking Italian because there are so many different dialects and accents. I'm convinced that when Americans go to Italy and say they ate where the locals eat, they consider anyone speaking in a foreign language to be a local.

Yesterday in San Francisco i went to the gym to start working off 5 weeks of pasta and wine. I was on the treadmill and the woman next to me had her cell phone at her ear. I couldn't hear her with all of the noise, but I kept hearing enough words for me to think she was speaking Italian. I was going to try to chat with her when she got off the phone. Some words sounded strange, and I figured she was speaking in dialect. Then after about 5 minutes I realized that she was speaking Portuguese.

I'm willing to bet that when someone from the USA goes to a restaurant in Italy and says, "I ate where the locals eat because everyone was speaking Italian," they are hearing a variety of foreign languages and dialects from people coming from all over Italy, Europe, and the world, and mistake everyone as being a local because they don't understand what they are saying.

After 5 weeks of only speaking Italian, on the way back when BA FA's would talk to me in english, I usually couldn't understand them, and would have to say, "excuse me?" I do not believe that someone who does not speak Italian can go to Italy and tell whether someone is speaking Italian with a local accent, or if they are even speaking Italian.

Sciamano

As Italian and also Roman, I disagree on a few points OP's originale post:

1) Italians like very much eating "outside" and this can be in a pizzera for a quick pizza, in restaurant, on the street for street food (also kebab though it's a doner to be honest) or simply in a pub (for example, nowadays it's very trendy to eat Hamburger Gourmet or only for craft beer. You will be surprised to know that Rome is one of the biggest market for craft beer).
For example, Italians prefer going to eat outside two times a week in a mid restaurant instead of only one time in a higher level restaurant....though at the end we'll pay totally more


2) Roscioli it's good but opened only 15 years ago. The real ancient, typical and historic restaurants in Rome are others. Different story for Roscioli bakery, an almost 200 years old institution in Rome. Hat off.
Value for money for the Restaurant is not that good and the restauration offer in Italy, expecially in cities like Rome, is really enormous so people can eat good almost everywhere. It's not rare not to find a free table for two persons in the middle of the week far away from the city centre and from tourist areas.
Also laziness, parking and public transport don't help. It's not easy to move in Rome without an own private means of transport.
If you live and work in city centre it's a different story, but that's a minority.

iapetus

Like Sciamano, I also take issue with the OP (original post, not poster ). I think it is a good idea to eat with the locals. And since we're talking about food and Italy, it seems to me that a little friendly debate on the topic is more than appropriate, if not downright necessary!


I think that locals do know where the good food is. And I'm pretty certain that that's where they go when they go to eat. When I dine out in Pasadena, California, I go to the restaurants that I like. I don't merely go to places that are convenient. Since mrs. iapetus is a terrific cook, I'm not about to sacrifice quality in the name of convenience. Unless someone were to specifically request a very cheap restaurant, I would only recommend places that I think serve good food (and even then I would try to suggest cheap spots that serve quality food for the price). I can't see why Romans would be any different. In fact, I can only imagine that they'd be more so, given how passionate Italians are about what they eat.

Perche, the take-away point from your OP -- at least the point I took away -- is that visitors to Italy should be wary of assuming that the clientele in any given restaurant are locals just because they hear (or think they hear) Italian being spoken. And I think that's a very good point.

But I also think that there are other, more useful metrics to use when trying to determine if a place is truly popular with the locals. What I do is try to identify the owners of the restaurant I'm visiting. If it's small enough, I think that this isn't particularly hard to do. You then watch their interactions with the customers. If you're paying attention, I think it's pretty easy to tell when the owners know someone dining at their establishment ... even if you don't speak Italian. (I speak Italian at an intermediate level; so maybe I'm overestimating how easy it is to gauge these interactions, but I don't think so.) If I see that happening often enough, I feel pretty confident that I'm sitting at a restaurant that locals will frequent.

I also just ask people I trust for recommendations. (Not that this can't backfire. I recall going out to dinner with colleagues once at a place that had been recommended by the hotel staff. While almost everyone else loved it, a friend of mine and I were less than impressed. To have called that spot mediocre would be kind.)

And I try to avoid places with high tourist density. I recall one particularly overpriced meal with decent (not great, not bad) food right on Piazza Navona. I should have known better.


Finally, I think it's important to know what you like. I can usually tell if I'm happy with the food and service I'm getting at a restaurant. Yes, I may not be getting the most authentic Italian food. But if the food tasted good, the wine flowed and the servers were pleasant to me (bonus points if they speak to me in Italian!), I'm going to be pretty happy!

mkjr

please list some good craft beer places in Rome. i have found a few. Open Baladin, looks to be the best i have read up on, My Ale. Bir & Fud, Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fà, Baguetteria del Fico

Sciamano

It depends from the area you are going to visit. If you tell me in which part of Rome you'll be, then I'll be happy to be hoppy for you

Btw, pubs you listed are ok but be aware My Ale and Baguetteria del Fico are only beer shops, they don't have draft beer.
Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fa' and Bir&Fud: same property, the former is an institution (little and so full that you can only stand) and the latter is also a place where you can a have great pizza! (better make a reservation). They are almost one in front of the other, so you can try both of them! (location Trastevere)
Open Baladin is also a trendy and spacy pub with a lot of drafts wher you can taste good burgers and food in general. (location Campo de Fiori/Ghetto)


I can suggest you also these ones scattered in the city:

Brasserie 4:20
Hopside
Stavio
Hopificio
Buskers
Birrigfugio
Be.Re.
Inofficina
Tree Folk's
Draft Tap Bar
Stazione Birra
Prok'n'Roll
Luppolo 12
Barley Wine
Buskers



I think you won't go back home thirsty

Sciamano

Thank you for the explanation
Reading "Original Poster" under the name (where the infos are) of the user when opening a new thread, I thought it meant this.

iapetus

Most people are referring to the original poster when they use OP on FT. I, however, usually refer to posters by their handle and the original post itself by OP. And I was very specific this time because I didn't want Perche to think that I was disagreeing with him, just some of his original post.