This still isn't Wallyworld....: When in Rome, eat as a Roman emperor would have

So now begins the daunting task of blogging our recent adventure to Italy. I am starting arbitrarily with the culinary aspect of the trip, just because that is what I am in the mood to do.

Here is our little guy, enjoying his last taste of Germany in the airport. Mmmm butterbrezel...

On the first day, we journeyed to the Testaccio district, in part to visit the market, where we could get some of the ingredients for our evening dinners. If anyone can identify these crazy crustaceans you win a prize! I was happy that we could pick up some real buffalo mozzarella, though the tomatoes did not seem to be at their best (duh, it's even winter in Italy).

The other reason we ended up in this somewhat obscure district, was to visit this restaurant:

Which dates to the late 1800s when this was a slaughterhouse district, and bears some of the authentic Roman cuisine from that time. For example, this head cheese appetizer:

For my main dish, I had the classic pajata rigatoni. For those of our readers who are the sensitive type, I would recommend not clicking the link. On reading the description, even I had some stirrings of regret. But it was frickin' delicious.

Even Liam's dish was amazing. I think I could be happy for the rest of my (consequently short) life just eating this simple pasta with butter and parmesan.

The next day we ventured to the more pedestrian tourist area of Rome, past the Coliseum, down to Trajan's forum (more on that in a later post, suffice to say I took more pictures than reasonable of his triumphal column, probably because I am too influenced by Mike Duncan's podcast).

Anyway, we planned on lunching at a place called Enoteca Provinzia Romana, whose hook was providing food gathered from the local province of Rome (for locavores, see). I had the anchovy torte (foreground), while Sarah braved the porchetta. Both were delicious, and Liam picked a winner again with his mortadella bruschetta (i.e., open face bologna sandwich)

We indulged in desert (in large part because it was raining, hoping we could ride it out). Chocolate Mousse with persimmon sauce:

Then, it was Christmas Day, so we headed down to the Jewish quarter for lunch. We went to Nonna Bete (recommended by Anthony Bourdain!) We had the sampler for appetizers, which included the Jewish style artichoke, fried salt cod, stuffed zucchini flower, rice balls and cheese. All of which I would recommend but the rice balls were amazingly good.

For the main dish, Sarah had the vegetable lasagna, Liam had the gnocchi, and I had ravioli with orange sauce. I won this one.

The next day we had a crazy adventure. One sight I wouldn't recommend seeing in Rome is the Polyclinic. 'nuff said. After passing by the Spanish Steps, we headed to lunch (without a plan). We were basically in tourist trap central, but I think we did pretty well considering. It somehow had a Viennese/German theme, and was decorated like a German brauhaus. We had the option for schnitzel and "german" beer (Becks), but instead had Calzone type things, and a very decent Italian beer on tap. Mine was a classic Calzone, sausage, tomato sauce cheese, arugala. Sarah's was filled with zucchini flours and cheese. This stuff was so good, I am suspicious about the "theme" menu.