Memories of Rome

Just getting around today to reading the travel section of last Saturday's Globe and Mail. This week's Travelblog - which invites submission from ordinary humble readers - was titled "Eat, Ask Questions Later" (it doesn't seem to appear in the online edition, so I can't link to it). It was one woman's story of dining at a restaurant in Rome called Ristorante dal Pallaro, known for the quality of its cooking, but also the fact that it does not have a menu. You simply turn up and eat whatever the owner/chef has decided to cook.

The restaurant this woman described sounded very familiar to me. So I went back and checked the travelogue I wrote after we went to Rome for Christmas in 2001. And sure enough, I discovered we'd eaten dinner at the very same place, on Boxing Day (our last meal in Rome). This is what I wrote:

[The restaurant we're going to tonight] is called Trattoria del Palaro [sic], and all we know about it is that it has no menu - when you go there, you eat whatever it is they decided to make that day. We sit out on the terrace out front, next to a large outdoor patio heater. After ascertaining that we understand the concept of there being no menu, the waiter nods and then disappears inside. Soon a bottle of white wine and a bottle of water appear on the table; the wine is a little ropey at first taste, but in the true tradition of plonk, it tastes better after the first few sips. A few minutes later, the waiter emerges again and the feast begins.

He sets four plates down in front of us, filled with a selection of appetizers. There are slices of cured Parma ham; hard, piquant little green olives; some soft white beans; slices of fennel bulb drizzled in oil. As we are loading our plates with these goodies, a fifth plate arrives containing sizzling little croquettes, hot from the frying pan; our best guess is that they contain lamb and potato, but whatever they are, they're delicious. All this food disappears in a trice.

The waiter clears all the dishes, and shortly thereafter our pasta is placed before us. This is a simple but very flavourful dish of bucatini (tubes) with a tomato ragù and lots of cheese. The meat course follows swiftly on and is really superb: slices of succulent roast veal, served with potatoes sliced thinly and then deep fried, so they're a bit like kettle chips, only thicker. There are also slices of grilled eggplant. All this soon disappears, and the tasty juices from the veal are mopped up with slices of chewy dense bread. To finish the secondo, there is a slice of mild pecorino cheese to enjoy.

We're both feeling pretty stuffed, but everything has been so delicious so far that we can't possibly pass up the dessert. We have a break to finish our wine, then the waiter comes, bearing slices of a custardy and slightly boozy lemon cake, and to finish, a delight - tiny glasses of freshly-squeezed mandarin juice.

It's a superb meal - we've definitely ended on a gastronomic high point - and all for the ridiculously low price of less than $25 each. Our only regret is that we only discovered this place tonight - if we were here longer, we'd have definitely come back.

The moral of the story? Maybe in future, I ought to think about editing, then submitting, some of my travel scribbles to outlets like Travelblog in the Globe. Other people seem to do much the same thing, so why not me?