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Home With Rome on My Mind
I'm home and happy to be here, but boy am I pooped. I returned just before Passover with the worst jet-lag I have ever had, and then I needed to prepare for a Seder at my house. When it was all over I knew why my grandmother had heart attacks right after Passover. Passover is a lot of work, huge stress. By the time you sit down to the Seder table you're ready for an ambulance, not the four questions and four cups of wine.
I am getting too old for this, a phrase I find myself saying more frequently now that I have turned 60. I know, I know, as many of you well-wisher have told me, that 60 is the new 50, but I haven't felt that way since my birthday two weeks ago. I have to say that I very much enjoy my Cook at Seliano sessions, and I manage to muster all my energy and good humor for the cooking classes, the excursions, and the day-long social interaction with my guests. But the week can be exhausting for me.
For a little rest, I went back to Rome for a few days before my flight home. But there is always so much I want to do in Rome that it ends up not being restful at all, even with a little Italian nap after lunch. I am awaiting the day when I can enjoy what Italians call dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing.
On this trip, for instance, I just had to go to the new Museo Barracco on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of Rome's main thoroughfares. I have been watching closely as this 16th century building, a former private home, was being restored. I often stay in a small apartment across the street with windows looking out onto it. On the usual tourist route, it's down the street from the church of Sant' Andrea della Valle, where the opening scene of Tosca takes place, and around the corner from the Piazza Navona. The museum building is worth seeing for its own sake. It is quirky. In fact, for a long time I thought it was not really 16th century, but a 19th century version of 16th century. Inside, it has some wonderful painted coffered ceilings and frescos, and beautifully tiled floors. I actually took a photo of the iron hand railing on the stairs, hoping perhaps to have it copied for my apartment, where I have some stairs that require a new railing. The collection of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman sculpture, all collected by one man, Baron Giovanni Barracco, is one of the most exquisite displays of ancient art you will ever see, albeit small. There are only 300-something pieces. Besides that, everything is of the highest artistic level – no floss here -- almost none of it is behind ropes or glass. You can get up very close. You can imagine that it is your house, your collection.
I also had never been to the museum of the Risorgimento in Il Vittoriano, the monument that Romans derisively call "the wedding cake," or "the type writer, a huge, layered, all-too conspicuously white building in the middle of the city dedicated to the unification of Italy – the Risorgimento – and Italy's first ruler, King Vittorio Emanuele. The only building in Rome as arrogant as Il Vittoriano, which was dedicated in 1911, is the brand new white stone and glass Richard Meier building now housing the Ara Pacis, an ancient Roman alter dedicated to the Roman peace.
Italian unification is a complicated subject. Even educated Italians don't fully understand what happened. But in brief, and way, way oversimplifying, rumblings for unification of the numerous city-states of the north and, south of Rome, the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (also known as the Kingdom of Naples) started in the early 19th century. Garibaldi, the general who is credited with winning the south for the northern Savoy monarch, Vittorio Emanuele, didn't put the last pieces together until 1861. (By the way, while in exile for a period, Garibaldi lived on Staten Island.) There wasn't really a country called Italy until a decade later.
The museum has many artifacts from the Risorgimento, including silly things like the blood-stained bandage used on Garibaldi's wounds when he was injured in Aspromonte (in Calabria) by the royal forces for whom he was theoretically fighting. But there are some emotionally moving and narrative paintings, photographs, and sculptures. If you know a little about the so-called unification the display of stuff (I don't know what else to call this odd collection of things) makes it somewhat clearer. There is also a brief film you can watch. The line from the film that I came away with was, to paraphrase; "It was easier to create Italy than to create Italians."
What that means is that Italy is still a nation of very independent regions and people, with often dramatically different customs, culture, and attitudes. I know this from studying the 20 regional cuisines of Italy, and even more sub-cuisines. To give you one tiny gastronomic example, I am finding that even in the south – just the south – there are different tastes in how pasta should be cooked. Order spaghetti in Naples and it will be so firm you think it is undercooked. At least that's what a Sicilian (or American) will tell you, because in Sicily they prefer their pasta more cooked. Well, that's another vague generalization, as Sicily itself is like a small country. Every one of the eight provinces of the island has different cultural characteristics and foodways.
Besides the museum of the Risorgimento, Il Vittoriano has an art gallery, the tomb of the unknown soldier, and breathtaking views of Rome from its various terraces.
Behind the Vittoriano is the Campidoglio, the Capitoline square and museums, which should also not be missed. And it rarely is. It is in every guidebook as a must- see, and some days it seems like every tourist in Rome is taking that advice. The day I was there, the piazza was filled with students from all over Italy. They were all on their required spring outing to the capitol city to learn the history of their country. The piazza and faÇade of one of the buildings was designed by Michelangelo. It has a careful reproduction of an equestrian sculpture of emperor Marcus Aurelius, which is one of the most important relics of ancient Rome. You can see the real one, restored, inside the museum, in a contemporary glass structure that also houses the foundations of the original ancient Roman temple of Jupiter (also for Juno and Minerva). Inside the two museums that flank the square, there are other art treasures – the famously homo-erotic Caravaggio painting of St. John the Baptist, the head and some other body parts of a colossal figure of Contantine II, the Roman marble of a dying Galatian … it's endless.
What is definitely to be missed in the museum, however, is the very enticing roof-top restaurant/café. To sit outside and get waiter service you pay a premium over the already usurious prices. If you must eat or drink something, serve yourself at the counter, or pick up your food and beverage and try to find a free table in the busy indoor section behind the service bar. You can walk outside and take in the view after your snack. The tramezzini, Rome's typical triangular white bread sandwiches, are a safe bet. The American-style salads are plastic bowls of leaves and add-on as you might get at Hale & Hearty. Not bad, but who wants to eat that while in Rome, except Romans who get plenty of their own food elsewhere.
I was so exhausted from the Vittoriano/Capitoline experience that I was, in fact, tempted to stay in the building for lunch. Instead, we trudged over to the old Jewish ghetto, which is not really far. I was thinking we'd go to Da Giggetto, a famous restaurant (not kosher) that I had not been to in a long time. Last year, I tried out the one kosher restaurant on what is essentially only one block devoted to things Jewish – Via Portico d'Ottavia. There's a Judaica store with beautiful silver menorahs, wine cups, and serving pieces. There are a couple of kosher fast-food shops. There's a kosher bakery. The grand and gorgeous main synagogue of Rome is around the corner. And, oh yes, there's a store called Leone Limentani that sells close-out and overstock Ginori and other china and crystal, not necessarily Italian. Fortunately, it is never open at lunch hour, when I am usually around. Otherwise, I'd buy something I don't need and that would be difficult to carry home.
The one full-service kosher restaurant, La Taverna del Ghetto, just down the street from Da Giggetto, was horrible. If you are a kosher tourist, you'd be better off eating canned tuna. And when I saw that Da Giggetto was charging 6 euro – nearly $8 – for an artichoke alla Giudia, which is nothing but a whole artichoke fried in olive oil, I decided to skip the experience. I can afford an $8 artichoke I suppose, but I was offended by the price, knowing that artichokes cost nothing at this time of year, and in this year in particular when the crop is particularly abundant and the farmers aren't even harvesting them all because the price they get is so low. Instead, we ate at a neighboring restaurant, Il Giardino Romano, where the artichokes were only 4 euro, about $5.25 at the current horrific rate of exchange. Actually, to start, we ordered the antipasto of fried items that included an artichoke alla Giudia, as well as a strip of excellent batter-fried salt cod, another Roman Jewish specialty, breaded and fried, meat-stuffed olives (delicious), and a mozzarella stuffed fried zucchini flower. We ordered an artichoke a la carte, as we were two and both wanted one, but very graciously, just to be nice, our waiter gave us a third artichoke, saying that he was sure we could manage another.
Out of character, but over-stuffed from five weeks of two, four-course meals a day, I skipped pasta and went right for a plate of roasted baby lamb with roasted potatoes, which was merely okay. Bob Harned, also out of character, as he often wants to skip pasta, ordered the lasagna which was vaguely Bolognese style with a little meat ragu and a lot of béchamel, which was better than okay, but a little too mushy and sloppy to be great. I looked at the pastas on the table next to us – five young Germans eating the standard Roman repertoire of carbonara, Amatriciana, and caccio e pepe (just pecorino and black pepper) -- and they looked better than what we had ordered. But the atmosphere was delightful in the verdant rear garden with its reproductions of Roman sculptures, as opposed to eating on the street, as would have at De Giggetto. We were quite happy with our restaurant choice, especially when the chef-owner, of Egyptian descent, came out to say hello and explained how he'd grown up in the Jewish ghetto and how in this part of Rome "we are brothers, Jewish, Muslim, Christian."
I have much more to tell about my trip. I haven't yet sent out the letter about Siracusa, or a note about my wonderful finds in Ravello -- a house for rent, and a wonderful bed and breakfast.
Right now, however, I need to remind you all that I will be at the Staten Island Museum this Friday night, April 13, and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
The event is called Pretty Tables, Perfect Settings, and I am presenting table vignettes from four historic New York City restaurants – Delmonico's, Luchow's, Horn and Hardart, and The Stork Club.
On Friday night, the event is champagne and hors d'oeuvres from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m.; $100 a person. My experience from the last "Pretty Tables, Perfect Settings" I attended, is that the hors d'oeuvre can easily be dinner.
On Saturday and Sunday, you can view the many beautiful table settings during an afternoon tea from noon to 3 p.m.; $45 a person.
For more information, call Cheryl Adolph, (718) 483-7113. You MUST reserve.
Hoping to see many of you at the Staten Island Museum,
