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\AN' Roman pleasures
HOT news on the restaurant scene in Rome now is the new McDonald's, which has done more to damage Italo-American relations than have any of the recent political horrors. Local sensibilities have been outraged, but the visitor can be happily reassured by the number of res- taurants which remain pure pleasure.
L'Orso 80 (tel: 656 4904) is well worth seeking out, hidden away in a ribbon-thin street off the Via Scrofa, between the Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. Don't be put off by the alpine but interior. Decor is the last thing that'll be on your mind. Profusion is the thing here: refectory tables are piled with pineapples, strawberries, apples the size of small melons, capacious dishes of antipasti misti, haunches of Parma ham, fat bundles of asparagus, fleshy gamberoni, the large, deeply-coloured Mediterranean prawns, and glistening bream and sea-bass. It is more or less taken for granted that you will have the antipasti (and at least 12 bowlfuls), served with a sort of Italian poppadum. After that, try their spaghetti alle vongole, the blonde sauce sharply spiced with garlic and crushed red peppers and very salty (as indeed all Roman food tends to be), then spigola ai fern, grilled bass, and a plate of spinach, which comes cold with olive oil and lemon juice (if you want it hot, ask for it al burro, though try it al olio first). With a bottle of their not too aggressive house wine, a meal like that for two should not be more than L70,000 — about £35.
The fish is perhaps even better just down the road, towards the Pantheon, at L'An- goletto (656 8019,) though the atmosphere is not as exuberant nor the abundance as gorgeous. Go for the spaghetti alle vongole here too (so completely different from the thing that goes under that name here) or else agli scampi (with langoustines) fol- lowed by dentice (a kind of sea bream) if there are at least two of you, or orata, a small, oval fish with a wonderful, slightly smoky flavour. End with a boat-shaped slice of pineapple, semplice or doused in any liqueur you might want. The pinot grigio from Friuli is cool, crisp and ex- tremely dry, and although by Italian stan- dards this restaurant is on the expensive side, at L90,000 (£45) for two, you eat a lot, and a lot that is memorably good, for it.
Creeping upwards on the lira scale, one restaurant that cannot be missed is Taver- na Flavia (474 5214), near the Via Veneto, and a remnant of the Dolce Vita years: signed photographs of once-shimmering starlets decorate the painted bricks and there is a special room, 11 Liz Room', kept empty in memory of the heady days when Richard and Liz came each night fresh off the set of Antony and Cleopatra. There is even a pair of her shoes, framed, hanging on the wall. The prices may be more English here, but the charm is Italian enough. Fernando, the head waiter, glides with you through the menu: there are 23 paste, including penne alla vodka, risotto alto Champagne, but I'd go rather for a paintable and fragrant plate of tagliolini al pomodoro e basilico or maybe some of the best Parma ham I've had in all my life; if you're feeling both carnivorous and rich proceed with a bistecca alla Fiorentina an enormous T-bone steak grilled and enough for about three, or a Roman speciality, abbachio, spring lamb, which they tend to overcook unless you tell them not to. A bowl of fragolini, the little wild strawberries, is the perfect pudding, or ask especially for zabaglione, one of the high points of Italian civilisation. There is a good wine list and their barolo, at around £8, was the best wine I drank while I was in Rome. Reckon on spending around L100,000, £50 plus, for two.
Not all of Rome's best restaurants are as expensive as Flavia. Dal Bolognese (361 1426) in the Piazza del Popolo is very much in the top end of the market, though you can eat far too much for about £15 a head, which would be impossible in the London equivalent now. If you do come here, the two things you must have are the pappare delle alla lepre, broad strips of pasta with .a. hare sauce or the gran carello dei bolha misti, an enormous dish of boiled meats, beef, chicken, ham, sausage, trotters and tongue, with the knife-sharp salsa verde (garlicky caper and parsley sauce which is more of a chutney here) and mostarda dt Cremona, gleaming: fruits in syrup and mustard oil it would be impossible to eat both. One of the best views in Rome if you sit outside, but the wood-panelled interior with its stock of pleasant if unspectacular paintings is very comfortable. It is also the case that not all tourist places are to be avoided. It is wonderful to sit outside at Otello alla Concordia (679 1178), just across the square from the Spanish Steps (and not far from the maledetto McDonald's), which is cheap' authentic and the food is reliable and robust. A bowl of slippery-fresh pasta, polio alla Romana (chicken with peppers)' cheese and fruit, with half a litre of house wine will cost about L30,000. Alfredo alla Scrofa, birthplace of the famous fettucine Alfredo, is not worth going to any more except for that: soft, comforting and with enough butter to Use up half the EEC mountain. A fullish dinner will cost around L85,000 for two. But what is good about eating in Italian restaurants is that no one minds how little eat. Even in the most expensive places, it's perfectly all right to eat a plate, of pasta. A bowl of spaghetti, a plate 0.` spinach and an orange — what could be ! more perfect lunch? And nowhere will that cost more than a few pounds.
Nigella Lawson
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