Rome Part 2

St Peters Basilica

Our adventure in Rome continued. We kept up with the theme of red wine, while also picking up another. I was dead set on finding an "authentic" margarita pizza while we were in Rome. So everywhere we could we either ordered one, or looked to see what they looked like.

The back story is that I find the Margarita pizza to be simple and delicious, but there are so many variations here in the states it is hard to tell which is the real deal. It seems that most places just get it all wrong. This hunch was based off of the idea that the margarita pizzas that we see that have light sauce, an ultra thin crust, thin slices of a mozzarella ball, sliced tomato, and a light basil garnish are the real deal (pictured above). While those imposters that just have shredded mozzarella and more sauce are a sham. So we headed out to see some more good sights and have some more good food.

 Our first stop of the day for food was a small pizza place across the street from the Vatican Museum that caught our eye while we made our way to the Basilica. So we started out with three starters. They were all slices of fried heaven. The one front and center is a rice and meat roll. That was really good. I loved the texture of the rice, and the sauce kept it nice and moist, giving good contrast from the fried crust. The roll in the back is kinda like a fried cheesy tatter tot. It tasted as it you would imagine and it was really good as well. The last is prosciutto mozzarella roll, and yes, its also fried. That was on par with every other prosciutto and mozzarella combination we had encountered in Italy thus far. Though it was surprising that the process of frying it seemed to have taken some moisture away, but it was delicious non the less. Oh, and we must not forget the wine. We ordered two glasses for 2.5 Euro a glass, but the server was generous enough to mention that a whole bottle was only 5 Euro. So now that the wine is in the picture...

We did order a margarita pizza, but decided that we did not want it once we saw it. It looked like the shaved cheese type, but we will get back to the pizza a little later. Instead of a margarita pizza we went with a ham and cheese calzone.

This calzone redefined what I think of when I hear the word. Before I would think of a slightly crisp crusted crescent shaped pizza pocket that contained the exact same ingredients as you would find on a pizza. They are huge and usually not that great. Enter the calzone above. This was delightful. It was light, crisp, soft, and savory. The ham and cheese was wonderful and rich, while the dough was airy and soft. The dough was crisp on the outside, but not too far off of the texture of a croissant in the middle. The texture was way different than any calzone I'd ever had. You did not take a bite only to  break through the crust to be met by an explosion of pizza sauce and cheese. It was a subtle crisp with a soft barrier between you and the simple filling of ham and cheese. I really enjoyed this calzone. Way more than the calzones of my past.

After the bottle of wine, and the calzone that changed calzones forever we headed to the Vatican, and walked around (I know, not the most appropriate thing to do post bottle of wine, but that's what we were working with.) We left the Basilica, and grabbed a couple beers from a street vender, and sipped on them as we headed toward the colosseum. This was our second attempt since it was closed by the time we got there the first time due to our leisurely afternoon snack. On our way we caught a whiff of something delicious. There was no doubt that it was coming from the place to our right, so we decided to investigate further. We weren't really hungry mind you, but the search for the "authentic" margarita pizza was on. We ordered and the half a pie that you see above is what was delivered to us (it was whole when it got there). It was yet again the shredded cheese type. We asked and they confirmed that this was indeed a margarita pizza. We were still confused. It looked like a CPK frozen pizza that I would grab at Safeway in a hasty move for a quick meal. There is a bright side. Yet more fun with cheap wine...

Terry Enjoying Herself

 We discretely expressed our opinion of the pizza for a photo, drank our wine, paid the bill, and then left. We were starting to get the notion that we might have the whole pizza thing backwards. Seeing that we have only encountered the above style while in Rome, it was becoming all to possible that we were wrong in our assumptions. On our trek to the colosseum we popped our head into another pizza place and their margarita pizza was more of the same. At that point the phrase "silly American" was popping into my head, but we hadn't given up yet.

 

Damn. The pizza that broke the Americans back. At this point we were either very wrong or we were picking all of the wrong places to get pizza from. This was at the end of the night, and yet again its not the holy grail that I was searching for.

This concludes our European adventure. I will show a couple photos below of my meals leaving the country, giving you an idea of how the quality deminishes as you leave. It is still a delight when eating here at home, and biting into a dish to find that it is similar to what we were able to enjoy while abroad.

 

The final panini. This was at the airport moments before I had to board the plane. Surprisingly it was still better than some panini's that I have had here, but it was a far cry from what we were eating the night before.

The final blow. This is the meal that I had on the flight back. It was airplane gnocchi and it was not glorious. It was aided by the mini bottle of Jack Daniels that I washed it down with in preparation for my mid flight snooze. 

It was a awesome trip, and we had a great time. We saw a lot. We ate and drank our fair share, and I can't wait to go back.