Filed under: Food and Drink, Europe, Italy
The carbonara arrived on my table with a dollop of bacon-dotted, jaundice-colored cream atop overly cooked spaghetti noodles. When I moved the plate, the mound of cream didn’t even jiggle, as if it had been heat-lamp baked for hours, hoping some fool like me was going to come in and order it. I had ordered the carbonara, not just because I love this pasta dish, but because I was reviewing a restaurant for a magazine (the restaurant didn’t fare too well in my review). I wasn’t in Rome, from whence the dish hails. I wasn’t even in Italy. I was in New York.
That’s not to say that Italian cuisine outside of Italy can’t be good. It certainly can. Carbonara is a simple dish. Just pasta, eggs, guanciale (or pancetta), garlic, parmigiano, and black pepper. But, as I found out, it’s not necessarily easy to make buonissimo, as the Italians would say.
Case in point: I was in Rome last week. And given that I’m so carbonara crazed and hadn’t been in Rome for five years, I decided I’d put myself on a mini quest: I’d try to seek out the best carbonara I could find. There were, though, parameters that were out of my control: I was filming a documentary about my book. The days were long and we would finish shooting around 10 p.m. every night. Not a lot of time to figure out a good place to eat. The film crew left it up to me to find a good restaurant in whatever neighborhood we finished shooting for the day. A challenge, for sure.
Continue reading The Subjective, Incomplete Guide To The Best Carbonara In Rome
The Subjective, Incomplete Guide To The Best Carbonara In Rome originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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