How to Really Really See Rome
December 2008

Rome IS an incredible place:

Everything you've read about it is true. It's stunningly beautiful, full of art and architecture, spanning thousands of years. Turn a corner and there's a palazzo from the 14th century, another, something Pre-Christian, another, and you'll see one of the wonders of the world, the concentration of things quite literally overlapping one another.

And even with the millions upon millions that visit Rome each year, you can still find moments that feel authentic, intimate and completely yours. The hole in the top of the Pantheon seems all the more real as rain falls through it, and on the rarest of occasions, snow. Today when I visited, tiny balls of hail fell through the hole, bouncing on the marble floor below. The sound was unmistakable to all of us: The snapping of a thousand pearl-necklaces. Even the three year-olds that ran in circles, their arms out like airplanes, plainly knew that they were experiencing something very special.

'E come sta la mamma', was the first thing this man said to me as I sat down to lunch today at what has become my favourite restaurant, ever since I started coming here, well over 20 years ago.

This is Luciano. I came to Da Valentino when I was a a poor student, draining the bread basket enough to embarrass myself. He never flinched. I came as a high-school teacher, taking up the other side of the table with papers and books. I came as something of resident, when my best friend and I rented a place here for 11 weeks, that summer that so many died from the heat. I've brought famous food and wine writers here, the majority of my siblings, and my parents too, each loving the place for what it is: A genuine Roman trattoria nearly unaffected by time.

And although I have a warm spot in my heart for Luciano, my mother has something that approaches an innocent crush on him. Even if years occasionally pass between her visits, it's always the first place we go when in Rome. She and I will enter and sit down together, grabbing a simple table in the corner. Sooner or later Luciano will approach, announcing the specials and their eyes will lock. There will be that moment, the flint-spark of recognition. He'll stop in his tracks, extend out his arms as if wading in high water. He'll take in a deep breath and begin to sing, the tambour of his gentile voice as soft as an old worn brown leather satchel.

Today the rainy cold entered my bones and I told him so. He suggested a bowl of minestra pavese, a light chicken broth, in which the cook has floated toast points and cracked a raw egg. It did the trick, long before I ruptured the yolk which filled the bowl with a colour normally reserved for sunsets.

'Menus are for those that like to have something to read, rather than those that want something to eat', he says. And it's true. Those that really love the place never ask for menus, but rather treat the meal as a series of negotiations.

Rome, and its region of Lazio, are decidedly white wine country. Order the house white in most places and they'll bring not white wine but yellow. They're simple wines, not something on which to pontificate. Here it's an almost Marxist beverage, something much more proletariat. I never really feel like I'm in Rome until the first sip passes my lips, putting me completely at ease.

Depends who you ask but Rome is either the most Northerly Southern city, or the most Southern Northern one. Either way, the food of Rome always strikes me more as southern rather than northern, if only for the fixation on really good extruded pasta, something that northerners almost never get right, even here in Italy..

All over the world children pass precise and distinct moments that stay with them forever, when their culinary GPS's are set to an unshakable default. If you want to know what yours is, ask yourself what you'd like to eat when things are not going well for you, when the world feels like an assault. For me, it's beans. I often feel it the other way too, that the more I crave them, the more stressed I am, whether I happen to know it at the time or not.

Today it's tempting to think of yesterday's travellers as having been forced to eat beans out of convenience. To those of us that really, really love beans though, it might just have seemed like a great way to pumice down the rough edges of hard days of travel, that at least with dinner came a well-earned sense of familiarity.

This is Giuliano. He came to work here when still a teenager and has been here every since. To those of us who are bachelors, he's the perfect waiter, as he always makes a fuss over my dinner companions, making each over the years feel special, as if her having dinner here with me was all but inevitable, the final threshold.

All over Italy dishes are given place names, as though a dish were created in a place and then came to be so successful as to slip the bonds of place, becoming national or even international. The truth though, is that often a dish is named after a perception of how others do it over THERE. Take this cotoletta milanese. No one here in Italy thinks of the dish as coming from Milan, anymore than adding parsley to a dish changes its origins to that of Genoa. (The later is more an observation on the supposed stinginess of the Genovesi, rather than, say, their love of parsley).

I finish with a bitter drink, my favourite here called vipero, perhaps for its sting. It's a medicinal flavour, virtually impenetrable for those not accustomed to finishing a meal with something bitter.

Leaving I thank Giuliano and Luciano and mention that I'll be back in three weeks. Then three weeks after that. Then twice two months after that. 'See you then', says Giuliano, kissing me on the cheeks. Luciano touches my cheeks as he kisses me. 'We'll be here. We'll always be here'.

Someday I hope to start my own family and bring them here. I suspect there will be a precise moment when one of my little ones will look up into Luciano's eyes, just as he begins to sing to her, songs written when radios still had tubes and men all still wore hats. 'Papà, papà', she'll say. 'He remembers me'.

For those of you who will be attending our courses next year, you'll be given access to The Inner Sanctum, hidden pages on our site, unavailable to those that have yet to book. The Inner Sanctum is filled with insider information, of places to stay, things to eat and people to meet. If you're coming next year, we'd be delighted to call ahead for you, booking you a table in Rome, or anywhere else here in Italy. Luciano and Giuliano will be tickled to meet you. So will we down here in Lecce.

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Fotografie e testo, Silvestro Silvestori, Novembre, Lecce, Italia.