When I travel, I do my best to respect and observe local customs.
Slurp noodles with gusto in China? OK, easy enough. Avoid eating with my left hand in India? You got it.
But when it comes to Italy, I seem to have a little trouble.
The first rule that’s a bit hard to swallow is the one about cappuccinos: None after breakfast. After a certain hour, Italians will only drink shots of espresso.
I was told this only after I began drinking my afternoon cappuccino at Hotel Eden in Rome. I had just arrived from my international flight — my stomach was grumbling, and my lids were heavy, so I cut myself some slack and finished the hotel’s life-sustaining elixir.
The next day, I would commit another faux pas without knowing it: I had pizza at 10 a.m.
That was early even for me — a devotee of bread, tomato sauce and cheese — but Italians only eat pizza for dinner, a guide would tell me a few days later.
Her reasoning was that pizza is too heavy for midday — but days of gorging myself on lunchtime pasta had me calling foul on that logic.
According to Italian food purists, pizza must be consumed straight out of the oven; it must be cooked in a wood-burning oven; and it must be cooked by a “pizzaiolo,” a pizza expert.
Surprisingly, the morning pizza joint I visited met all these criteria. Plus, Antico Forno Roscioli is casual, well-priced and centrally located on Via dei Chiavari. It usually tops lists of Rome’s best pizza places, and our Access Italy guide personally vouched for it, too.
Once I arrived, I realized I had been there years before on a similar quest to eat pizza during the day
Some rules, it seems, are meant to be repeatedly broken — even when in Rome.
The Details
Antico Forno Roscioli
www.anticofornoroscioli.it
