ken atchity door to door: In Italy... All Roads Lead to.... Rigatoni!! [via Jim White]

In Italy... All Roads Lead to.... Rigatoni!! [via Jim White]

In Italy, It’s True What They Say….

.... All Roads Lead to… Rigatoni.

I just returned from two golden weeks in Rome where I had some of the best pasta dishes I have ever eaten, drank gloriously of the 2007 Tuscan Chiantis, gawked at life-like sculpture, and rubbed shoulders with 2,000-year-old cultural artifacts.

How good was the trip?

Well, for a brief spell last week, napaman thought of uprooting his life, selling the farmhouse and moving to Italy… to become… romaman! The city does that to you.

I suppose Paris does this to visitors, too, as does London. But these cities don’t have pasta like Rome, which is the clincher for me.

The secrets of a sensational trip to Rome:

1. Stay in Rome the entire time.

Forget the guidebook nonsense about including side trips (Amalfi Coast, Cinque Terre, etc.) when you go to Rome.

There is enough art, enough culture, a sufficiency of Roman ruins and enough great restaurants to spend two weeks in Rome and never get bored or find yourself retracing your steps.

2. Stay in one hotel the entire time.

Want to have a GREAT holiday? Stay in ONE place the whole time.

Don’t move around, and only unpack once.

We found a sensational site, www.tablethotels.com, created by designers and architects, which has a Relais et Chateaux sensibility. Tablet.com will help you find accommodation in cities around the world, but in Rome, it was like having a personal assistant.

Tip: Join Tablet Plus, which for $200 a year secures a membership with all kinds of bonuses, inducing free hotel upgrades, and free WIFI.

In Italy, where they charge for WIFI by law (talk about a powerful telecommunication lobby!), our Tablet Plus upgrade, saved us way more than $200 in WIFI charges alone, as well as scoring us an upgrade to a suite at no extra charge.

We stayed at Hotel Fortyseven, (via Luigi Petroselli 47) which also gets a positive thumbs-up recommendation from napaman. The hotel is central to everything; within walking distance of every major site except perhaps Villa Borghese and the Borghese Gardens; the rooms are clean, modern, and the concierge team is first-rate, able to book restaurants, get taxis, and resolve small matters in a moment.

3. Do not rent a car.

The great thing about Rome is that you can walk just about everywhere.

Spanish Steps? Fountain of Trevi? Roman Forum? The Colosseum? The Vatican? Sistine Chapel? They’re all within walking distance of a central hotel like Hotel Fortyseven.

Most days, we walked seven to eight miles, walking off the previous evening’s carbo-load of sensational pasta.

It is easy to eat pasta two times a day in Rome. What is so fun about the pasta here is that Rome has several of its own shapes of pasta, most with which I was not familiar.

Salvatore Tiscione, chef at da Felice restaurant

This would include a somewhat wavy, long, extruded noodle called tonnarelli, which is tossed with butter, pecorino cheese and freshly ground black pepper to make the simple, yet delicious, dish called tonnarelli cacio e pepe.

Lazio, the province in which Rome is located, and of which it is the capital city, is sheep-heavy, so locals consume much more pecorino here than they do Parmigiano-Reggiano, the cow’s milk cheese of Emilia-Romana.

The single best version of tonnarelli cacio e pepe, which I had in Rome was at a restaurant called (depending on your guidebook) Felice, or Da Felice, or even De Felice. But it’s located at via Mastro Giorgio 29, if this’ll help you find it.

Other food must-tries in Rome

Rome is ground zero for artichokes (when in season) and there is a constantly waged battle over which is better – carciofi alla romana (braised with garlic, mint and parsley, then drizzled with olive oil), or carciofi alla giudia, or Jewish-style artichokes, which are essentially deep-fried.

Dal Bolognese

We have a love for Bolognese cooking; Emilia-Romana, the provincial home of Bologna, Parma, Modena, and Ferrara probably produces the best food in Italy. So when we learned that there is a restaurant serving Bolognese cuisine in Rome, we made a beeline for it.

The food is so good, so authentic, and so memorable at Dal Bolognese (Piazza del Popolo 1) that we actually ate here twice, ordering the IDENTICAL dishes a second time:

+ Brodo with tortellini

+ Taglionlini with Bolognese sauce (absolutely authentic sauce, tasting as though there might be ground pork, maybe some mortadella and/or liver in the effort)

+ Bolito misto - a plate of boiled, mixed meats, served with a stunning salsa verde and a version of mostarda di Cremona, a spicy-sweet compote of glazed whole candied fruits.

Or, to put these dishes in picture-speak:

Perilli

For sheer “do as they do in Rome” pleasure, include a visit to Perilli (via Marmorata 39), a family restaurant, which has been serving casareccia fare to locals since 1911.

The windows are frosted to keep prying eyes out; anyone passing would otherwise gawk at the food or the guests (Federico Fellini was a regular).

There is a series of appetizer plates to choose from; the pasta carbonara is exquisite, and the Romans at your next table are as likely to have the latest iPhone as you!

One of the great dishes of Rome is puntarella, a chicory salad splashed with an anchovy/balsamico dressing that brings the greens to life. The version at Perilli is memorable.

Sor Margherita

The receptionist at Sor Margherita, tells patrons that there is anything from a 20-minute to a 2-hour wait.

In the old Jewish quarter, visit Sora Margherita (Piazza delle Cinque Scole 30), a neighborhood restaurant since 1927. It is quirky for two reasons: there is no sign out front to announce its presence, and secondly, you can only dine here if you are a member of the Sora Margherita Associazone Culturale. (It costs nothing to join and everyone who signs dines!). The food is cheap, cheerful and the room is a hoot:

Roscioli

Roscioli (Via dei Guibbonari 21) is a great restaurant, a great wine store, a great retail food outlet. No visit to Rome is complete without at least one dinner here. Maybe two.

They make their own bread (possibly the best in Italy), their wine list is stocked from a nearby underground cellar (which napaman had the privilege to tour) and the menu selections so compelling, you just want to tell your waiter, “One of everything!”

Choose from three different aged Spanish cured hams (jamon)… choose from six different aged prosciutto… choose from salamis, culatello, and fiocco and other cured meats, which are made from free-range, heirloom pigs. Oh, the list goes on, and we’re still only on the appetizers.

Aficionados will tell you that Roscioli’s carbonara is the best in Rome. I cannot deny that it may be. But it may also qualify for World’s Best.

Organic egg yolks are tossed with aged guanciale, aged, farm-specific pecorino, and pepper from Sarawak.

Enoteca Corsi

Near the Pantheon there is a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Enoteca Corsi (via del Gesu 87), where locals eat lunch. Period.

It is chaotic, quirky, wonderful and not open for dinner.

De rigueur: Go to the retail wine store next door (part of the same family operation), select a 13-18 Euro bottle of killer wine (I love their Chianti selection), and ask them to transport it to your table. The add-on cost to enjoy the wine for lunch is 2 Euros over the shelf price. You can drink like a king here on a court jester’s income.

The fare is fun; this is not yuppified, or cerebralized cuisine. It is just well made, fairly priced food. And sometimes, a meal is just that.

Sites

Okay, ‘Nuff about the food. There are sights to see in Rome and rather than go head-to-head with Rick Steves, rating top attractions, or telling you the hours of operation, or giving you the address, let me offer this shorthand version:

As a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s 33,000 words’ worth of my favorite things in Rome:

Colosseum

Vatican. St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel

Pantheon

Roman Forum

Villa Borghese

Head here for the Bernini sculptures, including Apollo and Daphne.

They don't permit photos, so the ones here are "borrowed."

For all my life, I never understood sculpture, always preferring paintings to sculpture. But my visit to VIlla Borghese was a true game-changer, opening my eyes to what sculptors can achieve.

I am talking about Bernini (1598 - 1680). There are a number of his works on permanent display here. I stood transfixed before his "Apollo & Daphne," which depicts the chaste nymph being changed into a laurel tree as she tries to flee from the God Apollo. It is totally open-jaw, drooling, stare-time when you are in the presence of this sculpture. You can't believe anyone could ever chisel this setting out of a block of cold marble. It is so life like, so real.

The thing about Bernini is this: he freezes people in their tracks the way modern movie makers freeze a subject, then do a 360-tour of the frozen image (as in the Matrix). But Bernini did it 400 years ago and in marble, not with CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). Bernini makes the marble skin of a subject dimple the way real skin reacts to pressure; he gets the eyes, he gets the energy, he imbues the marble with virtual life-force.

I stood before Apollo & Daphne, and before Bernini's marble statue of David, who is set to fling his sling at Goliath, with my mouth agape. It was like hearing - and understanding - opera for the first time; I got the same spine-tingling chill one gets when hearing Pavarotti perform Nessun Dorma from Turandot, or Ch' ella me creda from Girl of the Golden West - unforgettable.

Piazza Navona

Spanish Steps

And a few incidental shots, which I happened to snap and like:

And finally, a note about Federico Polidori

While walking the back alleys near the Pantheon, I came upon Federico Polidori's small leather shop. I subsequently found out that Forbes described Federico as "Rome's premier leather artisan for 30 years."

I asked Federico, who is used to making one-of-a-kind leather bags, holsters for guns, quirky personalized briefcases, to make me a leather and canvass tote bag for use back home.

He has designed one-of leather goods for muckraker and author Carl Bernstein, and half-an-hour after I picked up my leather and canvass tote, Julia Roberts dashed into Federico's place to order a bag. It's that kind of place.

Here Federico and Roberta, his wife, display the bag which Federico made for me over the course of a week.

To contact Federico, email to: federicopolidori_holstermaker@yahoo.it

His artisanal leather shop is at Via Pie di Marmo 7-8, Rome. Tel: 06-67-97-191.

1 comment:

Sarah Smith said...: You are right. All roads lead to Rome. Thanks for the wonderful pictures. Regards from Hotel Cavalieri; December 28, 2010 at 1:50 PM

Yoga Gives Back

Written by Kayoko Mitsumatsu

From Posture To Power: Microcredit Changes Lives On Both Sides of the Ocean

We can talk about making change. But affecting real change in the world comes from impacting the lives of individuals. It comes from empowering people to be independent and able to make a living on their own while at the same time being fully integrated in our interdependent global community. Sometimes it takes something that seems to be radical to make this change, but these shifts can be deceptively small. They can be even as small (or as large) as the cost of a Los Angeles Yoga class.

How could this be? In the practice of microcredit, lending seemingly small amounts of money to small-scale entrepreneurs allows them to succeed and change their circumstances. This is the fundamental basis of microcredit’s transformative power; it’s a revolutionary concept in finance. This practice shifts the emphasis from financial transactions being focused only about large loans and large scale businesses, which are out of reach of many one-person operations, institutions and organizations – to lending practices that actually make a positive difference in a person’s life. Microcredit practices based on social justice and empowerment operate through a combination of small-scale loans based on trust and community support, with structured repayment plans and programs that encourage savings. In these situations, people actually have the opportunity to solidify long-term change in their lives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Yoga Gives Back Team: Joel Bender, Leslie Hendry, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Kayoko Mitsumatsu (left-right)

In 2006, economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This award was in recognition of their revolutionary efforts to create this micro-credit model, support sustainable economic practices, and provide an alternative to what were exploitive norms. When a person is caught in a cycle of poverty, they may become trapped in the system, particularly since large banking institutions have historically ignored people without assets or credit histories, who are just starting out and who may not have already proven themselves. Most banks prefer to lend large sums of money that represent a greater profit margin and are set up only for large loans in order to make a profit themselves. And even making it more challenging, people at the bottom of the economic scale worldwide have had to rely on moneylenders charging usurious terms and interest rates to obtain funds to plant the next crop, buy inventory of new equipment, or upgrade a business in any way. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank and their affiliates are offering another approach. It’s one that has significantly impacted millions of people.

As Dr. Yunus described in an exclusive interview with Yoga Gives Back in May, 2009, “We started in 1976, and today within Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, eight million people borrow micro loans, ninety-seven percent of them women.” This represents an enormous potential for change and empowerment that just did not exist on a large scale in this form prior to 1976.

There is a social cycle in economics, and Dr. Yunus explained this: “Poverty is not inside the person. Poverty is forced from outside. Poor people are as capable [a] human being as anybody else. They have the same power and energy, same potential. But they are denied such facilities. They cannot express themselves. Money is one of the most important items missing in their lives. You need a dollar to catch a dollar. You cannot catch a dollar with an empty hand. So, that first dollar, nobody has given to her. So she remains dependent on someone else. She has to be hired, to slave; she has to work to make food available on the table. What we have done, we have put that first dollar into her hands as a banking proposition. Conventional banks never come to the poor people. They go to rich people to make more money. The person who does not have a dollar – she cannot get it. So we did it. We did it in a way that is affordable to her. Because we do not insist on collateral. There is no collateral.”

While that may seem like a radical concept, the Grameen Bank has proven that their success is much more than ideological. Dr Yunus cited statistics for us, “The repayment rate is almost 100%, without collateral or anything. This is the strength of microcredit which is now spread all over the world. There are by now at least 150 million borrowers in the world today. Bu it is still very small comparing to the need. We need more microcredit organizations in the world so that more people can be reached.”

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization begun in LA, with the goal to provide a way for Western Yoga practitioners to give back to India, the birthplace of Yoga, which has given us so much. We’re heeding Dr. Yunus’ call to reach more people through expanded opportunities for and awareness of microcredit and have targeted India and Indian families, women, and would-be entrepreneurs, who would be otherwise stuck in the cycle of poverty that Dr. Yunus described. Yoga Gives Back supports microfinancing operations in India, through the Grameen Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC. Donations go directly to Grameen Koota, Bangalore, South India and our YGB awareness campaign focuses on the real stories of how poor women are changing their lives with small loans from Grameen Koota.

Ms. Vinatha M Reddy

Grameen Koota was started by visionary teacher and philanthropist, Ms. Vinatha M Reddy (pictured, above) in 1999, who learned about Nobel Peace Recipient Dr Muhammad Yunus’ microfinancing and immediately began exploring ways of replicating his work in her hometown. In 2000, she started providing small microcredit loans, averaging $25.00 a month, to fifty local women. Today, Grameen Koota’s work is reaching out to over 280,000 women in Bangalore, Mysore and many areas of Karnataka state, in South India, making real impact on these women’s lives as well as on the local economy.

Yoga Gives Back

The Los Angeles-based Yoga Gives Back has a worldwide reach and began out of the inspiration and dedication of my Yoga mentor Joel Bender and me. Our group has suddenly started growing almost daily and our mission is shared by a quickly expanding and loving Yoga community.

When I was growing up in Japan, which is a very middle-class society, I had never experienced or seen any real poverty, especially growing up in Tokyo in 1960s and 1970s, when Japan's post-war economic miracle was taking place. Then, I had a chance to live in Brazil in the late 1970s for two years, where as a teenager, I saw the divide between poverty and wealth, the reality of the real slums, kids on the streets begging every time you stopped the car at the traffic light, all very much like India. Social injustice hit me hard.

Once I started Yoga practice and feeling my life being so enriched by it , I felt a need to use my resources to help others. I was producing a documentary on Social Entrepreneurship and learned about microfinancing. I shared this information with Joel [featured in the teacher profile in this month’s issue of LA YOGA] who had been looking for the way he could give back to India since his first visit there – so we teamed up.

When I think about the growth of Yoga Gives Back thus far, I give a lot of credit to the entrepreneurship and volunteer spirit of Americans, willing to embrace and support a new grass roots campaign like ours.

Kayoko Mitsumatsu, co-founder of Yoga Gives Back, is a documentary filmmaker whose films deal with social justice issues, including First They Killed My Father a memoir of a Cambodia’s Killing Fields’ survivor.

A Life Changing Story of Microcredit: Jayashree

Jayashree

Jayashree lives in the suburbs of Bangalore and is married and the mother of two children. We visited her at her humble dirt floor one room home for the first time in 2007. We were touched by her warm smile and most generous hospitality, serving us hot tea and cookies.

Jayashree was born into a very poor family in Bangalore. When she was a child, her family’s financial situation became so severe that she had to drop out of school and work at a garment factory. She toiled throughout her childhood and after she got married at fifteen, her meager earnings had to support her ailing in-laws. She had two children. Her husband’s rickshaw business was not enough to pay her sons’ education or secure food for the family.

In 2007, Jayashree learned from her neighbors about Grameen Koota’s microcredit program and applied for her first loan. She was granted a first loan of 7,000 rupees ($175), and immediately bought her husband’s auto rickshaw. Owning their own rickshaw business increased their income significantly.

Jayashree was able to pay back her entire loan in one year and became eligible for her second loan in 2008. Having proven her diligence, her second loan amount doubled to 15,000 rupees ($375). This time, she bought a sewing machine and started stitching bags. The family’s earnings have now tripled and she is earning 150 rupees ($3.75) a day. In addition, she opened a small shop next to her house to sell her products which is earning her an additional 100 rupees ($2.50) a day.

She is sending her elder son to a medical school. Her son dreams of becoming a doctor and thanks his mother’s business for providing his education, their own home and daily food.

To participate in a Yoga practice where the proceeds support Yoga Gives Back and directly impact the transformation of not only your own life, but that of someone in India, start your Thanksgiving week at Yogaglo, Sunday, November 22, 10:00 A.M. - 12 noon. Some of the teachers include John Sahakian, Felicia Tomasko, Alexandra Aiken and Ally Hamilton; more to be announced. Yogaglo.com; yogagivesback.com.

For more information on Yoga Gives Back or to host a Yoga Gives Back class at your own studio or location, visit: yogagivesback.org or contact yogagivesback@earthlink.net.