Sicily in Rome

Have you ever eaten at the Sicilian fast-food café "Mondo Arancina" in London’s Notting Hill district?

If you haven’t, (and even if you have) take some advice and try the original at via Marcantonio Colonna, where, if you like strong, decisive tastes, you’ll be able to savour a vast array of unique delicacies. Apart from classics like pizza by the slice, panini, panelle (delicious deep-fried chick pea flour patties) customers come especially to enjoy the speciality of the house arancine piping hot risotto balls.

Bite into an arancina (“little orange”) and you get a succulent, grainy mouthful of Italian risotto with a surprise at its heart. It might be a warm dollop of spinach and ricotta, bolognese ragù, peas or creamed funghi.
And there are other, far richer varieties. The arancine are deep-fried in fresh olive oil which is changed aftereach batch and are available in 15 flavours. Cost: 2.20 euros each. I would suggest you try ‘Stromboli’ filled with aubergine (eggplant) and tomato, or ‘Etna’ which features a spicy filling of tomato and chilli.

The ovens are fired up early and from 8.00 am onwards you can drop in for arancine, pizza, sfincioni (thick Sicilian pizza with a spongy crust), anelletti (Sicilian oven-cooked pasta rings), pitoni (savoury coiled fritters stuffed with a range of fillings) or typical pastries like pignolata, made with almonds and pine nuts.
The owners personally guarantee the quality of all the ingredients used at Mondo Arancina: flour, olive oil, groundnut oil, tomato sauce, cheeses, almonds, sugar, chocolate, etc.
How can you say no?
http://www.mondoarancina.it/

Even after a hearty meal why pass on dessert? Next to Mondo Arancina is "Gelarmony", a Sicilian
ice-cream parlour with a vast array of hand-crafted gelati made on the premises that is open everyday until late.
As I entered the first thing I saw was a giant brioche filled with ice-cream – a classic Sicilian treat and if you really want to go to town it can all be topped off with whipped cream. The display cabinets offer a colourful and bewildering array of flavours to choose from but the staff at Gelarmony are more than happy to offer advice on mixing and matching your choice: intense flavours which delicately caress the senses.

Only natural products are used at Gelarmony and all the icecreams, fruit-flavours or creamy are hand-made in-house. For people who are allergic to dairy products there’s also a range of soya ice-creams. And there’s not only ice-cream; you might want to try the deliciously refreshing
granite, a crushed ice drink made with fruit or coffee, or any one of the dozens of tempting cakes and pastries that fill the cool cabinets: Frozen yoghurt, mousses, mignon pastries with a dazzling choice of fillings, ice-cream cakes, orange slices glazed with chocolate, sponge cakes filled with ricotta cheese and covered with almond cream - and of course, that most classic of Sicilian pastries: cannoli – fried pastry dough filled with sweet creamy ricotta cheese topped with chocolate chips and candied fruit. You’resimply spoilt for choice.

Few steps from San Peter church in Via Marcantonio Colonna, 38 there is a place with the best traditional Sicilian cuisine.
http://www.gelarmony.com/

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Restaurant "Betto & Mary - Ultra Rome Dining

Restaurants specializing in typical Roman cuisine are largely concentrated in the ghetto area behind the Synagogue on the right bank of the Tiber, but to sample one of the most Ultra Roman dining experiences you have to travel away from the historic centre and out to the Casilino-Mandrione neighbourhood, where you’ll find the restaurant run by Betto and Mary at via dei Savorgnan 99.

The Osteria includes two dining rooms and an internal garden. The decor is nothing special; the service is something else.

The friendly waiters have a penchant for making fun of unwary new comers; be warned Roman humour is not “lite”. Often it will be the owner himself who’ll sit down at your table to take your order and trade wisecracks.
The walls are decorated with funny posters and there’s also a tie rack labeled ”please leave tie here as they are not allowed in the restaurant”.

The atmosphere is robustly Roman – and so is the food. Many of these traditional dishes are no longer easy to find, or are only offered in five-star restaurants that cost ten times as much.
There’s coda alla vaccinara (oxtail stew with vegetables, see the post), la pagliata (a traditional dish primarily using the intestine of a young calf that has only eaten milk), la coratella (lamb sweetbreads) served with artichokes, granetti impanati (fried bull testicles) and tripe.

There’s a huge range of hearty home-made pasta dishes, including a vegetarian carbonara with zucchini instead of bacon. Vegetable specialities include fried broccoli, grilled radicchio and a host of succulent artichoke dishes.

If you’re a tad squeamish about the traditional meat dishes, anything grilled like sausage, chicken, and steak is perhaps a safer bet. They also serve a quite exquisite dish of quail.
To finish, how about cantucci – miniature, anise-flavored almond biscuits – dipped in a glass of romanella – a locally produced sparkling white wine.
Even if you go right through the menu from antipasti to dessert, you’ll find it hard to spend more than 30 euros a head and the portions are generous.

Betto e Mary is definitely worth the trek.
Booking is essential.
Closed on Sundays. And remember: don’t wear a tie or it will be confiscated at the door!
Restaurant "Betto & Mary" Via dei Savorgnan, 99 Rome
Tel.: 06-45421780

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The Area Sacra of Caesar and the Cats of Rome

Today this area is an abode of cats; stay there like if they were the owners of that place, they play or rest among the ruins of Campo Marzio and all of them seem to be perfectly at ease and protected.

A few meters up, in the meantime, life runs fast. Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome is plenty of passers, cars, trams and work in progress. The library that overlooks the square is in constant activity. But what takes place few span up their heads, does not seem to interest the feline colony of the Area Sacra.

This site is one of the most ignored in Rome by tourists.

The reaction in front of what, at first sight, seems no more than a hole stuffed up of ruins in the middle of the square, is always the same. Distrust, a quick look and go, towards other more understandable destinations. Then once you discover the event that makes this place important, the level of attention increases , maps in hand, to identify the structures that had to be there in ancient Rome, instead of those four stones and flaky columns that you see today. Reveal the mystery then:

In the cats lair of Largo di Torre Argentina, the March 15th of 44 BC Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated, it was made by a group of about sixty senators, they considered themselves the guardians and defenders of the republican tradition, they were opposed to any form of personal power. So, fearing that Caesar wanted to become king of Rome (unthinkable concept for Romans), decided it was the time to get rid of the dictator.

At about eleven o'clock in the morning, Caesar left the house and after the ordinary religious practices he got in the Curia. He went to sit unaware to his seat where he was immediately surrounded from the plotters which acted to ask him favors and graces. At the agreed signal, Publius Servilius Casca Longo unsheathe the dagger and struck Caesar at the neck, causing a superficial and non-fatal wound. Caeser tried to defend himself with the stylus in his hand, then all the plotters now around Caesar fling with daggers against their target; Caesar in vain tried to dodge the stab. but when he understood to be surrounded and he even saw Brutus (his son) going against him, covered his head with the toga, he passed over, pierced by twenty-three stab. Caesar had 56 years. The first Emperor of Rome, one of the most important and influential of the history; and his murder happened exactly here.

Today the district is called "Pigna", exactly in Largo di Torre Argentina; is right here where is consumed the most ancient and famous attack in ancient history. It was an important place of that time, area of thermal baths, majestic colonnades, leading religious area and especially political.

Centuries later, on this cultural esplanade passed years of hight-quality limestone activity, producing with bas-reliefs and columns layers of medieval buildings.

In 1926, Mussolini sent in this area some pickmen with the aim of breaking down the medieval structures and erect buildings able to accept the new leader class. The plan was never carried out, because under the blows of the pickaxes, came out the Area Sacra of Caeser, just, whose discovery had even touched the Fascist dictator.
Three years after that place was already territory of cats which, after all, they did not matter at all about the leader tears and nor about the stab inflicted to another leader two thousand years earlier.

Since then, the cats took possession of the place and of all the memories connected to it, becoming the major tourist attraction of the square.

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