Video: Guide not always controversy at the best and worst of Eataly Rome
2024 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 12:26
Welcome to the most famous taste megastore in Italy, based in Rome (other offshoots in Turin, Milan, New York …). Where over the weekend we sent two editors: if the first is enthusiastic about Eataly, the relationship of the other with Oscar Farinetti's giant is what modernity defines as a "complicated relationship". The result is a shopping guide: 10 things to buy and 10 not suited to that chosen place.
1. Pasquale Torrente's fry shop.
The Convent of Cetara (Salerno) remains one of my favorite places, perhaps the restaurant with the best price / happiness ratio in Italy. Kissed by a raw material that sings and a happy hand in interpreting it. Here we lack the poetry of the environment, but with the food we are there, and if you focus on fried anchovies you will be able to grab a sublime of that corner of Paradise. Impeccable frying, the word of those who were raised on fried fish in their San Benedetto childhood.
1. Freshly made mozzarella from Caserta Roberto Battaglia.
The consistency is inviting but the matter changes in the mouth. How is it possible? By now in any supermarket there is a decent buffalo mozzarella at the salami counter. We are not yet at the Saint [insert name of saint at random] from 125 gr. I go to Eataly, where they make me a fresh mozzarella under my nose to find a mediocre product, excessively compact and that when I taste it does not show me the stars?
2. The wraps.
Perhaps the point of administration that registers the most unanimous consent, will be that the piade are not so widespread in the capital but the preparation is manual, and the quality of the ingredients impeccable. The biggest reservations are about the aesthetics of the hut, but we will worry about it the day when humans feed on the aesthetics of huts, and not wraps, not to mention that tradition would like the kiosk just like that, with those irritating social colors.
2. Fresh pasta counter.
Fettuccine: Too thick, smooth and shiny like billiard balls, the sauce doesn't even get them dirty. Forget the Emilian pastry with an egg yolk every 100 gr. made with flour. Apart from the price, they lose the match with Sfogliagrezza by Giovanni Rana. Ravioli del plin. No comment, on the edge of reality. I am not aware that the original recipe includes bran in the filling. Of that they knew.
3. The bread.
True, Rome is a city of large ovens and the Castles offer extraordinary examples of the art of baking, but here it is impossible to peck at the sole. After all, flours (Mulino Marino, with the bags in full view) make the difference as in no other product category.
3. Trippa della Granda in a jar, purchased on the shelf (photo).
I state that I prefer Roman-style tripe prepared with mint because I find them fresher. This tripe is treated and cooked like a ragù, with an excessive amount of chopped celery, carrot and onion. Very heavy. Too much oil and a strange flavor of preservative (spices? Boh!) With which I related in spite of myself and I will certainly find myself in the hereditary axis. One jar makes a generous serving. At 11.80 euros it's not exactly cheap.
4. The rice of Carlo Zaccaria.
Far are the days when I had to make myself a bottom like a bucket to find what for me is the best rice on the square, now just a few kilometers are enough. If as far as Carnaroli is concerned it is in fact a matter of taste, and you can find the Acquerello on the same shelf, on Vialone nano there is none for anyone. Next to it, among other things, you will also find the Cascina Belvedere risotto preparations. I would lie telling you that my gourmet soul has never been touched by such filth, but I would be lying even more if I said that there are no very decent risottos.
4. Meat restaurant.
Grilled beef steak from Granda. Originally good meat but cold inside and charred outside. It tasted like a plate not perfectly clean. Served with unpresentable roast potatoes, I don't know if Pirelli or Montedison brand… a question of polymers, macromolecules. Constant in the dishes is a triumph of mixed salad like bonduelle but uglier. The presentation of the dishes is one of the worst aspects of Eataly.
5. The meat of La Granda.
I have heard several criticisms that have blown me away. Because really, if the meat of La Granda is not good then let's look for the heads of races on the verge of extinction, let's leave them in the wild in biodynamic pastures at high altitude - at least 10 hectares per head - and then convince them to sacrifice themselves for the cause. of human nutrition (as in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) after being massaged for seven days and nights by sensual but virgin geishas. Or become a vegetarian which you do first.
5. L’Oste della Bon'ora trattoria dishes in Grottaferrata: Tonnarelli all'amatriciana.
(Please observe the prices to which one euro per person must be added for the service which consists only of bringing you the dishes at the table and at different times, never together. Line at the cashier to order and the bill to be paid in advance). The choice of tonnarelli is doubtful, as they are not very suitable for this sauce, traditionally used on spaghetti or with the bucatini, half sleeves or bombolotti variant. Bottom of cooking water in the dish and stewed bacon, instead of sautéed and, moreover, vaguely rancid. Perhaps not well cleaned, that is, not deprived of the yellow parts of its fat. Yet L’Oste della Bon’ora is one of the best taverns in and around Rome. Euro 14.
6. The chocolate cantucci of La Molina.
I know that the chocolate shop in question boasts several detractors, who generally have no gods other than Slitti and Castagna, but this product is my personal guilty pleasure, an end of a meal of rather embarrassing greed and persistence. And be careful not to finish the cube by yourself, it has more calories than the daily requirement of an adult man.
6. L’Oste della Bon’ora trattoria dishes in Grottaferrata: Fettuccine with white veal ragù.
Fresh fettuccine too thick and peasant, untied, practically in broth for cooking water on the plate. The pasta was not dressed. Onion, carrot, spices and various aromas ab abundantiam. Euro 15.
7. The oil library.
Perhaps the best-stocked in the city, although Eat's in Milan, which boasts the most impressive selection of Italian extra virgin olive oils I've ever seen, plays another sport. My selection: Fratelli Pinna's Ancient Olive groves in Prato at 6.95 Euros (0.25 liter tin); the Coratina (intense fruity) of Marcinase for 11.20 Euros (bottle of 0, 5 l) and the Riviera di Levante PDO by Lucchi and Guastalli for 13.80 Euros (bottle of 0.75 l).
7. L’Oste della Bon’ora trattoria dishes in Grottaferrata: Gaffo Veronelli, or veal cheek in white with parsley.
To me it looked like a piece of boiled meat, the one with which I make broth and which, once it has done its duty, dives by itself into the dog's bowl. Lint-free, fairly fatty and undercooked meat. Euro 16.
8. The percebes (crustaceans living between Spain and Morocco).
If you find them somewhere else in Rome give me a whistle. Next to it, now that it's the season, there are also some pretty good ostriches.
8. Dishes from the restaurant L’Oste della Bon’ora in Grottaferrata: Boiled at the picchiapò.
Hard, tasteless and seemingly boiled meat cubes in a slow, watered down gravy with too much onion.
9. The wine shop.
In the "Triple A" selection there is a slew of tutelary deities of natural wine with honest markups, but it is by setting out to ravan in Piedmont that the treasure is found. I would not miss Sottimano's Barbaresco Currà 2001 (!) At 35, 80 Euros, Cascina Ca 'Rossa's Roero Monpissano 2008 - year after year, often by posting, the best wine of its appellation - at 16, 80 Euros and above all a wine that is amazing to find here, being comparable to a well-kept secret with the aggravating circumstance of production in homeopathic quantities. I'm talking about the Dogliani 2008 Pirochetta Vecchie Vigne 2008 from Cascina Corte. Make it yours.
9. Sicilian cannolo by Luca Montersino.
If there is a sweet filling that gets tired of being in the window, that is the Sicilian cannoli: it must be filled at the moment, holy shit!
I remember a time when I tasted the cylinders of my first Renault 4… They were more crumbly. Very hard cannolo, it looked like plasterboard with a very heavy ricotta filling, a boulder. Euro 3.50 each.
10. Jamon Iberico de Bellota from Carrasco.
The second best ham of Spain behind “His Majesty” (© Roscioli) Joselito. You pay for quality, but at least you can take it home comfortably, and in sizes to suit all (or almost) budgets.
10. Gentilini wholemeal biscuits, an exclusive recipe for Eataly.
They're full of butter, terrible heartburn. I'll go back to the Measurements of the supermarket. They are better. Not that fat, not that sweet, they have fewer calories and don't cost a lot.
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