slating PUNTARELLE / LARGE TRAPS OF ROMANIA '
Macaroni
"corp nun's not them, your body is that we go '"
Maccheroni, Piazza delle Coppelle 44 tel 06-68307895
We can call them if you like, residual forms of epic subway: go, a muggy evening in July, demanding to eat with friends, but unfortunately, foreigners and so fascinated by Gtr (large traps of Romania) in a restaurant well known to tourists. Face the heat, the crowd, the sweat, the shirt that sticks to the abdomen, but also address the irony of your best friend, an expert in cooking and restaurants, when I say, "Tonight I'm going to eat at the Macaroni Coppelle, "even if you tell him softly, and with all the necessary modesty of the case, surely you laugh in the face and treats you like any tourist from Milan who has read the blurb for the event that famous messenger 'Macaroni Lady crazy about Obama."
- "I know it's for tourists, but I remember once many years ago that in fact the first they could eat '
-" Look, you said well, many years ago. "
- "Okay, but that my friend is in Rome that he wanted."
- 'See you, maybe it's decent, I would never go there. "
But I go there. Macaroni, then, "characteristic of the Shells restaurant located in the Piazza" (if only I had read the site before ... if I had known that was located there never would have gone ...).
The entrance hall is reminiscent of the Commissioner Logatto Fracchia in the human beast, do you remember "are not ricchione Fri Fri are not"?
That's it. A little 'with casino then the reservation, as well as the tables outside and those inside are of Anglo-Saxon onusti tipsy because of the red rabble of the house, my friends and we are demanding thrown in the "crypt", a sort of catacomb unusable appliances mo 'cellar .
The waiters, it must be said, are nice, and this at the end of the evening will be the only point in favor of one of the worst places (among the most advertised) in the capital. I'm going to sit down and I was brought a scallop of bakery products, the typical Roman pizza, but in its worst four days old and so humid that it seems at times boiled tongue, and then the usual dose of stale bread. (Sul pane raffermo dei ristoranti sarà il caso, un giorno, di scrivere un saggio).
Do un morso, rimango composto, poso la fetta, mastico, deglutisco, distolgo l’attenzione e avvio la conversazione. Poi avvicino il cameriere e gli chiedo la lista dei vini. Lui mi scruta un pochino poi con aria complice mi sorprende: «Permette un suggerimento?».
«Prego».
«Un prodotto laziale tipico»
«Oibò»
«Uno Shiraz, Casale del Giglio».
Hai capito che trovata! Un vino originale, un prodotto laziale tipico. Però capisco l’antifona e cedo subito: «Ottimo». E in effetti la scelta si rivelerà winner: the only product of average quality of an evening dominated by the worst.
comes the time of order. I look at the menu and think, oh well going down two points that I do a review for Puntarellarossa (chicory are always secondary, I). The menu is an ancient sadness. A handful of Roman dishes thrown in bulk as soiled underwear in the laundry basket, without a shred of care or love. So, without a shred of care and love, also ordered us: "cheese and pepper," they say invariably my guests, "tripe," I say.
Here, tripe. It is always a good test, tripe. Why is it difficult to cook e difficilissima da presentare. Da come ti portano la trippa si capisce tutto. Ci sono quelli che fanno le acrobazie con la mentuccia, quelli che inventano canestri di pecorino, quelli che puntano sul rustico. E quelli che te la buttano a casaccio sul tavolo. Dietro ogni trippa, una storia, una passione, una versione del nulla. Passa una buona mezz’ora, forse anche quaranticinque minuti, un tempo infinito nel quale la mia fantasia vaga per esecuzioni bovine e macelli spietati. Mi immagino i camerieri simpatici che ammazzano ed eviscerano povere bestie indifese, mattatoi insaguinati, dolori e muggiti d’ogni tipo, vitelli orfani.
E quando il piatto arriva, buttato ovviamente a casaccio sul tavolo, capisco le reali proporzioni della mia naivety. I would have done better to imagine German factories and laboratories and microwave ovens. More than a meal is an autopsy. The beast has been killed the first few decades of service and cooked immediately. The aftertaste of chellophane and temperature of the strips, about twenty degrees, they betray a certain effect, "four jumps in the pan." But the worst, most offensive, is the recipe. Instead of Parmesan cheese, not even the shadow of a mint leaf and a tomato sauce that would kill any other flavor.
While I wonder about what will never cost the Market Trionfale a map of mint, I decided to try the cheese and pepper of my guests whose faces do not own I was excited since there escaped. You know the pose? Certainly yes, add in a bit 'of the cooking broth and pepper and you have a faithful reproduction of the plate.
Even as I try to justify myself with my guests (but in reality it is their fault that they have read the damn short article on the poor lady that Obama knows what the Romans think of us and our kitchen at this point), comes the waiter I asked as the evening proceeds. The fork that I stand up on the plate of cheese and pepper, he apologizes a bit 'embarrassed for mercy and then I grant you, mind: "But the tripe was exceptional."
I get up, pay the account, 82 € honest, and discerning with the two disappear in the hot Roman night, wondering when the next morning my friend caustic comment: "The nun corpa's not them, your body is that we go."
