re: You've that been to Italy

When you are sitting on the Amalfi Coast, eating a pasta dish with clams, mussels, etc.., it is truly a magical moment. Excellent food and impeccable views really make the situation special.

Good, fresh simple food, cooked in Mom and Pop places. Pasta dishes you only thought you had eaten over here, cooked like Momma did and not to some corporate recipe. A single dish, cooked 30 different ways, all of them slightly different and all of them good. Walking down a pretty safe street and deciding "let's try that hole in the wall, and being very surprised at how good it is and that there is also one or more in the next village, just as good or better. So many different pasta dishes, and no real need to ask anyone "where the best place in town is?"

Of course, I was with someone I loved, moving at our schedule, with no real reason to do anything, except looking at a road sign and deciding whether we wanted to stop in the next village or town.

Wish I had a couple of months to devote to the place, with no worries about catching some virus. If so, We'd go back tomorrow.

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I've only been to the north, which is very different. Very.

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Personally I'm much more a fan of northern Italian food. It's more rustic, it doesn't feature the tomato as much if at all and it's fantastic.

There was a short-lived gelato joint on Chimes street in BR called Bachio di Roma. The guy who ran it was from Rome and had worked at one of the top Gelato spots that I had been blown away by when I visited. When I tried his stuff here, it was other-worldly good. No ice cream compares. One tiny bite of his chocolate gelato filled my hole mouth with flavor. It’s a shame he couldn’t make enough money on chimes street to keep going. I wonder where that dude is now.

I went to Rome once and while there asked the guy running the pensione for a restaurant recommendation. He made a call and sent us to a nearby restaurant. They were from Sardinia and they spoke about as much English as we did Italian. The guy at the pensione, an American GI who married an Italian girl, knew this and told them to "take care of us."

There must have been at least eight courses, mostly small plates featuring different kinds of seafood in different sauces. There was fish and squid, and octopus, and scallops, and crab, and no telling what else. There was a lot of garlic and butter, not so much tomatoey stuff, with various pastas and cheeses too. And wine, lots of wine, not to mention wonderful freshly baked bread. We were there nearly three hours and took two bottles of the wine with us.

This was in the 80s, when they still had the lira and the dollar was strong. It came out to about 70ty million lira, or roughly $17 a piece. Probably the best meal I've ever had in a restaurant.

The standard is high because the people know and demand good food and won't settle for mediocrity. The cooking can be simple and rustic, but the ingredients are top notch. They cook with a lot of fresh herbs and olive oil. Their olive oil is second to none. I have a source in Tuscany that ships me some on occasion. It is expensive but a big can lasts me a year and it is the best. I don't know whether it is the soil or the climate, but the fruits and vegetables are a lot more flavorful than 90% of the ones we get at home. Same with the steaks in Florence. I don't know why we don't have chiana (sp?)beef here. The best pizza I have ever had was on the Amalfi Coast near where pizza was invented. Domino's and Pizza Hut would be laughed at. The cheese is fantastic because they are not encumbered by pasteurization laws. Diners in Italy get the best because they expect demand it. Ditto for the wine.

It has nothing to do with cuisines. Any cuisine when done with quality ingredients and a good chef is worth it. It doesn’t have to be Italian, French, indian, mexican or Cajun.

The foreign location might just add that extra sense of romance to make you feel better.

There is no bad cuisine. There are only bad ingredients and terrible chef..

Yeah. Those are some of my favorites too. Twice we have stayed just south of the town of San Donato in Poggio. There may be only a half dozen restaurants in the town and we have been to just about all of them. They are small,rustic and casual but the food is delicious and they have great selections of local wines. Few tourists find the place so it is all locals.

Nice grammar. You might want to learn more stateside before traveling abroad...

Fresh and local. Outside of the very very top restaurants in the USA, most restaurants use someone like Sysco or US foods to supply 90% of what they serve.

As far as I know Italy doesn't have this. They buy most of their ingredients locally daily or at most weekly.

The best food comes from the best ingredients. A great chef cant turn crappy ingredients into a great meal.

Then Italy, France, etc. have 1000s of years with those ingredients and what works and what doesn't. Items like cheese have had the kinks worked out for 300 years.