Eating my way through Italy

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Where were your favorite places and meals? I’m thinking Florence, Bologna, Rome, and Naples. Open to other places.

Love Italian food and I also enjoy walking around in the morning to grab a coffee and pastry. Maybe do one Michelin spot in each city.

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Here's something you need to know: the UK, US and Australia are culinary outliers in that restaurant competition seems to revolve around variety.

However, the median country - Italy included - does not operate this way. Rather, the restaurants basically compete to make THE BEST version of a narrow set of dishes.

To the point that I find it repetitive and undifferentiated.

And it's very on the nose. e.g. In Bologna, expect basically every single Italian restaurant to prominently feature pasta bolognese.

I spent 2 weeks in December touring with locals and was quite disappointed overall with the culinary experience. People can go on and on about "fresh" pasta all they want, but there truly is very little - if any- detectable difference from place to place.

Pizza is an interesting experience too. It isn't shared and it's eaten with utensils and not sliced.

Some seafood is decent, although they are very heavy on the octopus and squid. We had Christmas Eve dinner with a large family at a nice house...and almost every dish was squid or octopus.

Also, it seems dessert often consists of pannettone, which I find personally to be very meh.

All of this to say - the food quality is overall quite good, but it's a lot different from what one might expect. It's definitely overrated.

Yeah, the point of renting a car is to visit wineries, etc. in the countryside. I enjoyed visiting Podere il Casale outside Pienza and seeing their sheep dairy that they use to make pecorino cheese. It was great to taste a number of their cheeses paired with different wines.

You don't need (or want) a car to visit cities. Many cities have a ZTL, meaning you can't even drive a car into the historic part of the city. Get a car only if you want to drive around to small towns and rural areas of Tuscany, Umbria, etc.

I don’t really want to drive around the cities. I just want flexibility to go where and when I want and not have to worry about finding temporary places to store my luggage while I go walking around. Maybe it’s not worth the hassle. I loved driving in Germany but absolutely hated driving in Prague. I get all your points.

We have a car at my house in southern italy. We use it for day trips to cities that are harder to get to by train. Other than that, we don't use it. If you're in big cities, no real reason to have a car. But driving around Italy is pretty damn easy

Naples is kind of dumpy, but has some of the best food in all of Italy.

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We have a car at my house in southern italy.

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You're able to own a house and a car in Italy? I'm curious as to how you pulled that off

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I got to test drive a really extremely quick BMW on the autobahn.

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I understand now.

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Now if you want to get out in the country the car will really help.

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Agreed.

One of the best meals we had on our trip was in Montalcino (Re di Macchia) - would not have been able to eat there if we did not have a car.

Otherwise, OP, you can't go wrong with the big cities, but you will be leaving some gems on the table by only sticking with the big cities...

Spent last night in Naples. Had some of the best fried anchovies I’ve ever had and I’ve had them all over Italy.

I do agree though in that the pasta does get repetitive the longer you stay here.

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My experiences in Italy have been very different than yours.

Each region in Italy has different focuses and specialize in what’s unique to them. The baked mussels were very different than the steak in just 2-3 hours of travel.

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I always thought Italians eating pasta was an Americanized thing, but it's not. They eat way more than I thought possible. Every restaurant peddles pasta. We were visiting a relative that had moved there for a year and the host family they lived with had virtually no protein - pasta, pasta, pasta every meal. (And of course they still weren't fat )