Rome Day 10
Rome, Italy
April 22, 2011
How much ground can one cover in a single day by foot in Rome.
This much! Today was a sightseeing marathon. We somehow managed to hit a dozen tourist attractions by foot and feed the Roman economy by fitting in an impressive amount of clothing shopping along the way. Sightseeing pit stops by metro and mostly by foot around the city included Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, the Tiber River, and the Vatican. Our sightseeing stops also included Armani, Versace, and Diesel. The latter where we accidently forgot we were just sightseeing and bought a few things. Ooops! Well it is my birthday so splurging a little should be acceptable, right?
After hoofing it all over town, weaving through mobs of people, and spending lots of Euro, we drug ourselves back to the hotel to freshen up for the night’s highlight, dinner reservations at Glass Hosteria in the Trastevere neighborhood. Glass Hosteria acquired a Michelin Star two years ago and we were excited to check it out… We arrived at Trastevere by taxi, which took us along the River to take in some excellent views of Rome at night including the burly San Angelo Fortress. We then wound through a maze of tiny Trastevere streets adorned with ancient cobblestone. Traveler’s Tip: Do not wear four inch stilletto’s in Trastevere. EVER. It doesn’t matter if you have reservations at a great restaurant. I ended up riding on AJ’s back most of the way in order not to break something trying to navigate in my high heels.
Glass Hosteria is a tiny restaurant with pristine contemporary design including glass windows in the floor with champagne bottles below. The tables were all a made of thick aqua glass adorned with black slate placemats and golden yellow linen napkins. The stone placemats added wonderful modern texture to the table setting. We were greeted with the chef’s amuse bouche, house made sesame bread sticks packed with flavor and crunch. We browsed the menu and earmarked what we thought were the most interesting dishes on the menu. We then summoned the in-house Sommelier to help us pair wine. The wine list was 43 pages thick, offering only Italian wine, so suggestions from the Sommelier was hugely helpful. After choosing two glasses of wine to match our starters and a bottle to cover the rest of dinner we embarked on our little gastronomic journey.
As the food was delivered, we were sorely disappointed to realize we had left our camera behind, as the presentation of our dishes were all masterfully crafted… we wondered if Nathan was back in the kitchen plating because of the extreme similarity in style and beauty of these dishes to the way ours are presented at Jasoh! Well done.
First we had the beef Tartar with wasabi, orange, fried bread crumbs, mircogreens and tobiko. This was the best beef tartar we had ever had. It was very fresh and well-seasoned, had great texture, and was delicious with both the Chardonnay and the local Pinot Nero we had ordered by the glass. Our other starter, shrimp with melon puree, and fried paper thin pasta sheets. The texture of the dish was nice, but the flavors left something to be desired.
Our next courses included a pan seared white fish with lemon crème, deep fried polenta died with squid ink, and a nice artichoke sauté. We thought it was well prepared, but our Chef Nathan could have taken that dish to a much higher level with our Wood Oven, our citrus extra virgin olive oils, and Nathan’s wonderfully creative starches for more texture. Next we had fois grois filled raviolis with amaretto and apples. It was very tasty and the pasta was as fresh as it gets. We would have loved to see the ravioli more plump, packed with more fois grois, but the flavors were awesome and it was amazing with our bottle of 2002 Jermann Chardonnay-Sauvignon Blanc from Gorizia, one of the towns AJ had lived in in 2002! With the connections to AJ’s past and us noting that Jermann has won some recent winemaking awards we made the choice for this bottle after much conversation with the Sommelier. Aging had done great things to this wine, giving it a unique sweet cream butter approach with a nice acidic short finish. The wine was extremely full bodied and rich and we enjoyed it throughout the rest of our dinner, while chatting endlessly with the friendly Sommelier all about wine.
We culminated the evening with hazelnut nougat paired with coriander ice cream, bid the friendly staff farewell and trekked back over crevice and cobble through Trastevere to hail a cab home.
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