Italy Day 4 Visited 3/16/2013

Hotel de Russie Via del Babuino, 9, 00187 Rome, Italy 4.5 Forks

If there is any place to get married in Rome, the Hotel de Russie has got to be up there was one of the top places.  It's a classically beautiful hotel that's really the epitome of luxury.  My good friend Virginia was getting married there and I was so happy to be able to be able to join her in celebrating her wedding here.  I'm not here to review the wedding (it was lovely) or the hotel (fabulous) but the food.  The wedding was during the day, so we had an hour of passed appetizers and then sat down for lunch.  I don't remember much that was passed around during the cocktail hour but I do remember a delicious shrimp tempura that I loved.  I think I had about 4 of them and would have had more if it didn't look totally embarrassing or greedy.  I was always and still am a huge believer that the appetizers at weddings are often the best part of the food experience at weddings and if I ever do get married I want to push for just heavy apps instead of a sit down meal.  But I will say that the main entrees I got here was some of the best wedding food I've had anywhere.

The lunch started with a very delicate but wonderful lasagna with ricotta cheese and vegetables.  The layers of pasta were very light and even though there were a lot of layers, the dish didn't taste heavy at all.  I loved that the lasagna wasn't drenched in tomato sauce, that it was more on the side so that you could put as much or as little with each bite.  The tomato sauce used in the dish has this fantastic tang and the zucchini in it tasted like it was picked right out of the garden.

Next on the menu was a grilled beef with balsamic sauce and olive oil mashed potatoes.  I'm usually very wary of meat at weddings because they are almost always overcooked and it's just really difficult to cook 50+ steaks at the same time and have them all turn out well.  So I was super impressed at how delicious the steak was here.  It was extremely tender, medium rare and tasted like it was cooked just for me and not for a large group.  On top of it, the mashed potatoes were simply amazing.  So decadent and I loved the olive oil touch because who doesn't love Italian olive oil on everything? The potatoes were smooth and I could have literally eaten an entire vat of this and died a happy girl.  There's just something about a perfect mashed potato dish that's just so comforting.

Next we were served a fresh fruit plate with lemon sorbet.  It was probably the healthiest thing I've eaten the entire trip and to be honest I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't some ridiculous dessert to end the meal.  But before I could say anything I noticed that there was a cake outside.  It was not a traditional wedding cake but a similar dessert to what we had last night.  I do have to say that the millefeuille at the rehearsal dinner was actually better.  The custard used in that one was sweeter and thicker and the layers of pastry was a bit flakier and not as dry.

As far as sit down wedding food goes, the food here was one of the best.  I mean how could it not be when you're at one of the best hotels in Italy right?

Il Brillo Parlante Via Della Fontanella, 12, 00187 Rome, Italy 4.5 Forks

For our final dinner in Rome, we ended up at Il Brillo Parlante, which is actually owned by the same people as Hi-Res and Il Valentino. I guess we might as well try all of them right? I was hoping that it wouldn't be as mediocre as the other 2 restaurants and luckily this one was not.  It was the best one of the 3 restaurants.  Although the night kind of started on a bad note as we had a reservation at 9:30 and we had to wait and wait and wait.  We didn't sit down until past 10pm but the waitstaff was incredibly nice and apologetic about it.  There was a huge rugby game that night (Ireland vs. Italy) and there were tons of Irish tourists in town, so every restaurant was packed to the gills.  The waiter kindly let us place our order first so that we wouldn't have to wait too long for our food when we sat down.  We started with an order of the bruschetta, the spinach salad and a few pizzas.  I'm normally not a huge lover of bruschetta but the one here was amazing.  It had some of the freshest tomatoes and basil I've ever had in my life.  It was literally like eating tomatoes right off the vine and basil right out of the ground.  Amazing.  The spinach salad had apple, super strong gorgonzola cheese and vinegar.  I wolfed this salad down as it was the first real green salad I've had this entire trip and I also love a good strong gorgonzola on anything.  I didn't have any of the pizza because I was waiting for my pasta, but it looked good and similar to the other pizzas I had on this trip.  Since I had eaten so much rigatoni, I opted for a bucatini pasta with a basic tomato sauce and chopped bits of fatty bacon.  It was simple yet tasted like something I couldn't make at home for some reason.  Again, I can't stress enough how amazing the tomato sauce is in Italy.  It just doesn't taste processed or pumped full of sugar or salt.  It just taste like one a giant fresh tomato.  The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente and it was just a perfect way to end my culinary tour of Rome.  I know, this picture kind of makes it look like a hot hot mess, but believe me, it was delicious.   I was just still so full from lunch that I didn't really have the stomach capacity to finish the dish or enjoy it for all that it was worth.  I was literally forcing forkfuls of pasta down by the end of the night and that's just not a great feeling even if the food is great.

 We were all so stuffed and it was past 11pm by the time we finished dinner that we didn't order dessert.  The greatest surprise of the night was that when we went to pay the bill they had generously gave us a discount for making us wait so long.  What?! That never happens anywhere in the US.  We were so touched that we tipped them like 20 or 25 euros, which is a pretty big deal since Italy isn't really a tipping culture.  I'm glad my last meal in Italy was a hit and to be honest, every meal in (even the "worst" meal) was exponentially better than most meals you'll have anywhere in the world.  Italians just know how to do it right, use local ingredients to their maximum potential and leave you stuffed, happy and wanting more at the end.  In fact, when I came back to NYC, I actually was craving Italian food when I came back, which almost never happens to me after I've been traveling out of the country.  I left Italy with a super warm fuzzy feeling in my heart and it's definitely a country that I want to come back to again and again in the future.