693: Rome's Real Deal and Cracking Carbonara's Code with Katie Parla

26:25Arotta was not open, but Pantera was before it closed. Okay. I can't keep track of what's going on. It seems like it's going to open. Yeah. TBD. Yeah, but you gave us some great recs. Marisa and I were visiting. And I think the big question then to get to the periphery, outside the walls, is where do you stay? Is there like a place to stay that would put you in a spot that— 100 million places. Got it. I mean, this is very funny, but there's a Soho house in San Lorenzo now. Okay, yeah. So you can sleep near Matzo or Artisan, which is one of the best craft beer pubs. There's a spot called Mama Shelter, not far from Pizzeria and Panificio Bonci.

27:05It's in the Triomphale, like, Cipro district. And those are super cute. A lot of visitors like to stay at the Hoxton. I don't have, like, a zillion food wrecks around there. But the, you know, the area is very residential. It's all from, like, the 1920s, super interesting. And then there are, you know, loads of Italian-owned brands as well. Yeah, I mean, I think a million places to stay. I'm taking that out. But yeah, I think like staying somewhere interesting, but also walking a lot. That's kind of been my experience with Rome. So we could talk about the history section, which is probably the first 50 pages all day.

27:44Like, I love it. You write historical. I would say, like, it's a tapestry of, like, historical, like, deep cuts, which you expect in a historian's book, but also just with a colorful voice and drive that makes you want to read it. So I want you welcome. It's all true. There's a couple specific beats that I wanted to cover and just give us some context about Rome's history. And one is the arti, these food guilds that formed as sort of a culinary bureaucracy. And give us a little context about that period, because it seems from the reading, this was a time when, you know, food became a little bit more important from a governmental level.

28:22And honestly, maybe started, you know, Italy started having these like specialized food producers. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just for food. It was for all sorts of arts and crafts. And just to give a little bit of context, Italy is emerging from the Middle Ages and entering the Renaissance in stages. It's not as though it's, you know, 1450 and everyone's like on the same track. And in fact, Rome was quite a bit behind the cities of Florence and Naples and Venice because, well, the Pope was the king from 600 until 1870 and didn't do like a bang up job every century. But furthermore, it was also in Avignon for seven decades and then in and out of France for a while.

29:00So while you have all of these other cities really developing for economic and hygienic purposes, guilds around food, Rome just sort of catches up and they're able to draw on the existing archetypes. And the guilds that would have been based around like butchery or produce selling, my favorite one is the vermicellari, which is like the sort of pasta makers. That was intended to preserve craft, teach, really provide education, maintain quality, regulate. And you can still see the legacy of the food and other guilds throughout Rome. And when you're walking around Trastevere or the Centro Storico, a lot of the names of the streets speak to the industries that were based there.

29:42And the need for regulation was essential in order to provide for a growing city. Rome's population hit 50 ,000 for the first time in centuries in 1450. That's a lot of people to manage. Yeah. And so making sure the food is sort of like running smoothly was an essential feature of rule. So before that, like the artisan nature of food was less important. It was more like sustenance. And this is like kind of a prep they were making more professionalized industry. Yeah. I mean, Rome also like I hesitate to paint any part of Rome as like the Dark Ages. There was knowledge. There was stuff going on at any given time.

30:18But Rome, you know, in 1300 seems like it's poised to grow. And then in 1307, you have like the popes leave and then there's the Black Plague. So just the ability to pass down knowledge is completely affected by this. and the ability to maintain hygiene and food distribution completely affected. Plus, Rome then wasn't a tight nucleus of settlement. There was a condo in the Colosseum. The Pope's cathedral and palace was at the Lateran. The Vatican was just sort of like a marshy malarial swamp where people went for pilgrimage. People lived in and around these sort of marshy fields. But when the city starts to come together and coalesce as a more unified civilization, those guilds are essential and they're looking, you know, Romans would never admit it, but looking to like Florence.

31:00and other places that have already established these types of mechanisms. Again, I'm going to fast forward hundreds of years because we could go over the history of Rome on this episode, but I really was fascinated by the Mussolini and fascist era. It arrives out of a century of deep poverty and desperation, and the fascist government promises a rebirth, and food is used as a message, and the government is kind of like, you know, we can help you through these new regulations around food. I want you to set the table for this era. And, you know, what was the dynamic then? And do we see modern Rome expressing some of that fascist era dynamic today?

31:48So let's set the table. Mussolini comes to power in 1922 with a message of autarky. He believes that Italy needs to free itself from the terrible influence and subpar wheat of the United States and other parts of the world. And so Mussolini makes all of these outrageous claims that Italy will be self-sufficient, that in order to express your unity with the nation, you have to eat things that come from Italian territory. Of course, one only needs to study history for one minute to know that during the Roman Empire and all the sort of peaks of Rome, the city was relying on imported grain from all over the world, particularly North Africa.

32:31But nevertheless, the fascist regime continues to run this propaganda that like to be part of this growing culture, you need to demonstrate your loyalty by eating pasta. Domestic pasta. Domestic pasta. And that doesn't really go so well because, among other reasons, Mussolini's illegal invasion of Ethiopia in 1936 leads to all sorts of trade embargoes. And the country is essentially pushed to the brink of starvation. And so they're able to rely a bit on rice and other things. And there's a huge trove of visual propaganda that shows people consuming these Italian products are contributing to the purity of society.

33:14and that it's a moral failing to rely on any imports. Yeah, so do we see, I know we know that the history of Mussolini and the fall of Mussolini and then the years post-war, but do we see that ethic of looking inward more than outward remain today? And is it related to this era of Mussolini? I mean, look, Georgia Maloney does have some Mussolini flair in some senses, But in terms of the food systems and sort of the overall approach to, I would say, food commerce is really driven by people's desire to make profit. And so, if anything, leveraging the made in Italy kind of brand, for lack of a better word, is essential for exports and imports.

34:01There's a big push. If you visit any supermarket, you'll see, you know, carne italiana, this is meat from Italy, or pesce locale. The pasta industry in Italy has historically, as we've established, relied on imported grain. And now there's a little bit more knowledge that Italians aren't eating necessarily Italian grain in their pasta. So the labeling for pasta packages is advertising local sourcing. So I think there are perhaps some parallels and certainly Georgia Maloney does come from a neo-fascist background that treasures Mussolini's legacy in spite of how just decrepit and awful it is. But I wouldn't draw any strict parallels.

34:41Yeah, I think I was just trying to tap into like the nature of eating in Italy and having a lot of homegrown products on the tables of Italy. But it's a complicated topic that we can't really paraphrase. I do want to move into Adeboni because this was a book we covered in a previous episode and I'll link to in the show notes. I think it was a really excellent reissue that Michael and the folks over at Voracious did and you wrote the foreword. And I want to hear from you on this episode about this era and this cookbook and how it really maybe kick-started and maybe enabled Italians to cook more at home or think more deeply about food.

35:21Yeah. So Auduboni doesn't start with a cookbook. She starts with a magazine in 1915. So this is in the post-First World War era. And she's writing from Rome, recipes and sort of like a home economics guide. Her audience is small, however. She's writing for literate women in the early 20th century. So this is upper middle class people who aren't able to demonstrate their intelligence, intellect and their abilities really outside of a domestic sphere. No, university, I mean, high school wasn't guaranteed to women in Italy until, you know, half a century later. And so her preziosa magazine becomes the sort of starter kit for what will become talisman of happiness.

36:06Yeah. And when that's published in the early 1920s, it begins to balloon into a much larger project. And so I don't have the first edition. If anyone wants to sell me the first edition, I'm easy to find on the Internet. Celia doesn't have it at Omnivore? I feel she would have it. Oh, I'm sure she does. I'm going to go out there for a tour in January. I'll sneak a peek. But, you know, it grows to I think the most recent Italian edition has like 2300 recipes or something like this. And so when you look at the additions and see what's added over the course of a century, it gives you a sense of just how new a lot of the things that we consider traditional are.

36:42And, yeah, it's always surprising just like how many like mayonnaise sauces there needed to be in early 20th century Italian food. They were looking to the UK, right? They were looking to other parts of Europe for inspiration from that. Of course. Because it's like a home entertaining impulse as well as cooking these traditional dishes. and I mean, I think I like that everyone is like kind of piling on Silver Spoon as like kind of the boring book it really is. I'm just going to say it. You write about it. I concur. Yeah, you concur. I also think Pellegrino Artuzzi, Snoozefest. Yeah, yeah. Auduboni is the one I want to be reading.

37:16Is the one and it's a terrific reissue. Well, I mean, we could talk about recipes all day as well. So, I mean, I think for our listeners, it will be very interesting to hear about carbonara and really you crack the code a bit and you are disputing its Rome's origins. Tell me about that. So look, I'm not the first person to think that mixing bacon and powdered eggs to make a pasta condiment just seems like a little too cute. And there is currently a lot of Italian scholarship about carbonara and its development. What we do know is that the first published recipe was from a sort of guidebook cookbook published in Chicago in the early 1950s.

38:03And consequently, we have to ask, well, if it was such an important feature of sort of post-war life, why wasn't it mentioned alongside other things that people were eating? And Alberto Grandi, who's a scholar who has his own wonderful podcast, does sort of acknowledge the first publication happens in America, but he suggests that it in fact was just writing down a recipe that had been encountered in Rome. I'm just a little bit skeptical of that. I think that we have documented sources for a lot of things, and until we can discover any true origin, then it remains somewhat of a fun myth. Everyone needs a foundation legend for their foods.

38:45It's definitely something to talk about on food tours or on podcasts, and it's nice to think about origins and this bending of history over time. Absolutely. What's your gut instinct, though, that it was started in Chicago? No, I mean, I don't know. I'm pushing you first. To me, it feels like gricha, which is carbonara minus egg, let's say. It feels like a way to enrich gricha, which was like a very simple, approachable dish in a time post-war that people are feeling themselves. They're finally like coming out of a century of kind of awfulness. awfulness. And so adding egg, which would have otherwise been pre-war, like a pretty priceless ingredient, it just, it feels to me like someone decides to do this and then it blows out to become a thing.

39:33Yeah. And then you mentioned powdered eggs as well. So possibly from, you know, rations. Of course. Yes. So in the post-war era, during the war, there were K-rations and then the post-war there were B-rations. Anyway, I should read my book. There was another ration that was developed and powdered eggs were a part of this, so was bacon. And I should just also mention that a lot of the early recipes of carbonara mentioned bacon. Elizabeth David uses coppa. There are all sorts of things that would have been allowed that today are considered blasphemous. But that's because over time, Romans have codified the recipe to say it's made like this and only like this.

40:10But in reality, alliums and even Swiss cheese ended up in that recipe at its inception. So interesting. Wow. Swiss cheese. It's not tough hang for me, actually. Not sure if I want to try that. Okay, back to this idea of the real Rome. I want to hear like broadly about how Romans eat today. You are one yourself. You live there. So I want to like use this as an opportunity for folks who are booking their summer travel, who are thinking about going to your wonderful hometown. And like what can we learn from them? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of Romans eat at home almost all the time for dinner. Breakfast is something you have on the fly.

40:47at a bar with a Cornetto or a Mari Tolzo now, which has become very trendy. So big. I saw that in Michigan at a cafe. Yeah, TikTok, man. That'll do it. Yeah, I mean, it's made for TikTok, yeah. And light breakfast. And then lunch is something that you have out, usually in sort of a cafeteria context. That could literally just be like a steam table joint. A lot of the bakeries and the bar, which is like a cafe, at noon to one, they'll start putting out what are like home cooked dishes, things you wouldn't find in a trattoria, but things like tomatoes stuffed with rice, roasted with potatoes till they burst, all sorts of like lighter dishes, roasted chicken, sides of vegetables, things that don't sort of scream the decadence of like a cachoe pepe and oxtail stew meal, which is what you would have if you were going out to a trattoria in the evening.

41:37But most Romans don't go out like multiple times a week for dinner. It's too expensive um at least to like a trattoria but pizza is absolutely like on point right now and popping and you can find a million different incarnations of it so people go out for pizza a lot more than than you might expect well i mean i i mean i was there exploring pizza with mauricio and elementari i went to um obviously uh pantera as well and i think like there's a perception that roman style is like one thing it's a tonda right but that's not true you read the book you go there But I want to tap into that you brought it up about the pizza styles and pizza culture of Rome.

42:14Yeah. I mean, pizza also has its like appropriate time and place. So when you're at a bakery during the day, you might grab some pizzette, which are yeasted, round little pizzas, very simply dressed with like tomato sauce. Or you might have like the puff pastry pizzas, which are addictive. Yeah. You might have pizza a la pala. Like in – did you go to Antico Forno Rochelle, for example? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay, so the pizza la paula style is the pizza that's baked on the deck, and it's as long as the bread oven is deep. Yeah, that's right. And so it's sold by the slice, by weight, and that's like a snack on the flight.

42:48A more substantial topping could make it lunch. Also, pizza in telya, which is another by the slice format, which is cooked in a sheet pan, that's certainly a substantial snack or lunch. You can definitely find the tonda places, those that are selling the round personal pizzas with barely any rim, open at lunch. but it's really more of a dinner time thing. That's a dinner one. And all the aforementioned pizzas, not Tonda, are baked in electric or gas ovens. Tonda is more of a wood-fired thing. Yeah, that's what I saw. And I have to say, Emma, I loved that recommendation. Yeah. You gave it to me.

43:19Vershulligan. I took that one to heart, and I've since passed it on. And what about seeing some of these other styles, like seeing Neapolitan, or even seeing New York-style bread oven, low-rise pizzas? Well, there was a New York-style joint in Prati, and it opened and closed immediately. Yeah, Falco told me about that on the show. And I think, you know, I'd love to see Anthony open something in Rome. Why not? I mean, I don't know if it would hit, but definitely Neapolitans have now been able to open successful places. We had, I would say, like 20 to 25 years ago, the emergence of a sort of soft Neapolitan rimmed pizza, crispy, chewy Roman texture hybrid in places like La Gata Mangiona, which is still going strong.

44:05It's incredible. But that was where Romans started to embrace the thick cornichone. But still the texture remains that crispy, chewy Roman texture. But now there's been this huge pizza renaissance in Italy, and there are celebrity pizzaioli. So, you know, Sorbillo, of course, who has like I think 125 million pizzerias in the world now, has some in Rome. Feels like that in Italy. And Zococcia, who's a G, he's got a spot. Yeah. Girosalvo. So you do have like gourmet expensive with wine lists and like beautiful design Neapolitan pizzerias in town. And that's like new. New. That's like in the past decade, right?

44:41Yeah, exactly. It's so cool. It's like, you know, it's not just New York where Neapolitan is running wild. Exactly. It's kind of like taking over the world. And there's just, you know, some people, we don't really hear about it a lot on the show. I think people have like Chicago or Detroit. But when it comes to like the mass population, I feel Neapolitan is the most popular pizza in the world. It has to be. It's like it's everywhere. Let's go to talk about the recipe list. Like you wrote a book about Rome and it's terrific. And so this is like your return to this city that you love. When you're thinking about this new recipe list, are you thinking about modern dishes that you're seeing in restaurants now?

45:20Or are you going back into history and like picking up something you didn't get to write about? Both. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think I took the recipe list as sort of the fullest panorama that I could give. Yeah. Which includes sort of lost and disappearing dishes, garrafo latte, which is a clove beef stew. It's not something you find in a lot of places, but it's still iconically Roman. And fried carbonara at Pizzarium, definitely not something that's ubiquitous, but something that is, I think, a modern classic. Is that supli or what is that? Yeah, I mean, they call it supli alla carbonara. but you know suple also as a genre has completely changed over the past decade and a half so seeing these kind of new classics Trappizzino I think is a great example of this it's impossible to talk about Roman food without addressing the pizza pita of the Trappizzino and that sourdough pocket that's triangular and filled with Roman manes is something that when people visit Rome from other parts of Italy and other parts of the world they want to have that just as much as they want to sit down and eat cacio e pepe or braised oxtail.

46:25I mean, we had that near Campo di Fiori and the line was like 50 long. It's delicious. It's delicious. Five bucks. Yeah. It's amazing. But like, were there any recipes from history though that you unearthed, that you feel like you're putting it down for the first time? Or, I mean, that's my words, but like you're giving it its love that it didn't have before. No, and I mean, that's an interesting question. I think the dishes, any Roman could open that book and instantly recognize them as something that typifies food from the 1970s to the present. Cool. Right? People were eating much differently in the post-war era, and they were eating way differently before the war.

47:03And so, yeah, we just have to always remember that things that are cast as traditional and authentic often in Italy are no more than 60 or 70 years old, truly. So I just also want to give a plea to the listeners. if you're able to find the intestines of milk-fed veal in order to make payata in the book, please let me know where you found it. We can keep it between us, but I'd love to be able to recreate that at events in America. This is not a domestic product. It is illegal. Yeah, it's illegal. Okay, you might have to go to a dairy farm. I mean, a dairy farm— I feel like Wisconsin might have you— A dairy farm, that would have me sign a very, very strict NDA.

47:38Yeah, or I mean, there's got to be some, like, dark streets in, like, you know, Oshkosh that you can find some veal intestines. All right, hit me up, Wisconsin farmers. What's the flavor profile? I mean, it's sort of sweetly lactic and sheepy, even though it's not sheep, it's veal. But that like, you know that like tang that you get from like a pecorino? Yeah. Kind of has that vibe to it. And payata is the intestines of milk-fed veal that's harvested. And then the like outer fat strands are used to tie segments into rings. And then you cook it with tomato and toss it with rigatoni. and so it does have that like roundness but also tanginess because of the enzymatic activity.

48:18It has the acid and like electric acid. Almost cheesy but like recalled to eat at the same time. And creamy too. I don't know how I can segue from that because that sounds delicious. I'm very intrigued. Let's talk about independent publishing. Oh yeah. You know I love this topic for this show. We're here at a major publisher and I think you've gone against the grain with your company and I just want to broadly ask you like how's it going you know independently publishing cookbooks right now i mean for the first time i'm um supporting myself as a writer yeah and not relying on my tour company my food tour company in rome to fund my compulsion to write yeah and you know i've been in rome now for 23 years and so uh for the past three i've been able to like legitimately cash a paycheck yeah doing what i do which is i mean that's kind of fucked up honestly if you think about it but uh it's super super exciting and fun especially because i have this insane team ed anderson the photographer ian dingman the designer and i just let them do what they do and like kind of run wild and so the the visuals in the book are so impactful but that is also what gary he's mcatlas is like just having the creative license to do exactly what you want and And of course, you're self-funding it while doing it.

49:38But betting on yourself, taking those risks, it's exhilarating. So with Gary's success and then your success, have you kind of pivoted to more of an acquisitions editor? Are people approaching you? Do you have your own ideas that you're trying to assign? How's that working out? So currently, I got to change the name of the company because Parla Publishing is a little misleading. I do consulting for authors and I help shepherd their books, sometimes from like the ideation stage all the way to the end. Other times people come to me with full manuscripts and like, how can I get this made? And so we work together.

50:14Currently, I'm working with Altamonte's at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Delhi, Italian market in Delhi to create their book with their vision. That's very cool. And with photos that they've kind of been collecting over the course of like conservatively 110 years. Wow. Which, you know, in a traditional publishing setting wouldn't necessarily have been acquired or been given a significant advance. And so, yeah, allowing a company, a brand and a family to like realize their dream of having a book that they can share with their fans and their guests is it's super interesting. And I'm really enjoying that aspect.

50:52I mean, that sounds like a really nice place to kind of work in, to have like places that have long histories that maybe have, you know, big, bigger budgets if they are a successful business that maybe don't have the, you know, the reach that a major publisher would get. I mean, are you talking to any independent writers that aren't like institutions? Matt, I'm so tired and overworked. I'm not talking to anybody right now. I mean, this is also like the kind of psychology of it. It's working here and having written books to just think about doing it all on your own. I like it kind of stresses me out.

51:33But it also gives me like a lot of like inspiration that someone's actually doing it. And like when you pick up this book, the way it's designed, the quality of the printing, it's not. I mean, it's pretty much like on the standard of any major publisher. Is it maybe better quality? I mean, listen, I work here, so I'm biased. But I think you've done some really cool things with the design that I think you've broken some rules that I think are really, really fun to see broken. Yeah. No, I mean, also, I got to go to the printer outside of Milan. Shout out to Rotolito. They let me run all over the place.

52:09It's amazing. But yeah, it's like I didn't know anything about the post-manuscript or post-layouts process. And turns out a lot of people know stuff about that. And you can hire them at their print shops. and they like do all of that for you. So it's pretty cool. And it's not, I mean, of course, it's a financial investment. Like I bankrolled the whole project. Yeah, right. But also the, you know, the monetary reward, not to mention like the sort of professional reward is considerable. I want to jump back to the recipes. The minestrone has been on my mind. I had the minestrone at Babo and they're doing like the Solera method where it's like, you know, they're keeping it bubbling on the stove.

52:49I think they're on day like 35 now. Kind of interesting. But you write about it. You have a great recipe. And it's like, it's the cure for deprivation found in the city. The cure of the deprivation of vegetables. Which I feel like, yeah, if you hang in Rome a bit and you're a tourist, you're not getting the fiber that you might need. It's challenging. It could be painful. Tell me about this recipe. Minestrone is just a bunch of vegetables that are chopped up and put in a pot for like an hour. And beans, cranberry beans usually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if you grew up in an Italian-American context, forget about any of like the meat or certainly the pasta.

53:27This is a brothy, brothy soup. And you never have to prepare the ingredients yourself because every market stall sells chopped up minestrone mix made from the produce that doesn't look cute enough to sell whole anymore. and so you just tell them like oh i'm making minestrone for two three four and you get the quantity that is desired and it's delicious and it's pulpy and you can't really tell it by the end what's in it but it's so so so good what makes the stock the stock though i feel like you could like lean into chicken flavors but it's not minestrone if it's chicken flavors is it tomato paste like what brings that stock you're shaking your head i like no it's like some people start with a little sofrito yeah some people use a little garlic and oil but it's really just like vegetables and water this is poverty food yeah it's so so simple um and uh and yeah it's like it's not more complicated than that do you put anything on top for you personally some people try to put cheese on it i don't i don't allow that in my house yeah i was wondering about that that's like always the impulse but you have a nice hunk imported from italy that you want to put on everything but yeah okay you got like a parmesan rind laying around i guess you could put that in the mix but whatever i don't it's a clean broth we're talking a vegan product here It's a vegan product.

54:35Yeah, no, it's plant-based cooking. Yeah. Well, I asked you this before. I mean, are there any other places in the world that you would want to focus your life on than Italy? I mean, I love Turkey so much. I know. And I remember you were working on some projects there. Yeah. If my brain was able to learn Turkish, then that would be my next move. That's kind of the goal. But anything outside Turkey or is those two countries that kind of have your heart? Oh, my God. I'm obsessed with Mexico. I'd love to do some work there. And I've been talking with Roads and Kingdoms about leading, you know, some tours for them down there.

55:08Yeah. So let's talk about your tours business, because I've taken them myself personally with Mauricio and I've had friends go on your tours. You've guided my friends. And it's, you know, I've never actually hung with you in that capacity. We gotta make that happen. I know. I just would love to pay you to do a Piquetee tour of Italy somewhere. But like, what's the business like right now for you? I mean, things are booming. People really, really are, I think, hungry for experiences with real people. And parla tours are three-hour neighborhood immersions where you're actually in contact with food artisans.

55:39And we don't cut corners. We don't ask for discounts. We're going there and we are financially supporting the people who are doing really hard work. And what I think is special about what we do in our either three or six hour city immersions in Venice, Naples and Rome is that we're not just talking about cuisine because isolating cuisine doesn't really tell the story of Rome, which is our objective. And so a stroll, I'll take you to do the Pratian Triumphale Tour. It's about urbanism. It's about papal history. It's about fascism. It's about pizza. It's about, you know, you name it. And we're just really cutting through all of the potential layers.

56:17And it's fascinating. And you're eating while you do it, of course. But it's more than just shoveling food, which I think a lot of the competitors do. I know. There's like that. There's like always like a bunch of bullet points of you're going to have like 20 bites on this tour. Oh, God. Too many. I know. Exactly. I think when you're in it, you want to actually hear the history and then have like a maybe every 30 minutes have like a bite or something. Not like every 10 minutes or whatever. But what about traveling to Rome? I mean, I don't want to like dig into the over tourist nature conversation because that's too long.

56:47But I've always thought about winter in Rome would be interesting. Amazing. Is that spectacular? Yeah. Yeah. Summer. Summer's awful. Don't do it. You won't be hungry. It's too hot. But, you know, I think like May starts to get like a little too crowded and June starts to get a little too warm. It's not dimension crowded. Mid to late November. Amazing. There's still like a lot going on. They've already started putting up decorations in like late October. And very American. I know. It's wild. But I kind of like it. Yeah, I kind of like it too. And, you know, I've spent a few New Years in Rome recently and it was like 62 degrees.

57:27Yeah, yeah. Not great, maybe from a global warming perspective, but certainly you can be out and about and there's no snow. It's not unpleasant on the contrary. So January, February could be pretty much on the money. And not as many. There's visitors there, obviously, but not as many. Always. We don't have low season. But it's slower in January after the epiphany until maybe a month before Easter it starts to get stirring. That's interesting. So interesting. I need to do that. I definitely need to do that. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts.

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59:24Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. Katie, this has been so much fun. On This Is Taste, we asked guys about their discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious. Taste check, are you ready? Yeah. The best fruit? Cherries. What kind? Tell me where. Ravenna cherries. They're from the northeastern part of Italy, but they're sold all over Italy. and they're so like meaty and juicy. And they're in season in April and June.

59:59And I can't wait. I love that. The worst vegetable. Oh, a badly pruned artichoke. We do them fried in Rome. And if they're not pruned properly, they shred your gums with the fibrous parts. I don't like that. Yeah, yeah. You get that little bit extra zing. What is your typical breakfast? I eat pizza rosa, usually from Antico Forno Roscioli every day. Really? It just gets you started. I love it. Yeah. It's all I want. But what's the beverage of choice? Double espresso macchiato. The best dessert. The best dessert. Can I say cherries again? Fair. No, JK. I'm going to say pistachio gelato from Otoleg, but the toasted salted one, it's amazing.

1:00:44Tied with the peanut brittle from Cesare al Casaletto. I love the pairing. Otoleg's great. So good. So good. I don't know, like, Bologna might be the capital, though, for gelato. Okay. What do you think? It's pretty bomb. Yeah, I like it. But Otelag is next to my house. Otelag is near your house. It's easier to get to. God, you are so lucky. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. This is a really difficult one. You know, there's a place called Cetimio al Pellegrino, which is now Cesare al Pellegrino. I went to the original. The OG. I wouldn't say that the food was great. No.

1:01:20But the atmosphere of places like that that have been in business since 1938 and are just like time capsules, those places are vanishing and people are replacing their historic interiors with terrible lighting and bad like Ikea furniture. And I don't like that. I mean, the stove in that original incarnation was like single apartment stove. I mean, it's very basic. And I've always, I've like gone back. Is this the one that was featured on Bourdain? The one that was featured on Bourdain, you want some hot gas? Was the previous one? No. That was in Piazza Santa Cecilia. Roma Sparita. Oh, that wasn't Pellegrini.

1:02:01Pellegrino? Settino Pellegrino was in the more recent one. And Teresa and Mario opened the place, let them dine, and expected the place to be named in the show. And it wasn't, and they were heartbroken. That is right. Isn't that savage? That is a really tough story because they were like literally gatekeeping on the episode and like it was kind of like their joke. The next day I published like this is where they ate like give props to Teresa and Mario. That's so messed up. They were really really hurt by that. Yeah. Didn't like that. Yeah. I think the framing of the episode was very curious what the motivation to gatekeep it was.

1:02:42But yeah. I don't know. I don't know. But I did dine there. And that was very special. Your favorite city to visit for food? Oh, let's say Bangkok. Yeah. It tastes good. It tastes good. When you're craving fast food, where are you going? Jollibee. Oh, sick. Right by the Vatican. It's amazing. Really? Yeah. That's so good. Yeah, I'll even hit it after work. After work, after a day of guiding. After a pizza tour. Yeah, you're just like, I need some Jollibee. Correct. I need some spaghetti. Last one, your favorite sandwich? My favorite sandwich is, I'm going to count the chicken cacciatore trapezzino as a sandwich.

1:03:17Is that fair? Fair. We can call it a... Okay. Well, in our book, it's not. Okay. Then I'll say the number one at Mordier Bay, which is braised veal breast that's simmered until it falls apart, served with chicory, and then a very healthy dose of salt from a shaker that hasn't been cleaned in a decade. What's the bridge choice? It's a ciabatta. Yeah, it's just ciabatta. There's only one bread choice, a deliberately insipid bun. It's perfect. Perfect. Katie Parler, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you.

1:03:54This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.