I've been *yelping* my way across Italy, so I guess I should give back by letting you know about a standout experience. Let me preface this by saying that I was trying to go to very "local" places - not some restaurant by the Fountain of Trevi, if you know what I mean. My strategy for seeing Rome was to go to the more offbeat neighborhoods and try to eat like someone who lives there. I'd take public transportation somewhere (in this case I was on my way to the Pigneto neighborhood - the "Brooklyn of Rome) and if I had to change trains / busses / trams, I'd quickly Yelp to see if anything looked interesting. Alchimia was the top rated restaurant in the area I found myself in, so I decided to give it a try.
It's not super traditional. It's much, much smarter than that. It's a *take* on traditional Italian food, but its passport has also been stamped in South America and Japan. The combinations sound much trickier than they taste, so don't freak out about the weirdness factor! Andres, the owner, patiently explained everything on the menu to me. That is, he HAD been explaining everything when I stopped him at his version of a carbonara, which had shrimp instead of pork, and a citrus surprise. I was like, "I WANT THAT!" He said, "ok - but we also have a linguini with red tuna teriyaki. I was like "I WANT THAT TOO!" So he made me 2 half portions of both.
I'm still dreaming of them. They were revelatory. The lemon mixed with the cheese of the first one was fresh and alive. For the second one, the teriyaki gave the linguini another dimension that I never even knew about. Also, he makes his own focaccia, which looked perfectly ordinary but TASTED like a miracle. I don't usually eat bread without butter or olive oil or something else to put on it. But this focaccia was excellent all by itself. I wanted to slurp up the remaining sauce with it, but there was no sauce remaining when I was done with the pasta. He makes it with exactly the perfect amount. In fact, "precise" is a good way to describe the food. The balance is . I'm so, so glad I had to change busses where I did. As I said, I've been eating my way across the country for more than a week so far and, aside from dinner at my Italian friend's house, this was the best food I've had the whole time. Thank you Andres!!! read more