My husband Matt B. is half Italian, and he visited Italy with his dad in 1997, when he (Matt B.)…read morewas fourteen. His father had managed to get in touch with some distant family, some of whom shared their unusual last name. They all met up, and my father-in-law kept in frequent contact with some of the relatives in his generation.
Last month, Matt and I went to Rome, where most of the clan lives--Accumoli, the tiny village they came from, was destroyed by an earthquake in 2016, bringing the elders down to the city. It was my first time in Italy, and Matt's first time in almost thirty years, and we took the opportunity to get together with his Italian family.
We met up at Porto Fluviale, a fun, casual trattoria and pizzeria in Testaccio, an easy jaunt on the subway away from central Rome. Matt's relatives were coming from Trastevere and Garbatella and various other parts of the city, and I'm assuming this place worked as a central meeting point. It was far enough away from the tourist zone that most of the people there seemed to be Italian. I'm including our ethnically Asian waiter in this group. He was so thoroughly Italian he didn't even throw me a nod.
The atmosphere was relaxed and convivial. We were a big party and took over a long row of connected tables. Most of us sat down at 7:30, when we had a reservation, but one of Matt's nth cousins came later with two of his children, one of them almost the same age as Matt the last time any of these relatives saw him. The set-up was ideal for a large, amorphous, maybe-we're-eight-people-maybe-we're-twelve kind of group. Service was great. We were well taken care of, and got one of our servers to take a few commemorative pictures.
We drank red wine and enjoyed a wonderful, cozy Roman dinner. I wasn't what you might call hungry after a large lunch and afternoon gelato, but I liked everything that was ordered for the table. There was a great spread of deep-fried appetizers, and I was happy to try suppli alla romana, a tasty Roman fritter I otherwise didn't have on this trip. The fiori di zucca con alici were great, battered and fried stuffed squash blossoms, as was the filetto di baccalà, or salt cod fritters. And I appreciated the savory, salty olive all'ascolana, a dish I'd never seen before, olives stuffed with meat and fried crispy and golden. I also had some Roman-style Margherita pizza, which was satisfying with a thin, crackery crust. Finally, there was the tiramisu, lush and delicious.
I loved taking part in this giant Italian family dinner, which only ended some time after Matt's elderly Uncle Giovanni sneaked off to pay the check. Porto Fluviale was a lovely venue for a very special night.
