Sunday 23 October 2011

Today I got up and took a morning walk along the Tiber. Roma in autumn is fantastic.  The weather is warm, and it’s been mostly sunny so far.  The sycamores along the Tiber are barely starting to change from green to yellow, and the palms and umbrella pines are always green. There are flowers still blooming everywhere: roses and geraniums, and some locals swear to me that the azaleas often bloom a second time in October. 

I skipped breakfast because I had plans for lunch: Sunday dinner at Tony’s for their famous bistecca grande, an enormous 2-kilo (4 ½ pound!) t-bone steak.  I like Sunday dinner in Rome; it’s the one time that people gather for a big meal during daylight. Most Italians eat dinner late: 9 or 10 pm, or even later. But on Sundays families and friends gather, often at restaurants, for a midday meal.  I arrived at Tony’s around 1 pm and was greeted with the usual double-cheek kiss and given a table outside, where I could watch the activity on the street. The street is narrow, cobbled and winding, and to see it you would never guess that it’s actually on a bus route.  Cars aren’t allowed except for police and taxis, but the #125 bus comes by every 20 minutes or so. Sometimes the fit is so tight that diners have to move their tables to let the bus pass!  It’s funny to see the reaction of tourists eating at an outdoor trattoria on what looks like an alley in a little Mediterranean village when they suddenly see the #125 come running past.  Admittedly it’s not a big bus, but still.

It would be heresy to eat a steak without an appetizer, so I order antipasto di mare: marinated clams, mussels, squid, octopus, celery, and carrots in oil.  I love it when I get extra tentacles with my cephalopods!  This would have been enough for lunch, but it was only the beginning.  My ginormous steak arrived as I had ordered it: molto crudo, sanguinissimo (extra rare, very bloody).  I have had this several times before, and I’m always amazed at the size of the thing when they finally bring it to the table. It looks like a mastodon steak from the Flintstones.  I ate half and took half home with me.

Two American students, young women studying in Germany and visiting Rome for a few days were sitting at the next table.  I talked to them for a while and we compared favorite gelato flavors (my current favorite is zabaglione, flavored with sweet wine and egg yolks).  They had arrived on the day of the huge storm and told me that the rain was so hard that it soaked through their suitcases and drenched their clothes inside.  At my urging they ordered a giant t-bone to share between them.  As they were eating it, one of the students remarked, “I guess I’m not much of a vegetarian.” This struck me as pretty amusing, considering that she was carving up a huge piece of cow as she said it.

Tony would not let me leave Sunday dinner without dessert, so I had panna cotta (baked custard) with chocolate sauce.  After all of this food I needed to digest, so I walked to nearby Piazza Trilussa where I had stayed during my sabbatical a few years ago, across the footbridge Ponte Sisto, and into the centro storico.  There was an afternoon recital at one of the churches, a very good string quartet.  They played works by Beethoven and Bartok, both of whom I like very much.  Live music is everywhere in Roma, and most of it is good, so I like to take advantage of it when I can.  Afterward I walked back across the Tiber to Trastevere, made some research notes, and went to bed.