Welcome to Taking the Temperature, in which Eater checks the vital signs of various food scenes to find out what's exciting and what's DOA. Today: Pizza in Rome.
[Photo: La Gatta Mangiona]
When the subject of Italy and its pizza comes up, your mind likely immediately shifts to Naples, Da Michele, and tradition. But in the last few years, exciting things have been happening in Rome, making the city a pizza capital in its own right. It's thanks to a simple formula: an emphasis on quality ingredients, risky toppings, and creating a pleasant sit-down dining environment with fine booze to go along with your pie. In the following interview, local food writer and historian, blogger, and dining app editor Katie Parla talks about how pizza has evolved in her adopted city and shares the key spots in the movement.
How unremarkable did pizza used to be in Rome?
Pizza in Rome as a genre is a postwar thing. You had just a lot of small places that would do pizza in a wood-burning oven, some fried stuff, beans and oil or beans and onions, and then the crispy pie that wasn't particularly special or made with good ingredients. Roman pizza was always cheap.
What changed that?
Well, a few years ago Giancarlo Casa opened La Gatta Mangiona, which was then followed by Pizzarium by Gabriele Bonci. As a result, people in Rome began to think of pizza as a gourmet product, one worth investing in and pairing with good wine and beer.
Truffles, they are so fancy and expensive that 60 Minutes dedicated one fifth of their show this weekend to exploring the topic. Also: "Truffles are under siege"! Scarcity has led to them "being trafficked like drugs, stolen by thugs, and threatened by inferior imports from China." 60 Minutes is Dr. Seuss now.
Anyway, because of global warming, truffle harvesting is way, way down, and this has led to a seedy truffle trafficking underground that steals from restaurants, sells truffles on the black market, and even kidnaps truffle hunting dogs. That's not nearly as bad as the Chinese truffles that somehow get slipped in among Italian and French harvest "like cutting flour into cocaine." And watch out: American law doesn't require the labeling of distinct varieties of truffles, so who even knows what crap they're selling here. Educate yourself, below:
[Photo: Travel Channel]
In last night's episode of The Layover host/loveable curmudgeon/sunglasses connoisseur Anthony Bourdain went to Rome, where he challenged a pizzaiolo to make a delicious Hawaiian pizza and also got mistaken for Gordon Ramsay. Below, Bourdain's official stance on hipsters, health food, tourists, and all kinds of poop talk. On to the Quotable Bourdain — feel free to add your picks in the comments.
Inside Metamorfosi [Photo: Restaurant website]
Today, for the first time, Eater heads to Rome, Italy and focuses on six restaurants that have been garnering serious buzz. For this particular edition, local food writer, blogger, and dining app editor Katie Parla has made the selections and shared her thoughts on them. Among the group are a stellar boutique pizzeria (Tonda), a fashionable "gastro-bistro" by the Colosseum (Caffè Propaganda), a hotel restaurant with a badass carbonara (Pipero al Rex), and a cheese shop to end all arguments (Beppe e I Suoi Formaggi)
Here now, the Eater Heat Map to Rome.
Time for another Michelin announcement: this time it's Italian restaurants getting stars bestowed upon them. The big news is Massimo Bottura's Modena restaurant Osteria Francescana received its third star, and was the only new three-star restaurant in Italy this year. There are now seven Italian restaurants that can boast three stars.
Four restaurants — Principe Cerami in Taormina, L’Olivo in Capri, Quattro Passi in Massalubrense, and Oliver Glowig in Rome — got bumped up to two stars, while a whopping 33 restaurants received their first star. Below, the full list of restaurants receiving new stars this year.
What do you get when you pair one of the world's greatest chefs, some absurdly tasteful filmmaking, and the music of Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes, and Bob Dylan? Il Ritorno, the Italian chef Massimo Bottura's paean to Emilia-Romagna and its culinary heritage. The short film, which René Redzepi presented in Bottura's absence at MAD FoodCamp, juxtaposes discussions of traditional regional dishes with their updated interpretations at his Milan restaurant Osteria Francescana (rated #4 in the world).
In addition to celebrating the people and places inextricably linked to a preparation like "coppa di testa," the film seems to hammer home the point many modernist chefs have been trying to make of late: all food, no matter how progressive, must have a cultural anchor of some kind. As Bottura himself noted in an email, "The Bob Dylan song, 'Girl From The North Country,' is very important...the distillation of memory, it's about looking back not in a nostalgic way but to get the best and bring it into the future."
Anthony Bourdain relaxes on the beach in Cetara. [Photo: Travel Channel]
Yesterday's episode of No Reservations found Anthony Bourdain in Naples, Italy, where he followed the red sauce trail, trying to find the Italian source of American gravy. He also crashed a wedding with his wife and drove a laughably tiny car "decorated with pink trim." Here now, on to the Quotable Bourdain — feel free to add your picks in the comments below.
1) On Italian-American food: "Meanwhile, we Americans got the idea that there were in fact many other areas of Italy, somewhere where they didn't use red sauce, and pasta was supposed to be eaten al dente. In no time at all, we were feeling bad about the stuff we'd grown up eating, and we turned our backs on our first tastes of Italy, like a childhood friend who had suddenly embarrassed us to be around."
[Source photo: jonrawlinson/Flickr]
The next season of Jersey Shore, which begins filming next month in Florence, Italy, may be significantly more sober than previous seasons: the mayor of Florence, with a contract, has forbidden the cast from being filmed drinking in public (see the translation).
In addition, there's a requirement that the show should "Bring out the lifestyle of the Italians (not the Americans in Italy), our culture and good food." It seems Italians are not too happy about the show and its loose affiliation with their culture? We can't imagine why.
Anyway, is this the end of the Jersey Shore as we know it? Or is MTV just heading to Italy to spend a lot of time filming the cast drinking in an apartment? Or, is it going to be like an actual real, travel show? Here's the full set of rules, via wonky Google Translate:
Over on Reddit, a former Olive Garden Manager is answering questions about the company's Tuscan cooking school. It's real! Sort of? Actually, the chain restaurant sends a bunch of managers to a hotel during the off-season, and they site-see and eat and drink a whole bunch and learn a little bit about Italian food. At least it's all paid for by Olive Garden? Below, all your questions about Olive Garden's Culinary Institute of Tuscany, answered.
A scene from Wall-E.
Researchers who studied cholesterol, blood pressure, and body mass index data from 1980 to 2008 have discovered that pretty much everyone on the planet is overweight, and we're only getting fatter. Calling the phenomenon a "tsunami of obesity," the study showed that 9.8% of men and 13.8% of women worldwide were obese in 2008, as opposed to 4.8% of men and 7.9% of women in 1980.
Welcome to Craft Course, our column on the art of craft beer. Every week Christian DeBenedetti will take a look at interesting beer styles, brewmasters and their breweries, and more from high to low, East to West, and around the world.
Cafe Open Baladin, Rome [Photo: Global Post]
Today the craft beer scene is thriving in some very surprising places—even Italy. A couple of weeks ago we touched on Japan's hearty embrace of the small artisan brewery approach, with which West Coast IPA's and other beery innovations continue to open new eyes and tastebuds accustomed only to standard fizzy lagers. Countries that once had just a few national brands of industrial, pale lager are now awash with choices of idiosyncratic beers in a swath of styles, both homegrown and increasingly imported from the US. Stone Brewing Co., of San Diego, is even considering opening an American craft-style brewery in Europe, a development some Europeans must still find wildly implausible.
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Gualtiero Marchesi — considered in some quarters to be the founder of modern Italian cuisine (and the first chef in Italy to get three Michelin stars) — has entered into an unlikely partnership: 
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