today we're in Rome, Italy we're gonna be zipping all around town to show you some of
the best food this city has to offer
Roman food culture is all about bold
flavours, fresh ingredients cooked simply and a passion for nose-to-tail
eating this is our first video from Rome and we're here to hunt down the best
Italian street food watch out for Rome's most popular street food, hands down some
of the best pizza in Rome and a whole lot more, in this three-part series we'll
show you Rome's tastiest food from local favourites to heritage restaurants you
don't want to miss this series get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas
and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate, we hope you're hungry
let's eat!
this video is going to be all about street food here in Rome but not just
any street food we're going to be showing you the best places to get the
best street food so we're going to be going all over town to get the ultimate
dishes at the ultimate restaurants so we're not rocking up to any old place we're going
to the best places
the food in Italy is really regional and we can't wait to
show you Roman cuisine, Roman cuisine is known for using seasonal ingredients
cooked simply, they love nose-to-tail eating and the flavours are really bold and
punchy we're at our first stop and we're here for the king of Roman street food
and that is suppli which is a deep fried rice ball
we've got our bag of suppli we've come to a little park to enjoy it and ohhhh the
smell of deep-fried food so this is the suppli it is quite weighty so it's
made up of risotto rice which is cooked with ragu which is a meat sauce
with a tomato base and then it has got a surprise in the middle a big ball of
mozzarella so let's just break this open it's crumbed
and then deep-fried look at that mozzarella and that gooey ragu okay
oh my gosh it's never ending
oh my lord
let's break it off
oh my gosh that mozzarella is so gooey, stretchy and in fact the suppli
is often called the suppli al telefono because the string of mozzarella
resembles the old-fashioned telephone cord and this is such a good suppli
this place is known for doing really good suppli it's very popular with the
locals and I can see why the ragu has got a beautiful tangy tomato flavour
there's tiny bits of meat in there and the rice
it's so creamy the inside is really gooey and soft
and then you've got that crunch of the
breadcrumbs so coated in egg and breadcrumbs then deep-fried so it's
really crunchy
what a snack
this would not be a street food tour of Rome without pizza so the next stop is
for probably what is the most popular pizza here in Rome and that's pizza
bianca, bianca means white and so this is an incredibly plain pizza but you've
got to check out how good this is
that was an absolutely gorgeous shop it's a
family-run business it's got a beautiful traditional feel about it now this pizza
you will find all over Rome I mean every third shop seems to sell it but we went
to that particular shop because it's a family-run business and because it's
meant to do an incredible version and look at that so when I said it's a
plain pizza I meant it's a plain pizza so we got the
scrocchiarella style which is the crispy bit and all it is is a plain pizza
base with olive oil and sea salt so really really simple
Oh oh that olive oil you can see it all on top it's so shiny it's so tangy
the bread and it's got a nice chewiness to it
it's basically a quite fat version of the best pizza base you've ever had and
it doesn't need any more that olive oil and the salt on top it's the perfect
combination
oh the chew so good and the olive oil you can really taste it and
little bursts of salt as you hit the hit the rock salt incredible and this is
super common you see people munching on these all the time we had it for
breakfast actually we went to our local market got a slice had it with an
espresso for breakfast look at that look how crispy it is on the bottom so it's
nice and soft and chewy on top super crispy on the bottom
a really neat feature of the streets of Rome are these water fountains they're
called nasone and they're all part of the ancient Roman water supply network
and you can just fill your bottle up with super fresh cold water and these
are everywhere it's a really handy way to keep hydrated because now we've got a
big bus ride to go a long way to the other side of the city for our next stop
we're ramping up our pizza game so in Rome you can get two kinds of pizza you
can get tonda which is like a whole round pizza or you can get pizza al
taglio which is pizza by the slice and that's what we've come to our next stop
for now all the research points to this shop as being one of the best places to
get pizza by the slice in the whole city
there are so many delicious types of pizza to choose from it's really hard to
make a choice now with pizza al taglio what they do is you buy it by weight so
you just indicate how big of a slice you like they weigh it and then that's how you pay for it
this pizza looks crazy good let me talk you through what we ordered so this one here has got
prosciutto crudo which is thinly sliced uncooked ham there's some blobs of
mozzarella on there I think some balsamic vinegar hiding under that
arugula or the rocket and then we asked for her favorite pizza her
recommendation and we got given this pizza here and this is fesa di
manzo which I believe is actually beef and then there's some more mozzarella there's
pecorino the cheese which is sprinkled over the top there then some rocket as
well and then it was garnished with a slice of orange
let's give this prosciutto
one a taste I'm gonna get this nice juicy middle bit here okay
oh my word
oh my goodness that is so good oh
the prosciutto
is very very intense quite
salty and almost has got a sweetness to it the balsamic's quite
tangy that mozzarella is super super creamy but the crust or the pizza in fact
the pizza dough is incredible
so this place is famous for having popularised teglia Romana so that's
the practice of fermenting the dough for a really long time so that when it cooks
it rises in the pan but it also has a really crispy bottom and the bottom is
super crispy and crunchy I've gotta go for another bite
oh man
it's that balsamic which is adding that sweetness oh man it is amazing
I can't get over how crispy and crunchy and full of flavour that base has
this one's a lot more subtle it's still really vibrant very flavoursome but it's
more subtle than the prosciutto one because the prosciutto was so intense
this meat, so cured beef very light the punchiness comes from the
Pecorino Romano so in Rome the use of pecorino is everywhere like in a lot of
the pasta dishes, on top of a lot of the pizzas and it's a really sharp
pungent hard sheep's milk cheese and it is beautiful
I can really taste the rocket too it's very peppery it sort of balances it
out so it's got a pepperiness it's a little bit sort of refreshing
I suppose in contrast to that meat but that base it's awesome it's so chewy
it would not be a street food tour of Rome without gelato so that's what we're
doing next however don't skip forward cause you think ohhh boring gelato I've
seen it before yep we've all seen it before in Rome but
they're not all made equal you've really got to find the good stuff and that's
what we've done we've traveled back all the way across town for an incredible
gelato spot we ate here during our research for the series it's incredible
let's go grab some
I'll tell you why some of these places stand out soon but I've gotta get in and
eat this before it starts melting everywhere it's about 30 degrees here
today centigrade so I've got dark chocolate orange here with big bits of
candied I think orange in there and this one in the middle is a sorbet and that
is apple and mint just to really freshen things up but let's go dark
chocolate orange
Wow
oh it's so bitter
oh that is full of
flavour and the orange flavour is very strong I love that orange chocolate
combination and that absolutely nails it
a big bit of that orange in that mouthful it is ridiculously creamy that
gelato unreal, apple and mint
Wow
it's very very light in texture so it's almost like a slushie a slushie
style drink the apple and mint flavour are not too crazy they're they're quite
subtle so it's just a nice freshness
oh man it's hot today ohh that's absolutely beautiful just a really fresh apple
flavour and then that that mint is just just coming through so it's not actually
I thought it would be very full of mint and bursting with mint flavour it's not
too much it's nice and subtle so why come to particular shops to get
gelato like we spoke about before because there's a big difference between
each different shop is why so some shops they use powders and premix stuff
other shops like this one they do it all they get fresh fruit they peel it they
put that into the sorbet they use nuts that they've roasted they do all the
prep themselves so it's incredibly fresh incredibly natural tasting whereas other
places can be full of chemicals and colorings like you might get a mint
gelato and it looks like Kermit the Frog you don't want that you want it to be
subtle and then bursting with natural flavour so definitely find an incredible
fresh natural gelato shop like this one it's unreal
our next snack is from a bit of a Roman institution it's a place called Filetti di
Baccala and they serve one thing and one thing only and that's deep fried
pieces of salt cod
if you're ordering take away like us you just walk straight through the restaurant
right to the back and put your order in the kitchen
I've got my golden piece of salt cod in front of me so this place behind me is a
bit of an institution it's been around since the 1950s and
this is literally all they sell and I think you can get a salad if you're
eating in but most Romans just head up the back and grab a piece of salt cod to
take away so let's taste this thing
Wow the batter is so crispy and crunchy I
think he was twice frying it because it is so so crispy that batter I didn't get
much of the fish that time so I'm just gonna maybe break into it a bit
look at that salt cod and get more of that fish
it's beautiful the flesh is really moist and that
beautiful salty flavour so with salt cod what they do is they preserve the
fish after salting by drying it and then in order to make it ready to eat what they
do is they have to rehydrate it and remove most of the salt so they soak it
in cold water for one to three days and change that water two or three times a
day to get most of the salt out but the saltiness or a lot of the saltiness
still is retained in that fish and it is just such a unique flavour this has
been such a great day of eating Roman street food