Claudia Romeo: Hello from Rome!
And today we're going to try the trapizzino,
which is a local street food.
And it is something of a hybrid,
in between a pizza and a sandwich,
but then the toppings are none of
the actual toppings of either a pizza or a sandwich.
In fact, the toppings that we can find in here
are, like, oxtail, or tripe,
and they're really deep into the roots of Roman cuisine.
So, we're gonna step inside to see
how the trapizzini are made and what goes into them.
The word trapizzino is a combination
of the Italian words tramezzino (sandwich) and pizza.
It was invented by Roman pizza chef
Stefano Callegari in 2008.
Eleven years later, the company has expanded,
and now has five locations in Rome,
seven in the rest of Italy, and one in New York.
We visited Trapizzino in Piazza Trilussa,
in Rome's neighborhood of Trastevere,
one of the most vibrant parts of the city.
Claudia: The restaurant serves 30 different types
of trapizzino.
Here, you can find great Roman classics
like chicken cacciatore,
codfish and chickpeas,
but also more traditional Italian recipes
like meatballs in tomato sauce and eggplant parmigiana.
Across all locations,
they serve over 5,000 trapizzini a day.
Claudia: Some fillings, like the oxtail,
take almost eight hours to make.
The same can be said about the pizza bread.
So, I'm gonna give this one a try.
This one is the chicken cacciatore.
I'm actually really, really curious about this one
because I'm not from Rome, but I've had this sort of dish
a few times in my life.
And I've always had it, like, served on an actual plate,
and I ate it with, like, knives and fork.
So to have it, like, in here,
in this, like, nice little triangular sandwich,
is very unusual for me.
And yeah, I'm just, like, curious to see
how this tastes like and how it compares.
It has that same sort of, like, familiar taste
of the dish that I'm used to.
Like, it's still very juicy and it's actually maybe better,
because the juice, it's all here, you know.
It's all over in this, like, little bread pocket.
If you have this on a plate with a knife and a fork,
you're just gonna have the juice, like,
dripping at the bottom,
but you won't actually get it at the top.
Like, you know, the top of the chicken.
But in here, you kind of get the best of both worlds.
So it's definitely worth it.
Look at the size of this meatball.
It's, like, almost the same as the pizza bread.
But we're gonna try, OK.
I can't guarantee anything.
So flavorsome.
The meat itself is fantastic.
Wow, it's amazing how much the tomato sauce
has gone deep into the little pockets here of the bread.
Oh, saved by, like, two centimeters.
But that was good.
But yeah.
This sauce, it's, like, all in with the bread.
The bread is so warm and, like, crunchy on the outside
and very, very soft on the inside.
The tomato sauce sort of, like, blankets it perfectly.
It's 30 degrees outside, so it's, like, pretty warm as well.
But to have something like this that's warm in itself,
it really doesn't feel wrong at all.
Man: Ciao. Claudia: Ciao.