- Trattoria Da Cesare is known for its real, authentic,
delicious, home-style Roman cooking.
We're gonna have some dishes that you may have heard of:
cacio e pepe, pasta carbonara, and then trippa,
which is a Roman specialty that's the stomach of
the cow, which is stewed and made
nice and tender and delicious.
(speaking in Italian)
- [Lucas] Cacio e pepe,
pasta carbonara,
and then some of the trippa, some of the cow stomach.
- [Katie] Exactly, yeah.
- [Lucas] So, in your cookbook, Tasting Rome,
you go through a lot of the
Roman culinary traditions in history.
What are some of the basics of Roman cuisine,
and what are the distinctive aspects of Roman food?
- Roman cuisine, or the cucina Romana, is defined by
a series of ingredients that are typical of the city,
a series of cooking techniques, and a litany of recipes.
So, you think, like, pecorino and lamb,
like sheep-type things. - Sheepy, yeah.
- Organs, wild things, misticanza cicorie,
weeds that grow spontaneously, artichokes.
And then the pasta dishes that have emerged
in the 20th century: carbonara, cacio e pepe,
those now define the cuisine as well.
This is a pretty juicy cacio e pepe;
some of them are super dry and tight.
In this one I wanna incorporate some of that
liquidy sauce at the bottom. - Nice.
- He also put a lot of grated pecorino on top of it,
so I wanna get that in the mix, too.
- Which I love. - Comin' through.
- Thank you, grazie. - Prego.
- This is super good, the fresh black pepper
comes through so clearly and so sharply.
Tell me what else is in this cacio e pepe?
- [Katie] Pasta, black pepper, pecorino Romano, and water.
- [ Host] Is cacio e pepe an old dish?
- The sort of anecdotal evidence that we have for it
is that it was a sort of like mac and cheese
of the early 20th century, when taverns would
have to keep their diners sober, wanna keep them drinking.
Now it's fully incorporated and adopted onto trattoria menus
and it's become one of the really iconic dishes of the city.
And it's about a hundred years old by most accounts.
Hook me up with some of that carbonara, man.
Yes, thank you, that's perfect.
Oh, look at that guanciale.
- It looks good, I'm gonna eat it.
- I'm going for the cacio.
Mm. - Oh, man.
That's some good-ass carbonara.
For all of the ostensible heaviness,
the egg, the pork, the cheese,
it doesn't feel like it's weighing you down.
- Well, that's one thing about Roman food
that a lot of visitors learn when they come here.
In Rome we judge food based on how digestible it is,
how light it feels, even if its ingredients
are theoretically super fatty.
- Let's have a little bite of this tripe I like.
- Yeah. - So this is cow stomach.
Okay, nice, grounded, offal flavor.
- Mm-hm. - The mint is nice.
- What you get is a lot of bright acidity
from the tomato sauce that's sort of
mellowed with the pecorino, so good.
Rome for millennia was a place where many peasants
had to eat, and they ate every part of every animal.
So that custom still survives today.
We don't eat everything to the same extent that we used to.
If I go to my butcher, I don't have to pay
for sheep's heads and brains, they just give them away,
there's not- - Oh, really? Okay.
- demand. But there are definitely
poor cuts and organs that are certainly part of
home cooking and definitely restaurant cooking,
and tripe is one of them.
What Rome is, is a city that brands itself as authentic,
and indigenous, but it is the product
of this wonderful contamination of the foods
and techniques and ingredients of shepherds from Abruzzo
and Sardenia, and laborers
from Campagna and Sicily and Calabria.
There's no reason that Rome should be trapped
in a peasant culture in an-
- Time capsule. - impoverished place.
It's a city that evolves just like any other.
- My understanding is that these pasta dishes,
while they look fabulous, and they taste amazing,
they're affordable, they're for the people.
- Totally. - It's not something that's
out of reach for your average citizen.
- No, I mean in New York or Los Angeles you would pay
sometimes $30 for a cacio e pepe,
and it's unusual to find cacio e pepe for more than
10 or 12 euros, so uber affordable, especially
for the quantity of pasta and the quality of ingredients.
- The more affordable, approachable dishes
of a given place give you better insight into a city,
and into the people, and into the culture,
than its fine dining. - Sure, oh yeah.
- And I maintain that, and I think that
that's especially true in Italy.
- I concur, and what's really special about this place
in particular is that they're using top-notch
ingredients, everything is really thoughtful,
the chef, Leonardo, is so committed to making comfort food,
and he's unpretentious, but he also,
like, he's serving you things that are super affordable,
but with linens on the table.
The service is attentive,
and the wine list is insanely cheap.
With all of these sort of subtle service considerations
that would be absent in a more rustic trattoria.
- Katie Parla: author, tour-giver-
- Yeah. - Rome-dweller-
- Rome-dweller, yeah.
- Website-haver. - Yeah.
- KatieParla.com. Thank you for everything.
- It was a delight, oh my god.
- This is such a delicious meal.
- Thanks for coming to Rome. - Yeah.
- Wanna drink more wine? - Yeah, more wine.
I really hope you enjoyed this episode
of Dining on a Dime from Trattoria da Cesare, in the-
- Gianicolense. - Gianicolense neighborhood.
Of Rome. If you'd like to watch more, please click here.
Just be paused. (laughs)