Convivial Dining and the Appian Way...

First the food. Last night we had a white-tablecloth fine eatin' experience at Il Convivio Troiani.

First, the wine we chose was excellent. Ira picked an Ischian red because of a good summer he spent on that island decades ago, and it was a triumph of nostalgia, a 2000 Ischian rosso Casa d'Ambra, dedicato a Mario d'Ambra. Deep without being too strong for the fish and fowl we were to eat, it was tasty from beginning to end.

The waiter gave us an amuse-bouche of deep-fried mullet and artichokes, spicy and subtle at the same time, just a tiny portion to get us started. We then both ordered the same appetizer, mozzarella cheese layered with fried zucchini flowers. It was on a bed of anchovy paste, which really set off the blandness of the cheese. I'm going to add anchovies to the Caprese salad next and see if that works. Oh, and they gave us a sweet red-pepper sorbetto after that dish to reinvigorate the palate. It worked! I loved the slight hint of hotness and the slightly bolder but still light sweetness of the dish.

For our first real course, I had the mezze pasta, which is like a short, thick tube. The filling was quail and chicken and porcini mushrooms and it just got richer. The taste seemed to develop the more that I ate.

We split the last dish, a partridge cooked in citron sauce and then placed over a red wine sauce. It was the red wine sauce that added a delicious complexity to the game bird, but once again, the wild fowl was tasty. So far this trip I've eaten pigeon and guinea fowl, now partridge. A good year for the hunters.

OK, just quickly on to the art and culture. The picture you see at the top is of the Appian Way. We had a driver take us out there and the effect of someone's leaf fire was outstanding. You can still see the ruts in the ancient cobbles. The other photo was taken at night, of the Pantheon--certainly my favorite building in Rome.

In the morning we'd visited the Galleria Borghese, which is stuffed with statues from Bernini and a legendary Canova. You notice so many details you can't get from a picture when you can circle around a statue!

I've talked enough and I haven't even mentioned Rosetta, another fine meal that is literally two minutes from our hotel. The waiters were a bit too frenetic but the seafood is top notch. We ordered the special seafood appetizer, which is actually about 8 separate dishes. I'll leave it to your imagination, but imagine plate after plate of tender, succulent, often raw seafood, each tastier than the last. By the time we got to the main meal, it was really an afterthought, though I did get the scallops covered in bottarga. Delicioso!