Roman vittles

We spent our honeymoon in Rome; ten days in a tiny but cozy apartment that was less than a block from a metro station. It had everything we needed, including TV (to watch Italian police dramas, which are so filled with plot cliches that you don't need to understand the dialogue to follow them), a kitchen with a two burner stove (on which I made pasta every night), and a tiny washing machine (which held no more than four shirts and a pair of pants OR two towels).

Andrew and I agreed that we really enjoyed having an apartment. It was wonderful to sleep in and not worry about people needing to come in and clean, and having a kitchen so that we could eat one or two meals at home saved us enough money that we could splurge a bit on the third meal. Generally we had a big, two or three course meal at lunch, and then salad and pasta for dinner at home.
The quality of the food at restaurants varied tremendously. Our worst meal cost us about $60, and included stuffed squash blossoms (which I had always wanted to try) which were most assuredly vegetarian, except that the oil they were fried in was so impregnated with a fishy flavor that it was unpleasantly akin to eating calamari. The second worst involved some pucker-worthy wine that I'm desperately trying to forget.

Eventually we learned that there was a marked difference between a $50 meal for two and a $70 meal for two, and that it really was important to trust the guide book. This led us to our best meal, which was also our last. (It was also the only one that featured Neapolitan instead of Roman food, but I have too few data points to make any firm conclusions regarding the two.) We shared a bottle of prosecco (sparkling wine), and I had incredible homemade orecchiette (little 'ear-shaped' pasta) with pesto and a limoncello cake.
I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) that most of the food that we ate I could have made at home, and probably made better. I don't know if this is a comment about the quality of the restaurants there, a backhanded compliment to my own cooking ability, or just plain bad luck. I will say, though, that the quality of the ingredients available was outstanding. Whether we purchased at the market or the grocery store, the zucchini were small and tasty, the melons perfectly ripe, and the mozzarella creamy and perfect. To me this was evidence that Italians do care more about what they eat than we generally do here, and it gives me hope that there is good food in Italy, and that I just have to figure out where they hide it.