Italy Diaries: Eat like a Roman
Pizza, paninis, and pigeons in Trastevere and Testaccio
I was enjoying my pizza, but now an Italian woman is shouting at me. “To go!” she screams, “to go!” She is banging on a wooden board as she does so. I realise my error. I’m sat at one of her tables, sprawled out with my box of pizza. My box of pizza that I had said was to go.
The woman slaps her board again and my girlfriend and I scarper with the box. We had (briefly) been sat outside Pizzeria La Boccaccia. It sits on a narrow cobbled street in Trastevere, which isn’t difficult, because all of the streets in Trastevere are narrow and cobbled. It’s Rome’s most picturesque area, and Pizzeria La Boccaccia has some of its most perfect pizza.
Inside you are greeted with a large glass container running the length of the room, filled with pizza. What kind would you like? They almost certainly have it.
There’s pizza piled with Parma ham, mozzarella, sausage, potato. Potato? Yes, potato. Italy may decry the Hawaiian pizza, pineapple as something that should never, under any circumstances, be anywhere near a piece of dough, but potato is fair game. The Romans know what they’re doing, it’s fantastic.
The staff fill a box with as much pizza as you like, slicing off chunks and weighing it. That’s why I was so smug sat outside with my spoils. I hadn’t just pointed at the menu and hoped, I had managed to get three different kinds of pizza, pay for them, and hadn’t pissed anyone off.
That didn’t last long.
We sit and eat the pizza on the steps of the Fontana del Ponte Sisto which looks out onto the river Tiber. Then it’s time to move on. To Testaccio.
Trastevere is all charm and beauty. It has gorgeous architecture, the sun turns the buildings golden in the evenings. Groups of tourists mingle on the streets and the bars and restaurants are full. Cars are rare and life is idyllic.
Testaccio is not all of these things. Its streets aren’t cobbled and full of contented tourists and their gelato. It’s traditional, gritty, working-class. It’s the sort of place the travel guides might call eclectic, up-and-coming, down-to-earth. This usually means shithole.
Not here. It’s hard to be in a shithole when you’re in Italy. Everything is too pretty, the buildings too beautiful.
Though, actually, the Mercato di Testaccio isn’t gorgeous.
That’s because it’s for Romans, really, the people who actually live here. Its inside is utilitarian, workaday. Its stalls can look cheap and, so far, resistant to the gentrifying mob at its doorstep.
But the Mercato also has some of the best food in Rome, and we’re here for one thing: the paninis of Mordi e Vai. You might not think you want to eat hot meat and lots of bread in the heat of Rome, but you’re wrong. Skip these and you’re skipping the best sandwich in the city.
Expect beef, tripe, sausage, and more, covered with a rich sauce, often some cheese, and of course, this is all inside soft and crispy bread. I eat mine and immediately want another. It doesn’t matter that I’m sat on an ungainly, uncomfy stool, that a team of young beggars pester all who make eye contact, and that there are many, many pigeons, I could sit in this market and eat sandwiches all day.
Mordi e Vai literally means “bite and go,” though if you try to the only thing that will be going will be the sauce down your trousers.
Don’t go, stick around long enough to eat another one. There are other stalls to check out, too. Unless an angry Italian woman shouts at you.
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Bookmarked Mordi & Vai. I looove paninis. I dunno how I missed them when I was last in Rome, but I shall no doubt remedy that soon.
Truly one of the best sandwiches in Rome!