today we're in Rome, Italy we're gonna be
traveling all around town to show you
the best food Rome has to offer
Roman food culture is bold, delicious and
steeped in history this is our second
video from Rome and we're here to hunt
down the best Italian food watch out for
traditional Roman dishes featuring horse
and offal, modern Roman street food and
loads more in this three-part series
we'll show you some of Rome's best food
from local restaurants that are off the
beaten path to delicious street food you
don't want to miss this series
get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're
Chasing a Plate, we hope you're hungry,
let's eat!
the food in Italy is really regional and
we're so excited to share Roman cuisine
with you so Roman food is really
well-known for its
punchy flavours, they love using seasonal
ingredients and they really really love
nose to tail eating
we're starting our day of eating at Testacchio market and this place is filled
with an array of fresh produce and a lot
of ready-to-eat food as well but we are here
to hunt down something special we're here for a
famous braised meat sandwich
the most famous sandwich at this shop is
called Allesso di Scottona and it is a
braised beef sandwich I'm holding it in
my hot little hand and holy moly it
looks so good so what he did was he just
took a white roll and he sliced it in
half and then he dipped one side of the
roll in the meat juices now I can see
that the meat was braised in tomato I
think and there's celery in there and it
is just falling apart when he grabbed
that chunk of beef out of the stewing
juices it just collapsed onto the
chopping board at the prod of his knife
it was so tender and then I also asked
him to add cicoria which are braised
bitter greens there's a bit of chilli
cooked in with them so they should add a
really or cut through I suppose the
fattier meat
this shop is really famous
because the owner used to be a butcher
and he's using his old family recipes to
create some meat dishes from offal and
less popular cuts of meat I've got to
stop talking and just get eating
oh my goodness that braised beef just
melts-in-your-mouth it is incredible it is
so tender and fatty and that bun is
really chewy it's got a great texture
I want to eat this bite right here with
that fattier meat and a whole ton of that
cicoria or the bitter greens
oh my goodness
it is so delicious
the meat just explodes with juice it's
got a really subtle flavour you can taste
the vegetables it's been cooked with but
it's really really rich as well cicoria is perfect as it cuts through
the fattiness of it and that bread is
sensational
Rome is a beautiful city to travel
around we're covering quite a bit of
ground in this video on public transport
but also on foot it is stunning to walk
around almost every building is just a
picture postcard, churches everywhere,
ruins it's a stunning place but walking
around makes you hungry so we're going
for our next snack now
it's time for second breakfast
we've come to a famous bakery that is
really well known for its maritozzi
which is a cream bun
we ordered our bun from the pastry shop
next door but what you can do is have a
coffee with it so you take your bun
next door to the coffee shop and then
order an espresso and you can have your
coffee and cream bun together
this is a serious cream bun look at the
amount of cream on top so it's a plain
sort of bun a sweet bun and then just
absolutely piled with whipped cream so
very simple breakfast snack and I do
love the concept that you can go to the
bakery which is right through this wall
and then come through to this little
coffee shop order a coffee and put it
with your cream bun
oh my god, wow
look how thick that cream is
that's crazy
the cream is really really soft so it's super
super aerated
it's got a beautiful
flavour it's really nice and sweet
so the bread is sweet as well not overboard
though but I think definitely sweet enough
that the espresso will be good
perfect combo
beautiful bitter coffee cuts through the
sweetness of the bun that cream is
incredible it's so fluffy
and then the bread
itself it sort of tastes to me a bit
like a panettone it's got that same sort
of fluffiness it's really nicely
aerated just like the cream so you've got
a lot of lightness here actually it's
not as heavy as it looks
it looks like it's gonna be just too
much with that much cream
but it's not it's really light this is a
really popular breakfast snack here in
Rome we went to the place that we got it
because it's known to do one of the best
ones in Rome and the shop has been
around since 1916 so they've been at it
for a very long time
we love showing you the really
traditional stuff on this channel but we
also don't mind something modern if it's
incredibly good so this next stop that
we're making is something that's taken
Rome by storm now in a city this old
you've got to consider something which
is 10 years old
like what we're about to have modern
because things are just so old here and
places have been around so long so this
place it's been around about 10 years
it's taken Rome by storm, it's called a trapizzino
and it's a type of pizza pocket
the trapizzino is basically a pizza
pocket so it's a triangular shaped pizza
bread and they're putting fillings
inside which are really classic Roman
dishes so we ordered two we went with
the chicken cacciatora which is chicken
cooked with herbs and spices and white
wine, garlic, olive oil and whatnot and
then this here is the lingua which is a
cold dish of beef tongue and it's mixed
with a salsa verde so lots of parsley
anchovies garlic capers to give it a
really punchy kick all right I want to
start with the chicken because I've got
it in my hot little hand and it's also a
hot filling and you can see that the
pizza bread is really really crispy on
the outside but soft on the inside and
it's really slowly leavened so it's had
time to rise okay let's give this a
taste
holy moly
that is amazing
so the chicken has so
much flavour you can taste that rosemary
the chicken is really tender and then
the pizza bread, the bread here is just
insanely good and this is no exception
the outer is really crusty and crunchy
and the inside is really pillowy and
soft
oh man
so much flavour it's just been
braised and cooked for a really long
time so all of the flavours from those
different ingredients have had time
to sort of melt out into the dish, it's
delicious
I really love this concept of
taking these really traditional dishes
which you'd normally get as a main in a
restaurant and turning them into this
it's really neat so this one is the
beef tongue which is sitting in salsa
verde so it's a green salsa with a lot
of parsley you can see and there's anchovies
and a lot of olive oil the olive oil is
glistening all over that and I think a
lot of garlic in there too so I'm just
gonna push it all down actually look at that whoa it's so soft that beef tongue
I need a tissue
oh man, wow
the beef tongue is so so soft
tongue can be really tough that is not
at all it's perfectly cooked but look at
this this is the best bit that salsa
verde and all that olive oil it's all
run down into the pizza bread so that
beautiful soft inner layer of the bread
is super squishy and wet with olive oil
but then the outside is so crispy that it hasn't
soaked through
the tongue it's so tender
oh wow that is incredible
I've had the chicken one as well the
chicken's so tender and there's so much
flavour it's always a little bit funny
you know with this sort of thing I'm
never quite sure and I'm sure you guys
have seen it too where you see something a
modern take on something you think ohh I
don't know about that
this is incredible it's so well put
together and it's great to get these
traditional flavours in this incredible
pizza bread it's beautiful it's so chewy
it's got a nice little tang and the crunch on
the outside is amazing
mealtimes are often very defined here in
Italy so lunchtime means lunchtime often
a restaurant will be open for lunch
service but then shut at three o'clock
and be totally shut like doors down done
for the afternoon however then they
reopen for dinner we had to kill some
time between our pizza pocket snack and
dinner time so we went and sat in
St. Peter's Square and people watched a
bit and cooled down because it's 36
degrees today here in Rome so it's
really really hot but now it's gone
8 o'clock dinner times from usually 8
o'clock to 11:00pm so we're here for
dinner and we are going to be eating
some traditional Roman dishes
this restaurant has a brilliant
means of ordering so there's no written
menu there's a human menu so the waiter's
come across he's sat down with us and
he's letting us know all the dishes that
they have today and we're ordering straight
from him
we've come to this restaurant because
it's really popular with locals and they
specialise in cucina Romana so Roman 
cuisine so we ordered our first course
and also our pasta course and then the
waiter said he'll come back later after
we'd finished those two courses and see
what else we felt like eating so this
is our first course and it is shredded
horse meat sitting on a bunch of rocket
or arugula with a lot of olive oil and
then Parmigiano-Reggiano over the top so
I'm just gonna grab myself a big pile of
this look at that sheet of parmigiano
oh my goodness
okay
now let's get into this horse so it's
really finely shredded
that parmigiano
really salty it's got a real
kick and that horse is very salty as
well it tastes like slightly gamey beef and then that
rocket is very very peppery it's a great
combination
of course to go with a meal like this
we had to order wine so we've ordered
the house white so we've got a half litre
carafe of wine and it goes perfectly
with the food here in Italy and we have
got to the pasta course this is an
incredibly simple pasta
cacio e pepe and this is one of the four
pastas that you'll always find here in
Rome so it's one of the four Roman
classic pastas so every menu will have
this particular pasta on it and it's
really just cheese and pepper and it's
Pecorino a sheep's milk Pecorino
the cheese and look how
incredible it looks we've got spaghetti
you can see all the cheese obviously and
you've got those big chunks of pepper
all through there so let's just free it up
a little bit
oh my god
oh my god
the flavour is incredible so the cheese is
very sharp very salty and then you get a
massive hit of pepper so you basically
get the salt and pepper combo working
together and a super creaminess from all
that cheese
simple and incredible taking not many
ingredients and just making something
that tastes amazing it's so good and
eating this way is super common here so
eating in courses so this is the second
course the pasta course and what
we've actually got here is we've ordered
one and they've split it for us so we
each have a half portion so you don't
need to order a massive massive pasta
portion to yourself which is really
handy because there's more food to come
there was an array of choices for our
next course heaps and heaps of meats
that were available from the grill there's a
really fiery grill going out at the front of
the restaurant and then some traditional
classic Roman dishes as well as some
deep-fried things now the Romans love
their nose to tail eating so there were
lots to choose from when it came to
offal so let me talk you through what
we've got so this here is trippa alla
Romana which is tripe cooked in tomato
sauce with some mint and a ton of
pecorino romano on the top this my
friends is bulls balls so testicles
they've been deep-fried there's a bit of
lemon on the side and some rocket and
then we've got some braised bitter
greens cooked with garlic and drizzled
with olive oil I'm so excited to try
this tripe dish it comes from quinto quarto cuisine quinto quarto translates to the fifth
quarter and it's sort of peasant, the peasant food
so when they had, back in the day
an animal they broke it up into four
quarters so the first the prime cuts 
the first quarter went to the nobility
second quarter went to the clergy the
third quarter went to the merchant class
and the fourth quarter went to the soldiers and
then the first quarter the leftover bits
the hearts, the livers, the feet, the tongues the heads
went to the peasant class the
poor people but nowadays in Rome this
dish is eaten because everyone just loves
it it's really hearty and supposed to be
really tasty so let's just give it a go
so tripe is beef stomach
that is good
that tripe is really tender it's prepared
to perfection
it just melts in your mouth that tomato sauce
is quite tangy and then you've got that
sharp kick from that Pecorino
let's get some lemon all over these
bulls testicles so they've been crumbed
and deep-fried and they look like
they've been really nicely deep-fried
they're super crispy ohhh and really meaty inside
look at that
Oh
very well cooked
not chewy at all, really nice texture
super soft, flavour-wise not too strong a
lot of the flavour I'm getting is from
the crumb and from the lemon actually
the meat is more just a great texture so
not too robust in the flavour stakes not
too strong they're really good and
really well cooked I guess
creamy would be a really good word for
these they're just such a nice soft
creamy texture and this restaurant I'm
loving it it's got such a buzz so we
came in at 8:00pm we were in when the
doors opened but now it's about 10 o'clock
and it is absolutely buzzing in here
it's packed with locals everyone's having a
great time and the menu is incredible
there was so much offal on offer
intestines, hearts, testicles like we've had the tripe
there was much more than that as well there was so much
on offer this is a fantastic local
restaurant
