today we're in Rome, Italy we're here to
eat and we can't wait to share with you
some of the best food Rome has to offer
if you love to eat
Rome's food scene will be right up your
alley the food culture here revolves
around vibrant ingredients cooked simply
and hearty flavors this is our third
video from Rome and we're here to hunt
down the best local food watch out for
succulent porchetta from a
fifth-generation family shop, authentic
Roman pizza and incredible pasta
from one of Rome's best restaurants in
this three-part series we're eating where
the locals eat 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
we've been eating our way around Rome
for the past week and holy moly the food
is just incredible now Roman cuisine is
known for being very punchy, vibrant and
they love nose to tail eating and we are
so excited to share with you the food
culture here we are starting today in
the Jewish Ghetto this place is really
really quaint beautiful cobblestone streets
stunning buildings we're here to hunt down
a ricotta and cherry pie
we've come to this gorgeous park to
enjoy our ricotta and cherry tart and
this tart has a really interesting
history so the Jewish Ghetto is a really
elegant and atmospheric part of Rome but
it also has a really tragic past some
quite recent some which dates back hundreds
of years so the Jewish Ghetto was first
established in 1555 by Pope Paul IV and Jews were segregated into that
quarter of the city and it was a really poor
area and out of that poverty came a lot
of really distinct recipes this being
one of them and so one of the papal
decrees at the time was that Jews were
forbidden to trade in dairy products and
so what were they to do with recipes
like this which had ricotta in them
which is a cheese obviously a dairy
product what they did was they disguised
it in this pie so they created this
crust over the top of the pie in order
to hide the ricotta within it so what
you've got is a really really thick layer
of ricotta in there and then underneath
the ricotta are some wild sour cherries
almost cooked down into a jam and then
you've got quite a thick crust basically
to hide the ricotta so that tradition
has carried on
now enough talking let's
get eating all right
whoa that is so so good
the ricotta is really pillowy it just
melts in your mouth
and then the crust on the top it's
actually very sweet and crumbly it's
not heavy at all and then the sour
cherries at the bottom a nice tanginess
and a beautiful sweetness
now they had a whole range of these
tarts or a whole selection of tarts in
the front window of the tiny bakery that
bakery is famous for this tart and a lot
of them had a really burnt top and
that's really common that's a sign that
the pastry is really well cooked
we got away with just a slightly
burnished top and it is absolutely
beautiful
we've traveled a little ways across town
for some porchetta next and this is
a roasted pork dish you'll find it in
all the markets here in Rome it's always
sitting right out the front of the
stalls and you can buy it by the slice
it is an incredible looking dish but
we've come to a little hole-in-the-wall
restaurant to get ours because this
place gets theirs in from the village
which is really famous for this dish it's 
just outside of Rome we couldn't make it to
the village but they've brought the
pork to us so we're getting it from this
little hole-in-the-wall joint
the thing that hits you when you walk
into the tiny little shop is the smell
it is the most beautiful deep smell of
roast pork so what they do is they take
an entire pig they remove the head, they
remove the legs and they debone the pig
and then they rub the whole thing in a
whole lot of rosemary and roll it
basically and then roast it that way
so it's just a huge looking roll and the
one big roll that they have in there is
about 20 to 22 kilos so once you've
removed all those bits there's still a lot
of weight in there and man it looks good
so this is, this is served
room-temperature it's not served hot and
they just have the most perfect amounts
on there so you can see the real
meaty bits of the pork we've got and
different sorts of meat as well there's
some darker meat and some nice white
meat there we've got beautiful amounts
of fat all from around the edge and we've
got some beautiful skin or some
crackling stuck in there as well and all
interspersed together so I imagine every
mouthful is just gonna have a burst of
flavour I want to start at this end with
this lovely fat piece and I'm gonna put
that little bit of skin onto the end there
as well
oh my god
Wow ohhh the fat
oh that is beautiful
it's just so perfectly put together I
got totally got a mouthful there with
everything in so I had some beautiful meat
really soft a little bit tender the fat
super juicy just a burst of juice and a
burst of flavour and then I had some
crackling as well so I got a nice little
crunchy bit of that skin and it's got a
real strong taste of that rosemary that
it's covered in when they roast it it is
incredible flavour
this is not gonna last long it's the
most stunning flavour and it's just that
pork flavour because this is a porchetta
panino style which is the porchetta is
just the pork and it's a sandwich style and
there is nothing on here there's no
butter, there's no sauces there is nothing
else except the porchetta so it's all
about the pork now we've come to this shop
for a few reasons in fact just like the
cherry pie one of the reasons we're here
is the amazing history of this place
so this stall has been around since 1890
and working in there right now is the
father and son who are the 5th and 6th
generation of ownership for this one
store which just blows my mind I mean
the history in the food culture here is
incredible and as we touched on earlier
they also get their porchetta right from
the source so there's a village called Ariccia which is just outside of Rome
and that's where this dish is meant to
be absolutely the best but theirs is
cooked there and then shipped into the
city so they don't cook it on-site it's
made with the pigs from that village and
made in that village and it is
incredibly incredibly good
it's now lunchtime and we've come to a trattoria to have traditional cucina
Romana
or Roman cuisine now lunch time is a
pretty set time if you're eating in a
restaurant in Rome lunch is served from
12:30pm to 3 o'clock
this restaurant is
quite far out west from the centre of
town so you'll probably notice around us
we're not in that historical center of
Rome the Rome that you kind of see on
the postcards the Rome you probably know
quite well traveling outside the center
can find you some incredible food we ate
at this place during our research for
this series it was the most amazing meal
so we had to come back and show you guys
just how good this food is
our starters have arrived we ordered
suppli these delicious golden fried
balls of goodness
now you might recognise these
from our previous video where we did a
Rome street food tour and these are a
classic Roman street food so it's a deep
fried rice ball so let me open it up and
show you what it looks like inside ohhhhh
okay so it's um
risotto rice cooked in a
ragu with a huge glob of mozzarella
in the middle and look at that cheesy
string of goodness so they're often known
as suppli al telefono which refers to
the fact that the string of cheese looks
a bit like the old fashioned telephone
cord
so, so delicious
the ragu that it's cooked in is a
meat-based sauce with tomato and it is
so tangy the rice is really well cooked
it's got a little bit of bite still and
that crumb is really crispy I didn't get a
bite with the mozzarella in there so
let's just taste that
just a beautiful flavour it's so
oozy
now the suppli are not to be confused
with arancini, arancini are from Sicily and
they're a different shape the suppli is real classic Roman street food it's
really really popular here and this is a
really delicious version
this restaurant is really popular with
locals it's a Monday afternoon and the
place is packed
so it's run by husband-and-wife team
they both left fine dining careers
to open up this place that focuses on
traditional cucina Romana so we're up to our pasta course now if you want to go
like the full shebang and order every
single course you absolutely can so you
might go antipasti then the pasta
course then a meat course or seafood
course and then you might have dessert
and then a digestive and then coffee you
can fully do that but you can also just
order a starter and a pasta or just a
pasta, there are no set rules
we have got our pasta and it looks amazing let me show you what
we we ordered so this is amatriciana which is a pasta sauce made of
tomato, there's Pecorino Romano and
guanciale which is cured pork cheek let
me show you a bit that's hiding under
there and it's got a bit of chilli in
there some black pepper and I've got it
with bucatini which is sort of a
spaghetti like pasta but it's hollow and
then Thomas has got fettucine
carbonara so heaps and heaps of pecorino Romano
guanciale so the cured pork cheek again, eggs and black pepper
that's all it's really simple
this bowl of
carbonara looks so good so carbonara is
a bit different to what you might think
so carbonara is often thought of outside
of Italy as a pasta with cream in Italy
never cream so the creaminess what you
see in this dish comes from the cheese
the Pecorino Romano and the egg so
they take some grated Pecorino Romano
some eggs they crack that into a bowl
and whisk that all together they take
the hot pasta as it comes out of the
water very quickly drain away the
water
chuck the pasta in and just mix it all
together so that cooks the egg and that
gives the dish the creaminess and then
with this you've got the beautiful
guanciale so the cured pork cheeks as
well so
Wow
the pasta for starters perfectly cooked
al dente just so good so much bite on the teeth
but then that sauce the cheese is really
creamy it's got a great saltiness and the guanciale the pork another great
bit of saltiness but it's got beautiful
layers so you've got layers of of meat and
layers of fat they go together so well and
you'll see the dish is covered in quite a
lot of pepper and pepper through it so you
get a great pepperiness as well so nice
and creamy with all that egg and cheese all on the pasta
oh my god
it's heaven, absolute heaven
so simple there's not many ingredients
at all it doesn't need anything else it
doesn't need that cream that always gets
added outside of Italy it is super
creamy oh man this is an incredible dish
let's get a taste of this amatriciana alright
it is just sensational
the cheese, pecorino is a hard sheep's
milk cheese it's really punchy
it's just creamy as well now that it's melted a bit it's a really strong flavour
the tomato is really
tangy a little bit acidic it's got a quite strong hit of
chilli and that guanciale the pork cheek
oh my gosh the fat just melts in your mouth
and the pasta is just cooked perfectly
I love how it's hollow so it's sort of got
the sauce inside the pasta it's
absolutely incredible
now these two dishes are two of the four
main Roman pastas
you'll see these four pastas on
every single Roman menu really
we ate cacio e pepe the other day in a
previous video so check that one out
there's another one which is similar to
carbonara just without the eggs it's called
alla gricia they are so simple and just
perfect in their flavour
that is a very
very special place and a super special
meal I mean we just went with the two
courses because we've now got to go for
some pizza, classic Italian Roman food but what a
place and what a meal
after that incredible pasta we're back
into the well closer into the centre of
town so we're back in the beautiful
historic area as you can probably tell
from all around us and it's pizza time
so in Rome you can either get al taglio
which is pizza by the slice or tonda
which is round pizza we're going for
tonda at one of the best places to get
a tonda in Rome it's a really casual
looking space and we're really excited
to eat
we've ordered our pizzas and I'm just up
by the oven and the smell is incredible
so there's a massive wood fired oven, these guys
are churning out so many pizzas they're just
shoving them in the oven really quick and
they're flying out so the Roman style pizzas
are a very thin base which they're
loading up with a lot of different
ingredients
as Thomas mentioned Roman pizzas are
super thin and super crispy and these look like
perfect specimens so we ordered two this
one here is zucchini blossom and
mozzarella and the second one is
mushrooms and salsiccia or sausage
and oh my goodness the smell of the
mushrooms is just wafting up so this
place is really local it's a really
simple pizzeria the name for it colloquially
is 'the morgue' because of their marble
tables and it's just really really casual
but very traditional
the cooking time on these pizzas is
really quick and you can see just a
beautiful little touch on the stone in
the wood-fired oven so let's get right
on in so they come uncut so you whack
into them I'll just try and cut a bit of a
a nice big wedge the amount of cheese on
here is incredibly thick so let's get
through that mozzarella oh yea time for the good stuff
that mozzarella is incredible really
nice and salty it's not super
stringy like you'd think when you think of
mozzarella
it's a just got a nice almost wetness to it
I got some zucchini flower that time
which has a 
really nice earthy taste but I want to get some
more zucchini flower so I'm just gonna peel
this one chuck it at the front there so
it's the flower that grows off the top of
the zucchini
Wow
really simple and the base is great
it's not too crunchy it's not too chewy
it's got flavour so it's got a real tanginess
 from the dough it's
perfectly put together that is a really good pizza
let's dive into this sausage and
mushroom pizza so the mushroom is
really really thinly sliced and then the
sausage is just clumps of sausage meat
just dotted on that pizza I want to
make sure I've got lots on that slice
hmm the sausage meat has so much flavour it's
really really soft almost just melts in
your mouth it's so good, the mushroom
really earthy I love
that it's very thinly sliced that pizza base is
amazing
it's crispy it's crunchy and it's got a
little bit of chew
the mozzarella is really um
really creamy in
flavour almost it's got like a richness
and then that slight smear of tomato sauce on the bottom
of the base little bit tangy, good pizza
I am loving how simple these pizzas are so I
have two toppings Sheena has three
toppings, one of those is just the tomato sauce
and max it's three or four toppings at this
place so it's very simple the flavours
are very clean and we decided to sit
inside so we're right by all the action
so we're right by the pizza oven
it's full on watching them cook they're churning
through the pizzas you can sit outside
on the street too if it's summertime like it
is now incredible pizza and
tomorrow we're heading to Sicily so make
sure you subscribe because there is a
tonne more videos coming from Italy
