Rome visit--easy side trips?
 

We will be spending at week at Albergo del Sanato in January.
(225e. for Pantheon view double). During that week we will probably take a couple of train trips to other towns where we can enjoy an excellent meal. Will probably return to Nettuno to Da Rodo for seafood. Thinking of Orvieto (truffle season) as a possibility. I have heard lots here about I Setti Consoli but cannot find much on the internet or in books. Do they have a web site? I would like to know more about this place, other than "it is one of the best places in Italy" and other than a list of dishes anyone has eaten..what is the place like...??? What is the food focus? We are interested in the best food of the region, Umbria in this case, and do not care for fancy atmosphere or fussy over-conceived food. Price is not an issue here. So..should we take the train to Orvieto for the day for lunch and if so, where would be the best place? We might also set up a winery visit, time permitting. And if not Orvieto, what are other easy train trips from Rome that would make a good January outing..Frascati? Considering Naples but it is a bit far unless we stay overnight. Anyplace closer for a taste of Campanian food? Thanks!!

sorry, Albergo del SEnato in Rome....good rate for a double room. I will add here that I called Delta yesterday for our flights and ws told that the flight from JFK-FCO, a code-share with Alitalia, would cost us more than $1200. each. in January!! The Delta guy earched a long time and that was the best he could come up with for our dates. He told me not to bother calling Alitalia since it was a code share and their price would be the same. WRONG WRONG!! We got the tickets on Alitalia for a (still expensive) $800 per ticket rt. The same flights.

You are a smart cookie in my book for doing what you did! =D> Ticket prices are a real challenge this season. I wonder if you had tried cheaptickets.com, or even orbitz.

The best food in Rome can be found in the Trastevere area; good, hearty, and certainly fresh. As far as resturants recs within a day trip from Rome, wish I could help there, I would advise a day trip to Assisi with an excellent restaurant in Hotel Dei Priori, walking distance from the Basilica de Santa Chiara.

Thanks, Viajero2. It is not often that I receive praise like that! I perhaps am naive regarding the ins and outs of airfare pricing, but I was truly shocked that the Delta agent would tell me not to bother trying with Alitalia as it was the same flight and prices would be the same. I did have a look at Expedia and found my flights listed for the same price I paid. Mind you, we have visited Italy quite a few times in January and never paid anything as high as what we are paying this trip..about $800. I have no fear of Alitalia, having flown them often in the past...in coach all airlines save a few Asian carriers are horrors... Having heard tales of people flying for $1,000 business class, I checked with Delta and was told that I would have to cough up $6,000 for business class rt to Rome this winter. He told me that there is a special kind of bus class tickets deal if y ou book far in advance....trouble is I never am sure a year ahead where I want to go...

I think Assisi is too far for a day trip. I did go there a while back and adored the art.....

Now working on my Rome restaurant list..one I have noted is Trattoria Monti but might be better to start another thread on this, or again, amybe we should do it here..does anyone have any Rome food recommendations. Not La Pergola and its ilk and not Orso 80, please.

ekscrunchy,

You've probably already seen the reviews of I Sette Consoli on slowtrav, but here is the link anyway.

http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/restau...&s=orvieto

I'm hoping to visit for lunch when we are in Rome in April.

-Bill

Thanks, Bill. I am still puzzled about this place. Lobster and sea bass do not seem terribly regional to me and while I am sure the place is great, we are looking to day trip to enjoy more regional cuisine. Does Setti Consoli have a web site? I have not found one and this puzzles me for a place that appears to have high aspirations...

Since we will be in Rome for a week we will have no shortage of that kind of pan-Italian experience if we decide to seek it out but I was hoping to experience more regional cooking on the day trips...perhaps the kind of place the local gourmand would seek out, or the local barristers..
I am not set on Orvieto but it seems to be easy to access from Rome and it is truffle season, as I mentioned. Also wondering about great food south of Rome....

For information on Frascati and the Castelli Romani have a look at this website...

www.italyheaven.co.uk/frascati.html

And a very nice restaurant - about as far removed from Orso 80 as could be - is La Penna d'Oca on Via della Penna, just off the Piazza del Popolo. We ate there with friends, and had the fish tasting menu at 55 euros a head. It was absolutely fabulous, and we drank excellent local wine recommended by the chef. He came out to talk to us at the end of the evening, and was charming. I believe he is also the owner. A speciality of the restaurant is souffle for dessert - and you have to choose your souffle at the start of the meal so it can be prepared for you at the optimum moment. I had the lemon souffle with limoncello sauce and it was out of this world. There were only two other parties in the restaurant that evening and both were Italian. I found this doing a google search...

http://tinyurl.com/j94ev

Ekscrunchy,

Hello again; we keep meeting at discussions about food...

I assume you've Googled I Sette Consoli. The chef, a woman, is a member of an association called Young Restaurateurs of Europe. The description there says that the cuisine is creative and leans on local products such as meat from farm-raised animals and vegetables.

http://www.jre.it/italiano/b/ristoratore.xtmlid=62.html

There's also an English version, which says something a little different from the Italian version:

http://www.jre.net/Restaurant.aspx?R...antID=03903325

And this Web site (in Italian)

http://www.paese-italia.com/ristoran...te-consoli.htm

mentions that the kitchen is also "open to sea fish." And it incidentally gives as the restaurant's Web site the description given in the first (Italian) www.jre.it Web site.

Far be it from me to want to influence you (ha!), but in Italy I can frankly do without restaurants that specialize in "creative" cuisine, have little stools for ladies to put their purses on and have, on at least one occasion, had only Fodorites, come there independently of each other, for lunch.

Eloise, my sentiments exactly. I don't know how I managed not to find their web site but after reading it, looking at the pics, (and hearing the music,) I think I might be happier elsewhere. I also noticed that the company this place keeps, for example two of the Roman restaurants listed on the jre site, get flamed by lots of food-people for being over-the-top tourist-centered places. I know that there are many fans of Setti Consoli here on Fodor's but other than the posters here, and one person who posts about it on another food site, I have not really heard or read anything.... I am remembering a lot of comments about a place in Florence that was touted by a few people here...

Maybe we will head down the coast..Sperlonga? I think the Frascati eateries may be closed during a January weekday....

Eloise, good to hear from you..keep those thoughts coming...!

P.S. There are six threads with Sette Consoli in them on Chowhound; I only looked at one of them, which seemed to be strongly "Michelin-influenced".

Egullet's search engine does not seem to be too precise; it brought up three pages of links, half of them having to do with New York restaurants and the others with things like the cooking of Liguria. I did find one thread about Umbria, where Sette Consoli was mentioned two or three times.

Hello ek,

first of all, congratulations to a trip that will certainly be wonderful, in a season absolutely without tourists.
As far as Umbria, I suppose you might remember my "favourite" thread, but the restaurants recommended may be out of reach from Rome (they're all even further away than Assisi). No, I'm sorry, I don't know the Sette Consoli.
In the very north of Lazio, which is a particularily beautiful region, food is alas generally weak for Italian standards, which is a pity for your daytripping plan. But nearer to Rome, I have some places for you:
1. Sutri - La Locanda di Saturno, closed on Mondays, lunch on Saturdays and Sundays only, otherwise just for dinner. Excellent, refined food, not quite traditional, but not at all of the all-Italian lobster & sea brass type. Beautiful restaurant, somewhat slow service, absolutely worth a try. Sutri has an Etruscan theatre not erected in stone, but the other way round: cut into the rock. Plus, even (much) better: a church, equally cut into the stone - originally an Etruscan tomb, then a Mithras sanctuary, now a church named Madonna del Parto. Plus a pleasant hilltown with a great crypt from the 9th century (!) under the Duomo.
2. A different setting not far away: Bracciano - a favourite stop for the Romans for their weekend trips, a medieval castle (nice, but not really great), a lake, all in all a pleasant place but nothing special... except for: Vino e Camino, http://web.tiscali.it/vino_e_camino/ This is a VERY unusual restaurant for the Italian countryside - you feel the vicinity of Rome, and the preponderance of urban clients, cause here, they're cooking many vegetarian dishes and all with organic ingredients - and nevertheless (I know it doesn't sound too inviting) it's really good, I swear it, and a relaxed, low-key place.
3. Something even more surprising: Tivoli (I guess you know about it - one of the truly great sights all over Italy, with Villa Adriana as well as Villa d'Este, plus a wonderful old town full of ancient ruins, this latter totally neglected by the masses of daytrippers who come from Rome for the two villas). Here, in a town tortured by tourism (but nonetheless worth visiting for her splendid sights), you'd bet to eat terribly, but yet, there is a good place, too: Antiche Terme di Diana - yes, indeed, inside the ancient Roman Bathes of Diana!!, an astonishing setting, of course, but the food is nevertheless very good: http://www.termedidiana.it/. Part of the menu is devoted to ancient Roman recipes! (One of the truly great cuisines of the world and of all times - certainly as good as modern Italian cuisine, but totally different!!!)
4. My best restaurant recommendation for Lazio, an amusing out-of-the-way destination: Pontinia. Pontinia is, as you might guess, in the Pontinian plane, which was a giant swampland up to Mussolini's time. The Fascists drained the swamps, and built new towns and villages where before human life had been impossible - meaning these towns are pure Fascist architecture, not quite beautiful, but certainly fascinating if you are interested in architecture... Pontinia is maybe the best example, now a little crumbling (like Fascist buildings almost everywhere in Italy), and no tourist ever gets there. On the periphery of this small town, there is the only hotel around (it's modern, not Fascist, and no, it's not pretty): Hotel Ares. Its restaurant, called Nané, is by far the best I know in Lazio outside Rome: closed Sunday evening and Monday lunch. Among the best seafood where I've ever tasted (the sea is quite near to Pontinia). Heavenly, highly recommended, and worth a daytrip!!! (You could perhaps combine it with Cori, or Sermoneta, or Fossanova, which all have interesting and beautiful sights.)

Franco, thank you so much. Now, can I get to these places by train easily from Rome? I have one for you..the aforementioned Da Rodo in Nettuno. No atmosphere, no pretension, the door is not marked, and you eat in a room dominated by a frig/cooler with, as I remember paper tablecovers. They people could not have been friendlier and the seafood not any fresher. Now that was my kind of place (read of it in Fred Plotkin's book, kind of a bible for us here in USA, although outdated now) and I hope one day you have a chance to discover its' joys. Welcome back by the way...it has been too long!

Eloise, I did read those on Chowhound but many of the posts that rave about the place there, and on other sites, seem to be written by one person! I just looked up the Slowfood picks and wrote my list for both Rome and Orvieto..not surprisingly, Setti Consoli is not mentioned. And Franco has not heard of it, as you see above.

I wonder if any posters have tried the Slowfood picks in Rome:

Tram Tram
Dal Cordero
Ni Arte Ne Parte
Felice
Gregno
Da Sergio
Enoteca Corsi
Dal Cavalier Gino
Palatium
Trattoria Cadorna

And these more well known ones:
Tratt Monti
Matracinella
Armando al Pantheon

Would love to hear more on this....

Ekscrunchy,

I've eaten at four of the SlowFood picks, but I'm sorry, some of them are really very little known and I'm not sure I want to see them flooded with Fodorites. Mean and petty, I know, but there you are...

By way of amends, have you seen Fred Bruni's blog in the NYTimes, fairly recently, about Roman restaurants? He mentions Trattoria Monti, among others, which happens to be one I have not eaten at but that is on my list.

Eloise, say no more! Or we will have another Il Ritrovo on our hands. I will certainly check out Trattoria Monti ; Bruni's blog was what got me interested in the place and then I read about it in a 2003 Gourmet article by Fred Plotkin. I will pare down the Slowfood; Bruni; Plotkin and Mimi Sheraton, from her Rome article in the NY TImes a few months back....Armando al Pantheon is near my hotel so I am sure I will make it there. And I do need my fix of spaghetti al vongole. Pajata must be tried this time, as well as whatever artichokes are in season. The only place I see open Sunday night is La Campana and perhaps one of the Slowfood picks. Not sure if we will be there in time for Sunday lunch....so must find a good dinner spot to kick off the food fest!

In my (very) rudimentary and almost non-existant Italian) I have made notes from the Slowfood Rome picks and their best bets...and noted Franco's picks as well... I also like Maureen Fant's book on Trattorie. Anything else I am forgetting for guidance?

Ek (if I may), I think you've got it pretty well covered. I really only use SlowFood, and I'll try some of Franco's picks (first those in Venice, where I'll be spending time in November, wading through the acqua alta).

You might go over to SlowTrav and just search for Maureen B. Fant's posts. She tends to be rather dogmatic: hates Matricianella, scorns La Campana, loves Osteria da Nerone (around the corner from where she lives, where I was very badly treated and did not think the food was great), is mad abot Da Cecchino (where she takes ContextRome tours at great cost), etc., etc. She also laughed Mimi Sheraton's suggestions to scorn (I suspect that might have been professional jealousy).

Sorry, ek - as far as trains, I'm certainly not the one whom to ask (I use a car always and everywhere). But I remember having read on Fodor's more than once of a trenitalia website - it should be easy to check it there.

http://www.comune.orvieto.tr.it/I/3B023685.htm Here's a link to i Sette Consoli withe their email address

Eloise, I had no idea that was Maureen Fant on Slowtrav! Live and learn. But where do you see that she hates, for example, La Campana? On her web site she mentions it as a good place for Sunday dinner. I had trouble searching for her Rome posts on the Slowtrav site...did you mean it was there that she slammed those places? Can't wait to hear about your Venetian trip!

Does anyone else want to comment on any of the Rome Slowfood osterie listed above? Are there no other posters who use Slowfood apart from Eloise and myself?

Just realized that Felice was the subject of a NY Times article, A Roman Trattoria Plays Hard to Get, about how difficult it is to get a table. I will see if I can post the link....

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...55C0A9629C8B63

Ek, Now that I've reread the article, I remember having seen and read it when it came out.

If memory serves, grinisa once posted that she and her family managed to eat at Felice.

The odd thing is that Felice is listed in the Sandra Gustafson Great Eats book.

Yes, that is odd.

If you want to search SlowTrav for Maureen B. Fant's opinions on Roman restaurants, click on Find, choose Advanced Search, choose Italy forum, enter >Rome restaurant< in "all words",
>Maureen B. Fant< in exact name of poster, and as dates October 1, 2005 to the present. There are, I think, about a dozen threads, but some are fairly long.

Thanks, Eloise, I will give it a try.

Still wondering about whether or not to take the train to Orvieto for a day. I read a few reviews of some restaurants/trattorie that sounded very tempting! Especially with it being truffle season!

Since you mention Orvieto again, it springs to my mind that we didn't talk about Vissani, did we? No - almost nobody on Fodor's ever did, which is strange enough. Just a thought, since you said "price is not an issue"...

Franco I had been wondering about Vissani but read some rather bad reports about the place on other web sites. Not about the food but about the atmpshere of the place. I think I need a car to get here. Perhaps I should think about doing an overnight in Oriveto...
but then if I do an overnight from Rome, perhaps I should visit Naples... you see my dilemma here.

One of many bright spots is that I am very excited about Checchino dal 1887..how could I have neglected this palce on prior visits? I will tell you why..because we llike to walk to dinner and it is a bit far from places we have stayed. This time, no excuses!

Here is a basic query: Our flight arrives on a Sunday about 11:30. Get bags, taxi to hotel, check in..I figure 2:30. Is this too late to walk in for lunch? Easier finding a good lunch place than a dinner place in Sunday in Rome, I think. From what I can see, two options for dinner on a Sunday are Ditirambo which I liked a lot last time, and La Campana, which I do not know.

So..what about Vissani..have you been, Franco? Have other posters tried this restaurant near Baschi lauded as among the country's top 5, according to one source? It seems to get almost no mention here on this site....I Setti Consoli gets all the chatter while Vissani has the reputation.....curious..

I'm a big supporter of Trattoria Monti. I love the wonderful food and the graceful service. I've been eating there on visits to Rome for more than 10 years and have never been disappointed. Definitely get reservations for any dinner or Sunday lunch. Other lunches you may be fine to just show up.

Ellenem: Monti is definitely on my list; I am looking forward very much to eating there! I hope it is not too overrun with tourists like myself because it seems to be getting massive amounts of press lately.... Thanks so much for your input.

This is so much fun!

First of all, if I were in your place, I wouldn't any overnights - one week is pretty short for Rome, even if you already know it very well.
Vissani is about 15 kilometres from Orvieto, which doesn't seem too far to go by taxi - if you feel like spending enough to afford a Vissani lunch, the taxi price is negligible in comparison.
No, I've never been at Vissani, since I never could or wanted to spend that much. But a close friend of mine has been this summer, and he is one of the very few persons in whom I trust in gastronomic matters as if I had been there myself.
In Italy, Vissani has a reputation, and for many, many years already, as being the country's best cook. His cuisine is of course far from traditional, it's a ingenious cook's phantasy. The big restriction used to be the atmosphere, as you've put it. It must have been so incredible, so unworthy of a place serving delicious food like this, that Gambero Rosso, Italy's most important restaurant guidebook, refused to rate it for a period of quite many years - they used to rate only the kitchen, but not the overall performance, thus preventing the place from getting a total score and from entering into their all-Italian restaurant ranking...
But this is obviously history. Vissani's son is in the process of taking over the restaurant (a slow process of many years, obviously), and they have learned from the bad reviews. My friend reports that he has never experienced a better, or a nearly-as-good, restaurant service anywhere in the world so far. And he says the food was absolutely delicious, which means it WAS delicious (he is a VERY demanding eater). BUT he also thought that the prices are simply so crazy that it's hard NOT to calculate for every single mouthful how much it cost you. And that, too, is significant, cause this friend has normally not the slightest problem to spend a fortune for a meal... expect about 150 Euros per person WITHOUT wine.
To sum it up, if I happen to win in the lottery one day (which is extremely improbable, since I do even gamble...), I'd absolutely want to try Vissani.
As far as your arrival lunch, you could walk to Alfredo all'Augusteo, a glamorous restaurant of the 1950s still (justly) famous for their fettucine, pasta (home-made, of course) with nothing than cheese and butter - amazing how good you can prepare such a simple dish, if you know how to do it, of course. They are so famous that I imagine they should serve meals at 2.30, too - strangely enough, their website doesn't give any opening times. Maybe it's worth calling them?

Make this "I don't even gamble", please. I'll never learn to use the preview function, which would be a good idea, I know...

Folks,

I just wanted to comment about the airfare to Rome. Alatalia is
having a sale, until Nov. 14th, I just
booked flights to Rome from JFK for next March at $399.00 round trip (plus taxes) The sale is for travel from January 15 - March 29 2007. With taxes I am paying approximately $10l7.00 for two round trip coach tickets.

Best of luck,
Maureen S.

Thanks Maureen, for the reminder about Atalia's sale.
I think many of us who "lurk" here are both very tempted by the wonderful fares, and very hesitant due to Alitalia's precarious financial situation. If I were flying in the next two months, I'd buy their tickets, but we're going in March and I'm so afraid I'll be out all that money (4 tickets!) if they indeed go under after Jan. 31. Believe me, I've been agonizing over making a decision, and need to do it soon, as I'm seeing fares on the rise!

Maureen, good for you! And shamr on me for not booking sooner. Our tickets JFK-Rome are about $800 inclusive!

Franco, I think I will have to give Vissani a miss. I really prefer top-quality regional food rather than experimental cuisine when visiting Italy. And 150E pp person before wine is a bit rich, especially for a lunch when we would have to hop on a train afterwards.
Now, if you don't mind, would you mind enlightening me about the Gambero Rosso question I posted separately? I am asking this in response to a posting on another site where I read a detailed review of Vissani and where a poster delineated the difference between the Gamero Rosso and Tre Gamberi...would this be like Miichelin starts and Michelin bibs in the GR guide? (see related post for details..) And thank you, once again.

Well, first of all, I've NEVER heard of Tre Gamberi, I must admit. But making a quick web research, I understand from Gambero Rosso's website (only in the Italian version) that tre gamberi are the equivalent of tre forchette (the highest award category they have for restaurants), only for trattorie. You know they're including some trattorie of particular quality into their book? Must be quite what you're looking for, btw - trattorie are usually serving traditional food only, and I fully agree, in Italy, it's normally wise to strictly avoid creative cuisine (though I'm still curious about Vissani, I admit it).
Well - in former years (I don't read Gambero Rosso every year, especially since many of their recommendations don't absolutely meet my taste), they didn't rank the trattorie; including them into the guide had already to be prize enough. But now, obviously and as far as I understand it, they're having this tre gamberi award for a handful of really excellent trattorie. Though the site is in Italian, you can easily check which ones, since the names and addresses are the same in all languages: http://www.gamberorosso.it/portale/g...amp;textForum=

Thanks, Franco! It is always enjoyable to communicate with you. Your time taken from your work is our gain!

Hi ekscrunchy - I am in the same position, arriving on a sunday, and trying to find a great restaurant open on a Sunday - and not too touristy! Also, unsure if we should have a nice lunch when we arrive, or wait for a fabulous dinner on that day...

From my own somewhat limited knowledge bank, I would go for the big lunch as you will have a better choice of places. I would also reserve in advance through your hotel for this meal. Ditirambo was very good last time but it does gets many tourists, I think. Let's hope we get more good advice here. I think I need to do dinner Sunday since I do not know if I will arrive in time for lunch. There seem to be a fair amount of options for Sunday lunch, however.

I daytripped to Assisi from Rome last September and it was one of the highlights of my trip.

Assisi is gorgeous and small, so I consider it to be an easy daytrip. The view from the Rocca Maggiore are superb and the Basilica di San Francesco is one of the most beautiful churches I have ever visited.

I had lunch in one of the restaurants on Piazza del Comune and I think that was the best meal I had on my entire trip. I had "strangozzi al tartufo", which is a long kind of pasta with a simple truffle sauce. Both the pasta and the truffle are typical from Umbria.

Thanks, Castellanese. I have been there once. I think I will save a return visit for an Umbrian trip. I wanted to find a plces or places that were less of a train ride. I am thinking now of Orvieto but still waiting for some guidance on where to eat there...options other than I Setti Consoli which seems too "international" for my tastes, just judging from some web responses. Thinking down-home Umbrian food, showers of truffles, lots of local people. Tablecloths or not does not matter. One place I read about in Orvieto is L'Asino d"Oro; another is La Palomba. I suspect there is no one right answer here..all of these are probably great.

Just wonderred if Eloise and other food lovers have seen this Rome food blog by Maureen Fant:

http://web.mac.com/mbfant/iWeb/Site/...1C5B52C27.html