ekscrunchy

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!!

ekscrunchy

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.

Viajero2

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.

ekscrunchy

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.

iamq

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

ekscrunchy

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....

julia_t

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

Eloise

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.

ekscrunchy

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...!

Eloise

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.

franco

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.)

ekscrunchy

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....

Eloise

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.

ekscrunchy

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?

Eloise

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).

franco

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.

Ralstonlan

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

ekscrunchy

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!

ekscrunchy

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?

ekscrunchy

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