The Lasagna Challenge--November, 2014

Lasagna taste tests, a blog contribution framed by Julianne, with input from a team of five.

Our pleasure, nay delight, maybe edging toward rapture: our friends Cynthia and Jean have been visiting for the last 2 weeks. My sister, Kitty is here too and will be with us for another week.  What a good moment in our travels!

The five of us met in Florence, where we stayed a week, and then traveled by train to Rome for another week of eating, talking, walking, looking, and games.

Florence seen from Piazzale Michelangelo. 

They were out of lasagna at that restaurant, but the view was great.

It may surprise you to know that Italy has good food? Our pleasure the last few weeks has been trying it out.  We have eaten in some great restaurants — some by planning, some by chance or good luck.  More on some of the great restaurants anon (haven’t you always wanted to say “anon”?), but it is essential first of all to report out on the results of the lasagna tasting.  I was not on the lasagna team.  We are depending on Nancy and Jean as subject matter experts for the greatest insight.

 

Sculpture, snacking at the TI office, Florence

Florentine lasagna loved, or not, by us:

Chance took us for our first dinner to a fine Italian restaurant, La Spada, near where we stayed in Florence.  Heavy on meat so the vegetarians were not as delighted but the lasagna team formed that night.  Turns out that lasagna in Florence does not have red sauce — this had ground beef in a béchamel sauce. Definite notes of nutmeg.  Mixed reviews as it defied our expectations and we had to get used to the idea.

Il Desco had a vegetarian lasagna which was light, not greasy.  Cynthia reports that this restaurant is high on our vegetarian approval list. The lasagna had pistachios and a tangy cheese which delighted the mouth.  Planning team — a win.  May win the Florentine lasagna prize.  Post-lasagna, there was the visit to Michelangelo's David, giving perspective to any scale of mundane to sublime.

David, taking a bite of lasagna
(and you thought he was holding his sling)

Our lasagna tasters were not as pleased with the lunch lasagna offered at Trattoria Marione near our house, where we had lunch after visiting the Uffizi. It too had a béchamel sauce but less flavor and a little oilier of a cheese.  The other lunch offerings were great, but we are working on lasagna here. We loved our lunch there overall and would definitely go back, but not for lasagna.

Unidentified sculpture at Uffizi declining lasagna

Osteria Giovanni was a foodie highlight of Florence.  We all had such great offerings and recommend it highly.  However, no one even asked about lasagna.  Our planning team had outdone themselves in identifying the restaurant from a mystery story set in Florence (Dying on the Vine by Aaron Elkins) and then discovered that food critics also love it.  We are now groupies for Osteria Giovanni.

We are at Osteria Giovanni in Florence
Julianne, Kitty, Jean, Cynthia, Nancy (l-r)

The very next day, the very worst! Santa Maria Novella church, which is near the main train station, faces a large piazza filled with tourists and tourist-catering places. The piazza is partly blocked off by a paving project, and on the far side of the chain-link fencing from the church we settled on a café with umbrellas to ward off the sun. We didn’t pick it on the basis of any foodie knowledge, but we were hungry. One of the lasagna team ordered lasagna, and got what must have been the last piece from a large pan – curled up dry noodles, a crust on the surface. Really, no flavor. Let’s not mention that one again!  Definitely, advance planning pays off—we learned our lesson.

Fresco from Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella, Florence

The baby is safely born, but not the lasagna!

Our last restaurant meal in Florence was at Il Santo Bevitore, on the south side of the Arno. So many delights to choose from (and we chose many).  Kudos to the planning team.  The lasagna taster reported excellent lasagna.  But we were so distracted by all the other offerings we kind of forgot to make note of what its special characteristics were. A particular highlight was the waiters reaching over our heads with a long-handled grabber to get down wine bottles – pretty entertaining. The almond fig soup was so outstanding it rates a mention even in the lasagna posting.

Il Santo Bevitore - Hazelnut ice cream with spun sugar and chocolate sauce

Cynthia and Julianne not finding lasagna

By the time we got to Rome, we had adjusted to the idea that there may not be “Italian” food, but regional food from specific areas of Italy.  A major research effort clearly had to be — what is the Roman contribution to the mix?  Do they even have lasagna?  How will we survive for 5 months if they do not?

Chance (yay, chance team!) places us in our apartment in Trastavere across the street from La Tavernaccia, and we crawled over for dinner after the rigors of a travel and moving-in day.  Among many excellent offerings, we found lasagna.  L-team swung into action.

The lasagna, ordered by Nancy and tasted by Jean, was quite nice; Jean forgets why.  Still we love the restaurant. However, when we returned, no lasagna.  We may report back in the future—this is our home from home.  We will survive, it appears.

From our front window we can see our favorite Rome restaurant

The next day, a desperate lunch stop after wearing ourselves out on a tour of the Vatican — no lasagna.  Team was filled artistically and spiritually but physically down to the nubs.  A subset of the group went the following day to the Borghese Gallery and had lunch at a venerable Roman restaurant named Giovanni’s. Good reports of lunch in a restaurant filled with Roman businessmen.  No lasagna report, however.

Finally we had a chance to get all our questions answered about lasagna and many other foodie things at our “Cooking Classes in Rome” class on Friday.  Chatting about food, chopping, stirring and eating for the whole day—this is a great class if you are looking for one. 

The lowdown on lasagna is that it is not a Roman dish.  It grew in the US because of the large numbers of Italian migrants in the early 20^th C -- but they were from such places as Bologna and Sicily.  Lasagna as we know it in the US has the red sauce of Bologna and the prep and ingredients of the people of Sicily, who created a great dish out of poverty food.  Ricotta, for example, was the undesirable leftovers from making the prized mozzarella.  Yay, immigrants! for creating a silk purse literally from a sow’s ear - but too bad for us in our search for lasagna.

 

Ingredients, but not for lasagna, at our cooking class. Jean with pumpkin flowers

In a couple days, though, chance again took us to a great lunch, this time in Orvieto — back in Tuscany.  The lasagna on the menu had spinach, ground beef, and béchamel sauce.  Trattoria del Moro restaurant, near the clock tower in Orvieto, wins our lasagna prize.

 

Julianne at Trattoria del Moro in Orvieto

Considering all the great food we have had and good restaurants we have chanced upon or found through research we all could have much more to say. Anon.  There are worse ways to spend time than chasing great lasagna.

by Julianne, with pictures by Nancy and Kitty