Dining at Cucina da Enzo

Barb and Karen's Italian Escapades - in Rome

Last week, Barb discovered a blog called heartrome, written by an Australian with Italian parentage, named Maria Pasquale. She transplanted herself to Rome and decided to start a blog to share her Roman life with friends and family back home, and now has around seven hundred followers. Funny, sassy and observant, Maria captures the essence of everyday Italians; their mannerisms and habits, their joie-de-vivre and laissez-faire-ness....Okay I'd rather know the Italian for these sentiments...maybe just Italian is good :)....

Anyway, Maria lets you live in Rome vicariously through her insights and adventures, and she, of course, loves food and writes about it too. (I really love her stories about grocery store cashiers and bagging groceries...) The most recent blog she posted before we left was about a trattoria called Cucina da Enzo in Trastevere, a Roman district (rione XIII), and recommended the burrata and the pasta carbonara.... So Barb and I were determined to find it.

With day creeping into night, we crossed the bridge over the River Tiber into Trastevere (which means "across the river"), with a general idea of where we needed to go, although our map did not have the specific street we needed to find on it.... As we wandered, I decided to check my maps on my phone, where I had marked it before I left, so that we were hopefully meandering in the right direction, since we were hungry and tired, and had aching feet....all worth it.....and as we stood in a little back alley plaza, we realized that if we had walked a few more steps, we would have seen that da Enzo's was right at the end of the street we were on, with its tables covered in blue checked tablecloths out on the sidewalk. (We had seen this in our Google Maps streetview at home).





It was like finding Shangri-la. There was no line-up yet, and better, there seemed to still be empty tables. We realized quickly that they seemed to be reserved, although at one table the guests were already half an hour late....pretty rude....maybe it's normal here....

We approached several of the waitstaff with what were probably pleadingly desperate looks to enquire if there was room for two, and were told a few times that there was no space, everything was booked and we couldn't even wait. We stood there forlornly, and began to walk dejectedly away, when the waitress came after us and let us know that we could sit at a table where there had been a no-show. The problem was that it was a table for four, and we would have to share it if another group of two arrived. No problem, we were overjoyed....

When the waiter came by, he repeated this to us, so I just laughed and said okay, but I think he thought that I didn't really believe he was serious, even though I knew he meant it, because he came over and drew a line in pen down the center of the tablecloth, which made us laugh again.

Shortly after, two guys were seated beside us, somewhere in their mid-twenties, and they chattered away in what sounded like Italian and we all assiduously avoided introducing ourselves or making conversations, despite the fact that we both ordered the burrata as an appetizer to share, and one of them even ordered the pasta carbonara.

We had read on Maria's blog about the burrata, a buttery mozzarella, with a firmer shell, and soft creamy interior, which was served with slices of tomato and basil and drizzled with olive oil.  Burrata is formed as a pouch of mozarella filled with bits of mozarella and cream and tied as a little bag. (It looked fairly indecent from a certain angle, which just added to its charm, lol). We tried it and it was butterly divine.......I think we achieved culinary nirvana with this dish. It was deliciously sensational... Easily the best cheese I've ever had, although cheese is really too commonplace a word for this masterpiece of gastronomic excellence.

Our pasta arrived....Barb had the Rigatoni Carbonara, which is made with egg and guanciale (pork cheek) [according to Maria's blog], cut into fairly large chunks. In France, when you ordered pasta carbonara it came with an egg shell centered in the mound of pasta, with the egg yolk inside, which you immediately combined with the hot pasta in order to cook the yolk. The rigatoni carbonara at da Enzo's seemed creamier than that, so I'd love to know how they make it, although I am unlikely to ever find out. The pork pieces lent a nice smoky flavour to the dish, and the rigatoni was perfectly al dente. I didn't love the pork, and would rather have had pancetta, the overall flavour was amazing....

I ordered the Cacio e Pepe, which is a traditional Roman dish, meaning "Cheese and Pepper" with simple ingredients....pecorino cheese and lots of black pepper tossed in hot pasta. It was simple and divine, and I loved it.

At this point, finishing our pasta and thinking about getting ready to leave, we had not had much, if any, conversation with the two guys sitting right next to us, as we were all carrying on conversations in our own languages. So we decided to ask them if they were local and knew where the subway was and how late they ran....This was when we found out that they were not Italian after all, and were actually Norwegian (from Oslo), but as well as Italian, they of course spoke Swedish and Finnish as well. When we told them we were from Ontario, they said "Oh, we thought you were American. Sorry...." We said "We don't care"...(I don't really get this sentiment about American tourists, but it exists. Nice people and jerky people don't exactly have geographical boundaries). "Hans" told us his best friend was from Barrie...small world...Thus a conversation was born.

They were pretty hilarious, very witty, entertaining themselves as much as us, I think. We were regaled with a story of their flight on German airline "Lufthansa", where "Hans" (we never found out their names) had a crush on the stern, but pretty German flight attendant. At one point his ears were in so much pain during the descent, that she quickly and efficiently ran off to find gummi bears for him to chew, expertly tearing open the package and instructing him to "chew ze gummi beyaz". (He did a pretty good German accent, it was so funny). As they were deplaning he thought she said "Look after your signs of infection," but realized she had actually said "Look after your sinus infection." When "Franz" (Hans's brother) revealed that Hans actually had a crush on her, I said "Maybe she said signs of affection," which they didn't seem to get, but Barb did :)

Here was their take on Italian dining:

The wine: Hans and Franz were WATERING DOWN THEIR WINE, while we gazed in shock at them. It seemed so gauche, but is apparently the thing to do in Italy, and we were served a carafe of water, rather than the usual glass we would get at home. So there you go. It helps to not become ridiculously inebriate, and is perfectly acceptable.

As we were thinking of leaving, having shared the burrata and had a plate of pasta each, (which Hans and Frans had also eaten), when the waiter brought them back a menu we figured they were ordering dessert, but no, they were ordering their second course. So, we decided to stay and have dessert, we certainly couldn't face a whole other course, and hear their stories. For dessert Barb had tiramisu, and I had mascarpone mousse with fragolini (tiny, tiny strawberries). Both were amazing.

Here are what Hans and Frans have gleaned over their many visits to Rome, about dining:


Bread: This is the first thing to arrive at your table, and while you don't ask for it, you usually have to pay for it. It is not accompanied by butter, so I think the expectation is that you use it to clear your plate of all its delicious drippings....

Antipasti: Appetizers are generous portions and are not usually your soups and salads, which are their own separate course. You could choose one of these though.

Primi Piatti: First Course: Pasta or Risotto usually, and they have always also been very generous portions which leads you to wonder how you could move on to....

Secondi Piatti: Second course, which is the meat course. Hans had trippa Romana (Roman-style tripe, in a tomato sauce), which he loves, and the rest of us watched him eat it with mild revulsion. Tripe is cow's stomach, and as Frans wittily stated, it is meant to digest, it is not digestible....

Dolce: (Sweet); a dessert that is often cream based, with fruit, although there is a wide variety, and I am glad to say that the portions of dessert are small compared to home, which is usually all you want after a big meal.

Coffee: Coffee, as is most food and beverages, in Italy, is an artform. I have never had such amazing coffee anywhere, cappucino with froth so perfect, it needs no sugar...cappucino, by the way, is a morning beverage. You will look like an idiot if you order capuccino with your dessert. This is when if you order coffee you get espresso, a shot of deeply flavourful coffee, that while delicious I find needs sugar, which it is usually served with, but not cream. They informed us that espresso has less caffeine than you might think....so it is perfectly normal as an after-dinner beverage.

Also, if the waiters feel you have been there long enough, they will bring you the bill and that's that.

So, next time you are sitting next to a bunch of strangers, go ahead and introduce yourself, you never know, they might end up being hilarious Norwegians....who knew? Now we do.