Customer Reviews

Food Wine Rome (Terroir Guides)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a Rome-based food and travel writer I am one of the harshest critics when it comes to guide books about Italy in general, and Rome in particular. So it is with great pleasure that I can heartily recommend Food Wine Rome to anyone looking for a guide book to great food in Rome. David Downie has managed to include the city's hidden secrets as well as reveal new details about it's much loved culinary history. This is the book to buy to discover out-of-the-way cookie factories, pasta stores and hole-in-the-wall trattorie. It makes a great gift for anyone traveling to Rome, or for those who just want to know more about Roman food.

I've already reviewed Food Wine Italian Riviera, which I adored. This is a continuation of that review, in a way, and also a way to gripe about something. Read on. The copy of Food Wine Rome I'm holding as I write this looks like a box of chocolates. It's beautifully designed. Generally I don't give a fig about the looks of a guidebook, but this one is so gorgeous that I would buy it to give as a gift instead of chocolates. I am freshly back from Rome (and the Italian Riviera), where I put this little number to the test. All I can say is, though I tried to find things to disagree about with the author, who seems to know an awful lot more than most guidebook authors, I couldn't. That made me mad. But then I kind of got to know him, as I tried some of the weird and wonderful foods he loves: stuffed squid with peas, spring lamb in a kind of piquant vinegar sauce (at this wonderful trattoria, Da Gino, near the Pantheon), or classic oxtail stew (at a throwback, family-run place called Perilli, near what used to be the slaughterhouse, but is now a yuppie neighborhood). I had had some pretty amazing ice cream in Chiavari (near Genoa), and then I went to Settimo Gelo in Rome, at Downie's instigation, and although this parlor is way way out there behind the Vatican, I experienced the best, the lightest, the most sublime ice cream period. Yes, I did try San Crispino, everyone knows San Crispino and it's still excellent. I was renting an apartment so I went out and, as Downie suggests, bought freshly roasted coffee from three little places (Tazza d'Oro, Sant Eusachio or something like that--impossible, and a mom-and-pop place way way out in the east called Giovanni De Santis or something). This turned out to be the best coffee I have ever had. Ever. And I am an addict. So, what I am griping about is, why do we have all these second-rate guidebooks out there pushed by huge conglomerates, sending us to the same old places, when we can get this kind of book? I have to wonder. And yes, I did Google the author and found that he's more than college educated, speaks three languages, has written other kinds of books, and has just published a thriller called Paris City of Night, which I'm reading and will review, as mentioned elsewhere. I am also griping because I can't live part of the year in Rome and on the Italian Riviera (or in Paris).

Anyone considering a trip to Rome must include Mr Downie's book on their list of things to buy before traveling. This will ensure good meals ( and good fun) while in Rome whether you decide to dine at one of the very, numerous authentic Roman trattorias listed in the book or to try one of the more modern establishments which are also listed. You will have lots of options to choose from and Mr Downie has done all of the legwork for you. This book is not just for travelers but is also a must for those who live in Rome. I have inhabited the city for over 20 years and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading about places I know, as well as, learning about some of Rome's treasures which I have yet to discover. You can learn where to have your morning coffee and learn 33 ways to order it! The book is very helpfully divided into different areas of Rome. Mr. Downie focuses on restaurants, shops, markets, bakeries, chocolate stores and much more which respect the wonderful Roman traditions which have been passed down through generations. His history is thorough and fun to read. You won't be disappointed with your purchase.

I couldn't put this book down. Many things capture your attention including "33 Ways to Order Coffee", a tutorial on Lazio wines, and the detailed glossary. The whole city is covered so you could land in any part of the city and have Downie's well selected shops ready and waiting for you.

Even if you are not planning a trip to Rome, consider getting this book. It is packed with curious information for any foodie.

An amazing guide to one of the finest cuisines in the world! Although I have traveled to Rome many times and consider myself a discriminating eater, this guide introduced me to many new eateries. The historical background is excellent. I am grateful to David Downie for having spared me from eating the thousands of calories he must have ingested to write this exacting compendium. Now I can make a beeline for the best of Rome's delicious food.

I really like all of the information thats in this travel guide however I have to remove one star because of the book production. As a travel guide its too thick and heavy. It would have been better had it had been printed on thinner lighter paper and perhaps without the photographs. My wife and I will probably carry the guide with us when we go to Rome because it's really good and full of good information that will probably save us from testing some bad restaurants in order to find a few good ones. The information is really good but the printers of the book needed to keep in mind that there are new and difficult air travel regulations.

This book might seem to be, at first glance, a wonderful little guidebook to eating in Rome. But it doesn't take more than a glance at one or two pages to see that this is actually a book that cannot be put down. One little essay just leads to another. . . Porchetta! Porchettari! Onions in the sauce? Mint? And then there are the perfectly fabulous, evocative pictures. If I were lucky enough to be spending some time in Rome, I would certainly want to have this luscious guide with me.

I was lucky enough to be in Rome this spring with David Downie's "Food Wine Rome" in hand. With it, my husband and I were able to learn not only about which plain-looking but divine trattorias to go to but to understand the traditions guiding the quality of the food served. Our previous experience in Italian cuisine had been in Emilia Romagna, so it would have been easy (and unsophisticated) for us to think of Roman food as simple and simply good. But, like everything else in Rome, there is a layered and living history to the food, and the people who make and serve it. The pleasures of Rome--in restaurants, trattorias, bars, shops, bakeries--are all part of its united tradition. The photographs by Alison Harris show the places and people as they are--simply beautiful, each in its own way. The amazing thing about the writing in "Food Wine Rome" is that without being pedantic or fussy, David Downie imparts an enormous amount of information you can trust as being reliably researched and true. We've given this book to many friends and relatives. It's the perfect present for those going to Rome, in Rome, or remembering that beautfiul city.

This wining and dining (and a great deal more) guide to Rome came to me highly recommended by a friend, an old Rome hand who knows the city like the proverbial palm of his hand. The guide seems not to be corrupted by favoritism or "payola" but to be a book of serious appraisal by an American who's lived in Rome long enough and eaten out sufficiently ubiquitously to rank as an authority. Three of us have just returned from the city after a month there and we followed the author's advice for about six of his favorite eateries -- some I'd already known from years past and two altogether new to me. I know Rome from much exposure over the past 60 years-plus but hadn't been there for five years and so was curious. I can attest to the author's up-to-date exposure, his caution, frankness, and his evident expertise in matters culinary and oenophiliac.
If this is a book to be taken on a trip by plane, however, its format and weight(above all its weight) must be changed to be made available in an alternate version. Beautifully produced and bound, it simply weighs too much for a paperback intended as a handy pocketable vedemecum for present-day luggage restrictions and carrying about the city. To make it simple: print it on lighter "India" paper. That will affect the beauty of the glossy illustrations but it'll be worth it. I'd like to thank the author for his introduction to a trattoria I'd never entered before though it was forever on my way to the Piazza del Popolo. I have been made selfish enough not to want to divulge its name here other than to second the author's recommendation: (to paraphrase) if you can eat at only one trattoria during your visit to Rome, make it this one. That is very high praise indeed! We went there thrice; it was a revelation to this ancient sybarite.
One of my best Amazon purchases in many a moon.

Based on my experience with David Downie's Terroir guide to Food and Wine in Rome, I would buy a guide like this for any city I visit. We took this book with us last summer for a 10-day stay in an apartment by the Vatican--our fifth or sixth visit to Rome--and found consistently wonderful restaurants from its recommendations. I consider myself to have excellent "restaurant radar" and I speak fluent Italian, but a lot of the places that Downie sends you to are ones which you'd never find by accident because there'd be no particular reason to walk down that street. I can't imagine, for instance, what you'd have to be doing in order to stumble across "Antico Falcone," but it was the winner of our personal three-day "who makes the best carbonara?" challenge. It helped, of course, that we really, really love traditional Roman food and had no particular desire to eat anything else: most guidebooks will do their duty to Roman food by listing the same handful of places in Testaccio, and then inform you as to where to find a sushi bar or a vegan cafe. This book is all Roman, all the time. It is helpfully laid out by neighborhood, and if we were heading out sightseeing, we would simply pick whichever place in that area sounded most interesting. As other reviews have pointed out, the book goes way beyond restaurants, is gorgeously, intelligently written, and has lovely photos (not too many). I typically avoid heavy guidebooks, but I made an exception for this one, and it was worth it in spades.