Pigging Out at the Wild Boar Festival

If you've ever lived in Italy, then you know the fine people of the country love their festivals.  The words sagra or festa are found year-round, usually ending with a food product the city is celebrating.  In this month alone, I am aware of a chestnut festival, a polenta festival, and one of the largest chocolate festivals in all of Europe located in Perugia, Italy. Next month, I will hear of wine festivals as well as olive oil festivals.  Food is synonymous with Italian culture, which is why I proclaim myself a "Culture Junkie".

Yesterday, in a lovely hillside city 45 minutes outside of Rome called Castelnuovo di Porto, was the Sagra del Cinghiale. The Festival of Wild Boar.  

I was expecting vendor stalls upon vendor stalls badgering people to purchase their quality pork products over their nearby competitors.  Tube meat would be tossed overhead to eager customers in the back of lines. Wild boar prosciutto, salami, sausages, ragu, spreads, everything about the pig's cousin would be celebrated.  I even hoped there would be the lone oddball out there with a wild boar lollipop or gelato flavor, always the losing dessert on televised cooking competitions.  

But when I arrived at the small medieval city, all that was there in the main piazza, the town square, were several picnic tables and a long line leading to the pickup window of a temporary outdoor kitchen. It was a comforting mix of prison and grade school lunch service. I was given my tray along with a leaky bottle of draught white wine, sfuso. Then I asked for the three course Wild Boar meal.

Pappardelle in Wild Boar Ragu

Wild Boar cooked in a savory and spicy chocolate sauce

French Fries

The french fries were delicious.

And honestly the pasta dish was quite good.  But the boar in chocolate sauce would have been ok if they de-boned it better, in addition to serving it MUCH warmer.  Throughout many bites, I found myself pulling shards of bone from my mouth, not the most pleasant experience.  But for 12 Euro total, I got what I paid for. 

That's right, a man on stilts who made balloon animals.

By the way, for any doubters out there, boar in chocolate sauce is amazing.  The best version I have eaten is at a restaurant in Rome called:  

L'Asino D'Oro

Via del Boschetto, 73  00184 Rome, Italy

If you are unsure of eating wild boar, let one of my other articles change your mind:

http://www.made-in-italy.com/italian-food/news/pigs-porchetta-and-cinghiale-the-italian-wild-boar

The Holy Grail of Beers

Westvleteren is the name of the brewery in the Trappist Abbey of St. Sixtus of Westvleteren.  Serious beer lovers know the name because they have mystery appeal.  Most have heard of it, and most have never tried it. Since World War II, the abbey has prohibited the commercial sale of this beer.  The monks who reside at St. Sixtus create the beer solely to keep the abbey running, not for profit - the mantra of the trappist label.  So, sadly, they cap the amount they brew each year to a mere 60,000 cases each year.

Through a quick search online, one unreliable source suggested that Budweiser brews 2,500,000 cases each year. Much, MUCH more.

But in this comparison lies the age-old dilemma.  Which is more important: Profit or Quality?

I'm certain our ancestors from the early 1900s would say quality craftsmanship, regardless the product, was the most important business goal. I'm also certain today's generation would describe the goals of corporations and other major businesses quite alternatively. Oh trusted Capitalism, how you've changed your ways over the years.

Thankfully, St. Sixtus is concerned with one thing, making what many consider to be the world's best beer.

The story goes like this: You couldn't buy their beer anywhere. If you wanted a bottle of their beer, you would have to buy a case, and no more than one case, DIRECTLY AT THE BREWERY, located in Vleteren, Belgium, way up in the northeastern part of the country near the French borders. They made three different kinds with the names of Blonde, 8 and 12.  The bottles weren't labeled.  The only way to distinguish which beer you were drinking was from the color of the cap.   Oh, and if you wanted to buy a case, you also had to call and reserve one - their way to make sure it wasn't going to be sold commercially.

So on recent search for the Great Pumpkin at my favorite local pub in Rome, Open Baladin, I overheard a customer to my left speak enthusiastically in English.  When a person gets this excited over beer, I know there is something we can talk about.  So I waited for the right moment.  First I tried to find out what he and his friend were drinking without bothering him. I walked to the restroom and on the way back, I passed by the dark bottle... just some roman numerals on the front.  I still had no idea what the beer was.  Eventually, I had to know what he drank, so I interrupted him from his divine moment to find out he was drinking the holy grail of beers, Westvleteren 12.

How did he get this beer?  What is it doing with a label on it? What is it doing in Italy being sold commercially?

I had all these questions I wanted answered, but not the fluency to find out the truth.  So I bonded with my new friend, we talked beer and Rome and then he left. And I had to have my own. After all, I might never get to try this again.

And so I did. Many reviews have said it's just like the St. Bernardus Abt 12 and not deserving of the reputation. I found similarities, but I could absolutely tell the difference in quality, especially in the finish.  The Westvleteren 12 is a dark, high alcohol beer at over 10% with notes of dark fruits, slightly sweet with a hint of brown sugar or molasses, light but desirable fruit esters and the finish is smooth and lingering in the best of ways. Talk about one amazing Belgian beer.  St. Bernardus Abt 12 ends too strong, too overpowering to the palate in my opinion.  Yes, the Westvleteren 12 was worth spending the extra money and if you get the chance to try it, do not let the opportunity pass.

What do you think are the world's best beers?  Post a comment below to share your thoughts.

In Search of the Great (Roman) Pumpkin

To many Americans, October means Halloween.  To beerophiles, October means pumpkin  beer… the finest brews made with pumpkin, cinnamon and often dark brown sugar. 

This fine overcast Sunday in Rome, I decided to search for the Great Pumpkin in Rome.  I knew it wouldn’t be an easy task considering Italians don’t share the same squash-beer love ratios that Americans do. Nonetheless, I was ready for the challenge.

I decided to start with the place I figured would most likely have it… Open Baladin Roma.  I sat down at the bar immediately and looked over the multi-page menu.  If you are unfamiliar with my previous posts about this place: Open Baladin has about 46 varieties on tap. (See Best Places in Rome for Craft Beer and Autumn Beer Festival for more details.)  After flipping through the various categories, I finally found the object of desire.

Wait a minute… it’s from America?  Not what I was looking for guys.  I wanted Italy’s interpretation of the ultimate pumpkin beer.  I will have plenty of time in my future years to taste liquid pumpkin pie from the safety of my American home.  So I threw the menu on the bar top in a fit of anger.

The bartender looked at me, inquisitive at the least.

“Excuse me”, I asked in Italian, “but don’t you have artisanal beer made with pumpkin from Italy?”

The bartender turned around and searched through the mini-fridge behind him. Coming up empty-handed, he explained, yes, Baladin makes a pumpkin beer, aptly named Zucca, the word for squash in Italian, but they were out of stock. All I wanted was a taste of the good old days.  So I grumbled a few curses under my breath, fondly mixing the two languages I knew so anyone and everyone might know the pain I was then suffering, and I said, “I’ll take the Pumpking Ale from Southern Teir.

Pumpking Ale by Southern Tier at Open Baladin Roma

At that point, it didn’t matter what country made the beer.  I had pumpkin on the mind and it wouldn’t go away until I had my fix. So it arrived, a lovely light amber color with a fine cream head and I sniffed the pint to my heart’s content.  Aromas of pumpkin, cinnamon, dark brown sugar filled my nose making my mouth water instantly and a nostalgic feeling took over my mind. It’s like I’d just gone back to the U.S. to visit my family for Thanksgiving. More specifically, it was the moment I woke up in my old home, smelling of pumpkin pie at its last minutes of baking in the oven, ready to for dinner later that day. Buttery, sugary, spiced.

Then I took a sip.  At 8.5%, this beer packs a punch, but the brew master at Southern Tier has done an outstanding job of balancing the high alcohol to flavor ratio.  My beer-tasting palate is more advanced than some, and I could easily tell where that the alcohol was there, but it blended so perfectly with the rest of the overall taste, I knew this was a beer anyone would enjoy, especially beer-snobs.

The Translation: Pumpkin Ale - Now a typical American tradition, beer brewed with pumpkin and cinnamon.  PUMPKING ALE 8.6% - by Southern Tier - An amber beer that tastes of grain, somewhat sweet with notes of cinnamon.

The search still continues for Italian pumpkin beer.  Can Italy create a quality pumpkin brew in the likeness of U.S varieties? Will the love for this seasonal taste catch on internationally? Only more samples will tell.

Never Forget

It's stories like this that make me so thankful to be living here in Italy, to be living more in the moment rather than for the future. Financial planning has plagued Americans and likely much of the world for ages upon ages. Funny how I say "plague", like it's a bad thing.  Because obviously financial planning is NOT a bad thing.

It's actually quite good and we all know the key benefit of saving our hard-earned money... so we can use it later, so we don't have to work later.  When we are slower to get out of the car or getting out of bed, when we will someday be slower to answer the holographic image of our grand kids, what we used to know as a phone call,  projected from the ring of special bulbs coming out the center of our coffee table, the thing that will someday also be our holographic television set. All of that will be really nice when we are much older, as long as we have the money saved.  This is true.

Time for the reality check.

What if you die sooner?

A scary thought. An enlightening thought as well.  What if you worked so hard for so many years, saving all that money, never doing the things you wanted so you could do them in your retirement... but then fate catches up sooner than expected.  What are you going to think during that millisecond of time when your entire life flashes before your eyes, if it even does that? Have any regrets?

A very close friend of mine recently told me about a story. He was the best man for his friend's wedding a couple weeks ago. Everything was spectacular about the occasion, the couple couldn't be happier. After the special day, they headed to New Zealand for a truly fantastic honeymoon. Four days later, they got in a terrible car crash, killing the husband and sending the wife into a coma from which she still has not risen. Simply awful.

It's stories like that that make me thankful for everything I have.  That I have lived this long. That I have experienced so much that life has to offer. And that I'm not wasting the opportunities that are presented to my wife and I. It reminds us that life is short and no matter what, we should live it to its fullest, especially without regret.

My personal experience may not picture me as the poster-child for financial security, but I certainly can represent the other side who chose a riskier path. I'm not saying it's a better path, just riskier.  All I'm saying is the rewards are there, and they are quite different.

My friend told me words from the vigil about the newlyweds, that even though this tragedy came to them, at least this was the happiest time of their lives. Right now, I have two very close friends on their honeymoon in Aruba and I wish them nothing but the best during their celebration, and to be safe as possible. If you have friends or family traveling or just doing normal day-to-day things, don't forget to mention how much they mean to you. Don't forget to say you love someone even if it feels awkward. If you fight with your loved one, always end it making sure they know you love them. It's a morbid thought, but you never know when your time is up.  We can thank Kirsten and Kenneth for reminding us how important that is.  Religious or not, prayers and thoughts go to both of them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2206198/Newlywed-husband-killed-wife-critical-condition-honeymoon-crash-horror-New-Zealand.html

Just Another Stroll Down the Street

Imagine walking down a busy street in Rome.

The always busy street exiting from the Spanish Steps in Rome.

The tall, classically European buildings hover their upper level apartments over your head while the ground level is dedicated to everything commercial.  Store after store goes from phone dealer to clothier, pizzeria to coffee shop.  All the while, you are dodging the slower walkers in front of you like a game of Nintendo's Rad Racer avoiding cars.

During this exciting, real life adventure, you are with a friend or two, and they too are in the throws of the battle. Where you veer left, they must veer right, or they sneak tightly through a gap when you go around the moving object.  But when you get lost in friendly conversation, things can go awry. Laughter escapes your mouth and funny thoughts clog your mind. Right when you pass a clothing store entrance ... BAM!

"Oh my goodness, miss, are you OK?" You managed to stay on your feet.  The unlucky woman, however, fell hard to the ground. You don't wait for her to answer.

"I am so sorry!" You help the petite woman up from the ground, lifting her by the arm.

"I didn't see you at all!  I am so sorry!" So far she is speechless, likely fuming from being knocked over.

Then you look the mannequin in the face.

"Oh."

And the embarrassment sets in and you sneak glances around you to see if anyone saw the ordeal. Thank goodness! No one was watching... except the store manager.

Never ever has anyone looked at you more like a grumpy bulldog. Quickly averting the death stare, your face turned cherry red, you look at the mannequin, then the manager and quickly mutter, "Sorry," and walk away faster than you ever walked in known history.

This story was based on true events. Thankfully, it wasn't my true event, but a good friend of mine who lived out in Rome for a while. In any city, big or small, things like this can happen.

Have you ever done something embarrassing in public? Share your story.

Do NOT Eat at Flavio al Velavevodetto

This past week, my little blog celebrated its 50,000th page view within about a year and a few weeks from my original start date. Because there's a chance you have stumbled on my site as a tourist looking for great places to eat in Rome, I recommend that you do NOT eat at Flavio al Velavevodetto! 

This place has received too much attention from the foodie blogs of Rome and perhaps they've become too popular for the staff to handle a heavy workload.  My wife and I used to go there because it had a good name for the food, and because it used to be a Best Budget Eat in Rome with surprisingly good and affordable dishes. But things have changed. We are locals in Rome and we will never go back and neither should you.  There are much better restaurants in Rome that will be more attentive and serve better food than Flavio al Velavevodetto.

My wife and I brought our two friends there a week ago because this had always been our go-to place for great Cucina Romana, the authentic Roman pasta dishes. We honestly went about once a month for the past nine months. The past few times before, especially in August, we noticed the food was becoming less satisfactory than the beginning experiences. Portion sizes were dramatically smaller than usual, taste of food was just ok, pasta wasn't as al dente as usual, in our eyes, it began to fail in general. We remembered the food tasting much better.

The Amatriciana at Flavio al Velavevodetto used to be so good... used to be.

Every Italian takes holiday in August so I looked over the most recent negative experience thinking the usual chefs were on vacation, that the next time would be better. September rolled around, it was a Friday night so you know the normal chefs were there and we had our worst experience yet, so bad in fact that we will never again patron this restaurant while we live in Rome and will forever recommend that people skip it if they are considering it.

It was a mix of the service and food this night. Our server forgot to bring us menus. After 10 minutes of waiting, we asked him for menus. After 10 more minutes, we asked him again. Keep in mind, he saw us often as he ran past serving food or taking other orders. Eventually, we gave up and just took them from a nearby empty table.

Next came the water and wine request. We ordered white for our friends, red for us and a bottle of water while we looked over the menu. The water came out in 5 minutes, not bad. The white wine took an additional 10 or 15 minutes and he completely forgot to bring the other carafe of red wine that we requested. And don't worry, we definitely asked at least twice for our red wine. So, more waiting and more asking where it was, and more of his saying "just a moment" in italian. 

Then the food came out.  The fried food antipasti tasted good.  That much, I was at least pleased with. Once we finished, we waited about 30 minutes for the next part of our meal which was much too long. When the primi arrived, the pasta plates, it continued going down hill. Portions were average to small, the taste was just average bordering too salty, overcooked pasta instead of al dente, nothing too pleasing.  Then the secondi came out, well, one of them, because he said he only heard us order the one meatball plate. So ten more minutes wait while we watched our friend eat her secondi, then ours came out and it was another slap in the face: a severely reduced portion of potatoes than what our friend received.  Why serve six total pieces at all when most plates serve a pile of at least twenty. The person opposite with the same plate just laughed. We ordered this dish every time we went there and knew what it usually looked like and this was not up to their standard. So we decided to talk to the staff about the terrible service that night.

Eventually we voiced all of our complaints, told them we were frequent visitors of the restaurant and he added an extra half liter of wine which when he asked if we wanted it, we said no. But he didn't comp the first half-liter, he just went and refilled it even though we didn't want it.

Then we asked for the bill. By this time, we assumed he would want us out of there too, but no, he wanted us to sit there for another 15 or 20 minutes. Awful.  So he brought out the bill and he noted that  he gave our secondi as free. We thanked him and waited for him to come back several minutes later to pick up our money. 

But when we paid the bill and he came back with our change, which was supposed to be 2 euro, he brought back only a 1 euro coin, set it on the table and walked away immediately. We looked down at it trying to remember if we read the bill incorrectly. Nope, the whole table agreed we were owed 2 euro. All we could do was laugh at the terrible experience and how spiteful the server was for questioning his terrible service and the kitchen's issues. By that time, though, we'd had enough of the battle and left without asking for our extra euro back. Enjoy the tip, pal.

I hope Flavio al Velovevodetto does something to change its ways because it has supremely become worse over the last few months. HEED MY WORDS, visitors of Rome, go someplace else if want a good Roman food experience.

An Italian Amuse Bouche for VASGO's 50,000th!

AUGURI, AUGURI! Best Wishes! It's a Celebration!

In just over a year since I began truly writing posts on this blog, around this time in 2011, I had only a couple hundred page views according to my site's statistics.

This past week, you, my wonderful, beautiful and talented readers, helped the blog surpass its 50,000 page view!

In your honor, I'd like to give you a treat designed by just VASGO himself!

Photo Source: Francesca Claybrook Photography, LLC

I made up this Italian themed Caprese Salad style amuse bouche after seeing the most perfect round pasta, called Croxetti, in the store Eataly. It's like a pasta coin with an image stamped on it and was the perfect platform for the red, white and green treat.

The tiny, grape tomatoes looked so wonderful, I knew they would provide the bold red color I needed while functioning into the dish the way I wanted.  All I had to do was slice them thin as a coin and lodge them into the sides of the center. The basil was so green and aromatic, cutting them into tiny strips really kept the colors moving around the spool of pasta. The center is what made it all happen. Once I spotted the freshly made ricotta di bufala at the store, not just normal ricotta found everywhere but ricotta with superior bufala awesomeness, I knew the design instantly of my project from beginning to end.

Drizzled with the superior cold pressed-only extra virgin olive oil (better than hot-pressed) and next to a tiny pool of sweet, 30-year aged balsamic vinegar from a micro producer in Tuscany, this just VASGO version of a gourmet Caprese made all the work worth it.

And now..... The top Ten countries, by readership:

1. United States
2. Italy
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Brazil
6. Australia
7. Germany
8. Netherlands
9. Russia
10. India

And some honorable mentions within the last few weeks: France, Greece, Israel, Guam, Libya, Finland, Japan, and Spain!

Thanks to all my international readers!  All of you are wonderful people!