Italian food

When I got back to Albania, Jan, my Peace Corps mom, asked me what the best food moment of my trip was. This really got me thinking about the food that I had in Italy and actually how disappointed I was. Here's the problem: while I know that there is truly incredible food in Italy, I just didn't get much of it because it was way out of my price range. As we've already established, everything was really expensive. First, unlike on other trips, I was unable to conference crash, couch surf or be a groupie on the tour bus, so we had to pay every night for a hostel. I am really proud of myself for my hostel finds, actually. They were all clean and well managed and none of them tripled in price for the holidays. But staying in the hostels meant that about half my daily budget went to that and that we had to eat out almost every meal (the hostel in Florence had a restaurant downstairs that we ate at once and the place in Venice served breakfast of a roll and juice/coffee). I found that there were basically two categories of food available to us that we could afford: sandwich/pizza/street food and mediocre sit-down fare. Of the two types, I actually enjoyed the fast food more in general- the sandwiches were made with really good fresh ingredients and the pizzas were really good (the cheese makes all the difference!). What I was most disappointed with was the standard sit down places. We went to several places in which a plate of pasta cost an average of 7-12 Euros ($11-18) and was no better (and sometimes worse) than what I could make at home. I worked in an Italian chain restaurant for 3 years in which the prices were pretty comparable - I didn't think I would ever say this, but the food at the MacShack was much better. Our biggest disappointment was in Venice on New Years Eve. We went to Murano Island to look at the glass there and by 4:00 were starving. It seemed that most of the places were closing down, so we ducked into the first place we saw that was open. The staff was anxious to get out and were not happy to have last minute customers and so hovered over us as we ate. On top of that, the food was terrible! I don't think I have ever paid more for a plate of bad spaghetti. I won't say that I love the food in Albania most of the time, but at least it's cheap!

I don't want to make it sound like we never ate well. I found several surprise moments of goodness, like falafel in the Jewish Quarter of Rome, Suppli (Roman rice balls sold for 1 Euro), wonderful salad at a cafe in Venice and the food highlight of the trip: wine tasting held at the hostel in Florence.

Since we only had a few days in Florence and knew we wouldn't have time to go into the wine country, when we saw that the hostel was having a wine tasting we decided to go for it. Both Connie and I were really glad that we did as it was one of the best parts of the trip. One of the hostel staff (who is in culinary school) and a wine maker from the nearby Chianti region were our hosts. We tasted 5 wines (all excellent) and paired with simple fresh foods like cheese, meat, bread, honey and olive oil. We learned how to smell the wine and taste it slowly, about the wine making process and the differences between the different varieties. It was great.

Like I said, I know that good food is available in Italy, but unfortunately most of the affordable places in touristy areas are overpriced and awful. I need to go back to Italy when I have the money to really enjoy the food there.