A Rainy Sunday

It’s rare to have a string of rainy days in Rome, but that is what was in the forecast this weekend. Because it is my father’s birthday on Monday we decided to do what we did last year and go to mass at the church where my parents got married in 1960, San Giovanni a Porta Latina. We easily parked outside the church and sat in the same place we did before, and the children’s choir was just as sweet as we remembered. I even took the same panoramic view of the interior with my mother sitting to the left as I had last time. 

Our moods lifted by the beauty of the church and the familiar mass and music, we drove to the nearby neighborhood of Ostiense to have brunch at our beloved Marigold (I previously wrote about our first lunch at this wonderful new restaurant run by a husband and wife team). We got there just in time to score a spot at the long central table on the end. We got to chat again with both Sofie and Domenico, even though it got very busy, and had our brunch favorites,

 
eggs benedict and avocado toast, while enjoying the pleasurable vibe of the international clientele. We bought some chocolate chip cookies, seeded rye bread, and granola to take home in a new blue Marigold tote bag.

The rain let up as we made our way back to the car, and driving along the Tiber we admired the green sycamore trees and the familiar buildings as we drove back north towards home. Then my mother wondered if our florist might be open, so we turned right at the piazza and sure enough his stand was full of buckets of pink peonies and potted hydrangeas.

As he wrapped our flowers he gave some extra fully opened short stem peonies to my mother for free, because that’s just the kind of wonderful generous man he is, and she delighted in arranging them when we got home. Usually our flower market day is Tuesday, but it’s also nice to have fresh flowers on a rainy Sunday just as Tuesday’s peonies were starting to fade. 

Then we napped. Some days it is the simple pleasures that bring the most profound feelings of gratitude. 

How We Eat Out

Just about a year ago I wrote a post about food, and I am happy to report that we still love to eat minestrone, risotto, roasted vegetables, and a savory tart on a regular basis. When we crave a good grilled steak, we have a local place that serves up a perfect Fiorentina of Chianina beef that is nearly as good as what we often order when in Tuscany. Other than that, we rarely eat out. For one thing, the late-night dinners that Romans are accustomed to just don’t work with our schedule; for health reasons we try to eat our main meal at noon and stay light in the hours before going to sleep. The other problem is I like to cook and use the local fresh ingredients from my favorite markets because everything just tastes so good. In restaurants I am frankly disappointed, thinking, “I could make something better than this.”

Because of my love of the Tenuta San Carlo and the awesome rice grown there, thanks to social media, I stumbled on the story of Domenico Cortese and Sofie Wochner, a husband/wife team who just opened a wonderful new restaurant near the trendy food neighborhood of Testaccio in Ostiense. Last Friday, with our good friends David DesChamps and Bennett Singer, in town to do some more work on their documentary film project, we had lunch at Marigold Roma. Parking was a logistical nightmare, but I dropped my mother off and they had scored a table, and then my NYC parking prayer* worked -- I found a spot not too far away.

Let me say at the outset that I could tell I was going to absolutely love everything about this restaurant. The space is

intimate but not too small and crowded, spare and Scandinavian in its aesthetic choices but not cold and corporate like Ikea. Our server, Doris, was so warm and spoke perfect English, making us feel instantly welcome. Excited by the menu and specials, we decided to start with some small plates to share, and then each picked a different course to follow. The suggested red wine was phenomenal.

 

Tiberi “l’Rosso” Umbria IGT 2017 
Gamay Perugino, Ciliegiolo. Acciaio/Stainless Steel
An expressive light-bodied red with fresh red fruits, spice and pleasantly rustic.

I hardly know where to begin with my rave review of every

bite of food we ate. My fork travelled around the table to sample creamy stracciatella cheese layered with artichokes and hand-torn croutons, a perfect vegetable puree soup, a crunchy inventive salad of puntarelle and fennel with toasted hazelnuts and a bit of grated pecorino, vegetable quiche, a roast veal sandwich on Sofie’s sourdough with mustard aioli that my mother thoroughly enjoyed, and then

two spectacular warm plates, one with sausages and lentils, the other a beef stew or spezzatino with just a hint of heat that lingered in your mouth. For dessert we shared Sofie’s carrot cake and a brownie with our espresso coffees.

But what really made this meal special, aside from our good friends, the warm environment and staff, the delicious food and wine, was the opportunity to talk with first Domenico, and then Sofie, and discover that they were every bit as wonderful as I somehow knew they would be, and that our shared love of Tenuta San Carlo meant there was instant simpatia between us. They seemed truly happy to be doing the hard work of running a new restaurant. We took home the seeded rye bread and a scone, which my mother had later that day with her afternoon tea.

This was that rarest of gourmet experiences – inspired. So of course I picked up Maria’s hand-cut puntarelle the next day and a fresh fennel at my regular market in Flaminio, plus some hazelnuts from my organic store and dressed Domenico’s salad with my lemon garlic dressing. The next day I made my Caesar Salad dressing and used the rye bread to make garlic croutons. We had rye bread toast with avocado and eggs for breakfast, and the second time I made Domenico’s salad for lunch I added in some fresh shrimp. After a rainy weekend we craved some stew so I bought veal for spezzatino and added peas to the usual combination of

carrot, celery, onion, and potato with some tomato puree. I also made a batch of my banana oat raisin cookies but with almonds instead of walnuts, and some dried peaches.

We went out to Marigold and ended up bringing a bit of Marigold home with us. We can’t wait to go back.

*Jesus, Nana, and Manny, please find me a place to park. (This was passed on from a friend, and always works, especially if you’ve been looking for a while and then say the prayer).