New Foods

Charles has a saying when it comes to eating out at restaurants:

"I only expect it to be the best meal of my life."

And it's true, we do expect a lot from restaurants, because if we (read Charles) can make it better at home, why are we wasting our money? More often than not we are let down by restaurants, because it seems that most people don't have the same expectations that we do, and restaurants often receive praise undeservedly.

In Italy it's the same, and in fact it may be worse, because people tend to overpraise mediocre restaurants because things always look brighter when you are half drunk on the wine and enjoying your holiday. Because of past disappointments with highly praised restaurants, we have become even more critical when we eat out, and we are extremely distrustful of our guidebook's restaurant recommendations.

Wednesday night we decided to suck it up and try Cul de Sac, a popular restaurant in Piazza Navona that is always crowded with patrons. We'd heard nothing but rave reviews, and this restaurant is featured in several Italy/Rome guidebooks. We wanted a nice dinner, so we decided we'd give it a try.

I am happy to report that we not only completely enjoyed everything that was served to us, but we also tried two new dishes that were nothing less than outstanding. The first was pate. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's the liver of an animal cooked (I'm not sure of the specifics) until it's a paste that you spread on bread as an appetizer. It was unbelievable! We tried three different kinds, and only one of which we actually knew the translation for. We just sort of picked at random, so I'm not even sure what animals' livers we were eating!

Second, we tried escargots! That's right, snails. I've always been a little weirded out by the idea of eating snails, because I always feared the texture would be odd. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The texture is comparable to shrimp, and this particular dish was prepared with a basil pesto that was so fresh and tasty it left us wishing for more little snailies to devour.

In total, it was a delicious meal, with great wine and good conversation (we met the owner and his family and were able to exchange a few pleasantries in our new and improved Italian). Our faith in restaurants has been renewed, and now we have two new delicacies to add to our repertoire.