“I hope you’re hungry,” my guide, Dimitri, says. We’re strolling through Rome ’s Centro Storico, but in the opposite direction of the Colosseum and Pantheon. I’ve joined a food tour with The Tour Guy, searching for Rome ’s best traditional food.
For that, Dimitri says we need to cross the Tiber into the city’s first suburb: Trastevere. Like most vibrant hubs of nightlife and dining, Trastevere has deep working-class roots, but not ones embedded in industry and warehouses. This neighbourhood’s history is ancient.
In the heyday of the Roman Empire, it was home to fishermen and sailors who worked on the River Tiber and it became the refuge where Roman slaves lived as freemen after their servitude in the city. “No food is from Italy ,” Dimitri, says as we walk. He’s a Rome native, fiercely proud of the food and drink here, but he admits that most of Italy ’s most famous dishes are originally from elsewhere.
“Dried pasta from China via Arabia and pizza from Greece,” he adds. The Roman Empire’s vast tentacles across continents brought produce and culinary techniques from far and wide into Rome and shaped the identity of ‘Italian’ cuisine today. During this time, foreigners were not allowed to own property in Rome, so many settled across the river Tiber in Trastevere, creating a melting pot of flavours and cooking styles from the furthest fringes of the Empire.
Today, the narrow streets are still a hive of activity after sundown and you can feel t.
