Food Archives - Inside The Vatican

Mother Martha investigates restaurants, recipes and foodie culture in Rome and beyond

Meals in Monuments
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Meals in Monuments

Culture, Food, Magazine

Meals in Monuments

Stefano Navarrini Illustration By Mother Martha Since taking over this column in January 2014 from Friar Tuck, whose style was as expansive as his appetite(!), I’ve written about many Roman restaurants. Though all of Rome’s restaurants are now closed due to the virus, we are still hoping they will reopen soon, and we will [...]

Food for Thought
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Food for Thought

Culture, Food, Magazine

Food for Thought

Tables Near Raphael By Mother Martha Already an acclaimed artist, at the end of 1508 Raphael (1483-1520) left Florence for Rome, where he lived for the rest of his short life. He was invited to come by Pope Julius II (reigned 1503-13), probably at the suggestion of the architect Donato Bramante, who was working on St. [...]

Food For Thought
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Food For Thought

Food

Food For Thought

The entrance to the famous restaurant With a double article about the history of books in this issue’s “Of Books, Art, and People,” what more appropriate time to suggest a visit to Rome’s Caffè Greco! Here for more than 200 years the great minds of art, literature, and music have been meeting around [...]

Food For Thought
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Food For Thought

Food

Food For Thought

L'Orto Di Maramao, a "rural" oasis in central Rome During the Middle Ages, Campo de’ Fiori (“Field of Flowers”), today Rome’s oldest open-air fruit-and-vegetable market, was the commercial and touristic center of the city as well as the site of public executions. The most notorious was that of the Dominican poet, philosopher, mathematician and [...]

Food For Thought

We all know that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Indeed, Rome is a layer-cake of history built on seven hills, and it is appropriately nicknamed “The Eternal City” because visitors can see monuments and art from almost every period of her c. 2,700-year history: Ancient Greek, Republican Rome, Imperial Rome, Medieval (if not so much), [...]

Food For Thought

When I first arrived in Rome in 1972 as a young bride, there were no ethnic restaurants except French “Charlie’s Saucerie” between the Colosseum and St. John Lateran, Japanese “Hamasei” near Piazza di Spagna, and the “Cantina Tirolese” near St. Peter’s, a favorite with Cardinal Ratzinger before he was elected Pope. All three are still in [...]

Food For Thought

Salmon Roll At the time of this writing, a month after its opening, “Me Geisha,” founded by Italian-American businessman Giuseppe Tuosto two years after his successful restaurant with the same name at Via Roma 59 in Salerno, is probably still Rome’s newest restaurant. Just off Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, next door to the Chiesa [...]

Food For Thought

Panettone translates as “a large loaf of bread.” Actually, it’s a large sweet bready cake with various creamy fillings, raisins and candied fruits; its dome is covered with toppings of different flavors. Panettone’s origins probably date back to the Roman Empire: ancient Romans sweetened a type of leavened cake with honey. During the Renaissance, it became [...]

Food For Thought

Roman to the core, Aldo Fabrizi (1905-1990) was an Italian actor, director, screenwriter, and comedian, best known for his role as the heroic priest in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City and as a partner of the Neapolitan actor Totò in a number of successful comedies. Aldo’s exuberant younger sister, Elena, known as “Lella,” also had a [...]

Via Monte Del Gallo

The exterior of Fragrance Hotel St Peter. For many years, Friar Tuck and I were neighbors on Via Monte del Gallo, a narrow, quiet, residential street, which winds uphill from the Italian State Railway’s St. Peter’s station at the beginning of Via Gregorio VII to the Vatican-owned, spartan, rabbit-warren hotel Casa Tra Noi (www.hotelcasatranoiroma.com). [...]

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