The woman in the next table at Antico Arco was complaining about everything. "The cheese sauce is too salty," she whined. Poor thing: the "cheese" in cheese sauce should have been a clue. "The wine is too dry," she ventured to say about the red she and her boyfriend were having. Bring on the white zinfandel! "After this," I told my dining companion, "we need to walk around the area to remove the aura of the hippie backpacker who got lost in this nice restaurant." Fortunately, there was the warm air of the late Roman summer up in the hills of the city that could burn off anything. Trastevere, in the Janiculum Hill region near one of the famed Seven Hills of Rome, lights up at night with a mysterious and certainly more pleasant aura, one which must be unique to ancient cities. To walk around the area is to experience almost exactly the steps people took from hundreds of years ago, if those people heard a bunch of little minicars whizzi...
eating around asia and beyond.