dine•o•crat

We were lost, hopelessly, almost irretrievably lost. My friend from California had been driving us around for several hours, all three of us having gotten very little rest after our arrival in Rome. At that point, we had been up almost 48 hours with hardly a wink on the planes we took. We were searching for Civitella in Val di Chiana, a tiny little town in the hills above the Tuscan city of Arrezzo and it was a task more difficult than we thought. The directions we received were not very clear and it didn't help our cause that the signs around this area of Italy weren't very clear, either. Once you leave the city, the Tuscan towns pretty much all look the same. Pretty, but identical. And even when we stopped to ask for directions, the language barrier was worse than we had anticipated. Hours later, our Italian friend finally decided to meet us at a nearby hotel, easier to find than the bed and breakfast in which we were to stay. By the time we checked in to Antico Borgo—the B...

Salumeria Roscioli in Rome is a narrow restaurant in a chic area of the city, on the Via dei Giubbonari. After window shopping at the trendy boutiques along the street, we headed to the restaurant for our meal for the night. You enter through a deli/salumeria/wine bar with an amazing selection of products, and arrive in the back where there are small tables for dinner. There's also a downstairs, in the wine cave, with a few slightly bigger tables for larger parties. Flawlessly presented with deceptive simplicity, the food was quite good. There were, however, no surprises with the ingredients or preparations, though both were first-rate. What you will get, however, is a breathtakingly deep wine selection and incredible variety of salumi, as well as the precise but simple cooking of the chef. Prego? Below, two views of some of the the wines and liqueurs for sale in the vineria. If you have a table against the wall, most likely one of these monsters would be above your ...

One of the surprises of the Italy trip, Antico Arco , is a restaurant in the Trastevere region, in an area called Janiculum Hill, which turned out not to be one of the seven hills of Rome as we were told, but close. Nonetheless, it affords views of the city if you decide to walk around and it's a great setting for a restaurant. If you're staying in the center of Rome, the only way to get here is via taxi (or car, as the rare touristic case may be). You wind through narrow streets, basically at the edge of a hill on, at least for me and my companion, an unexpectedly scenic drive. There are a few monuments, fountains and one of the oldest churches to explore here, something we didn't have too much time to do at night. At the restaurant, the staff was very welcoming and friendly, and the old exterior belied the tastefully modern interior we walked into. The meal was quite commendable: solid cooking with little twists to keep it a bit exciting, featuring first-grade ing...