After being in Paris for a few days, I felt right at home when we traveled back to Rome. Although I am certainly not even conversational in Italian, I can at least get myself through a meal fairly comfortably and understand the gist of basic conversations. During the few days that we spent in Rome, I had both positive and negative eating adventures in Rome with food allergies.
The first day we arrived, we found our apartment, dropped off our bags, then went in search of pizza. The majority of the time I have been living here the pizza in Italy has been safe with my food allergies. That afternoon we found a quaint pizzeria to sit down and eat lunch. The guy who was working understood my card, and my “Sono allergica…” broken Italian explanation. The pizza was good, and everything went well!
Pizza in Roma!
That night we went in search of dinner. My boyfriend and I dressed up for a nice night out, only to find it pouring rain outside. We tried to find a restaurant in the vicinity of where we were staying. We found one down the street that had a nice rustic charm to it. When I ordered and handed over my card, the waiter I could already tell had an attitude. He went back to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later and told me what I was having. I didn’t know what to say. There was no choice given to me. Instead he told me the only dish I could have, which I didn’t even want in the first place. We decided it was ridiculous that I had no say in what I could eat, and we got up to leave. The waiter told us he was glad we were leaving because he didn’t want to serve us anyway! We were astonished at the way he treated us.
Luckily, we kept walking and found a restaurant with amazing pizza! They were great with my allergies, and didn’t give us a hard time. The night ended well!
The following day we continued with our “street pizza” for lunch and our nicer dinners out. We dressed up again and went out, yet again, in the rain to eat at a restaurant that was recommended in one of our travel books. The ingredients were extremely fresh and they were great about my allergies. A success!
Successful dinner with pizza and salad!
Another pizza lunch day and the last dress up night before leaving Rome. We went to Campo de’ Fiori for a nice outdoor dinner. The restaurant was called Carbonara, so I decided to try their Carbonara pasta dish. They were also great with my allergies.
Our trip to Rome worked out well for the most part. Although we dealt with a difficult restaurant situation one night, everything ended up working out in the end.
