eating in italy

Do you have RS Italy guide book yet? If so, good. If not you should get it as it has lots of good information for what you are look for.

Yep, definitely get the RS Italy book. And there's tripadvisor.com which aggregates reviews so you don't end up relying on just one person's suggestion. Good luck.

Walk off anywhere from the main tourist attractions and then spin around two or three times with your eyes closed and then point your finger. Go that way until you find a restaurant with a fixed price menu. Doesn't matter if you don't know what it really is on the menu. Will be great. Have the house wine. Venice and Cinque Terre are tourist towns plain and simple. In Venice I just fold up my map and walk for 15 minutes. Wherever I end up is where I eat. Seems to be a fail safe technique. This system only works if you want to eat great local dishes in a rustic/family style place. My favorite place is Rome looks like it belongs in a strip mall in Florida (just kidding, sorta). I remember ordering something like a seafood soup in CT. What I got was this great big platter of mixed fish/shellfish on a bed of soupy tomato rice. Yummmmm So be prepared to be surprised even if you do think you know what you're ordering. Bon chance!

Karen:
I obsess about finding the "right" places but my philosophy remains unchanged, there is no bad food in ITaly. At least none I ate. :-> Sometimes the experience was enhanced by the people we met, the waiter we had, the ambience. Wonderful is so personal, but a few I would go out of my way to recommend: Milan: Da Bruno, not cheap, but for downtown Milano, good prices, excellent food. 95 euros, bottle of wine and vin santo included. Venice: Nono Risorto - nice garden setting, decent pizza for Venice, very inexpensive, good house wine. Also liked Ristoteca Oniga in San Barnaba. Siena: Trattoria La Tellina - no English spoken, very reasonable, I think 42 euros including wine for salad and pasta for two. Montalcino: Taverna Grappolo Blu - pretty spendy, but worth the splurge. 91 euros including modest priced bottle of wine and dessert. I think we had two courses each, plus dessert. Orvieto: Trattoria del Moro Aronne. Less than 60 euros for two, and as always, a bottle of wine included. Also liked Re Artu Pizzeria. Family business, good pizza (OK, I never met a pizza I didn't like except in Venice at Pizzeria Accademia), inexpensive. Rome: Roma Sparita in Trastevere for cacio e pepe; Cul de Sac for anything; Antica Taverna for super inexpensive decent Roman cuisine. Lots of locals there and the nicest owner. Cinque Terre: Il Pirata in Vernazza. I know some disdain this place but "the Pirates" are entertaining as all get out, and very good cooks. Not cheap, but at 72 euros for two, including wine, our CT splurge. If you are a foodie, pick up Fred Plotkin's "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler," and check out http://www.parlafood.com

Laurel, Trattoria La Tellina in Siena. Do they open Sunday? I checked out their web site, but can't find out.
Thanks

"there is no bad food in ITaly." There's plenty of bad food in Venice...

We found plenty of bad food throughout Italy (Venice included), usually when we were in too big a hurry to shop around. One of the best tips that RS gives is to order whatever the special is for the day. It will be fresh because it's made from what they got in the market that day. We hardly ever went wrong following that tip. You can also get great recommendations from the places you're staying. Don't just ask for "a good restaurant" as that is almost guaranteed to get you a recommendation to a pricey touristy place. Instead ask where the front desk person him/herself goes with friends or for a special occasion (depending on whether you want lower cost or a fancier place.) We've done this and ended up in restaurants surrounded by Italians instead of other tourists. Have a great time (and do buy the RS book).

Rome: Vecchia Roma. Outside dining. You're surrounded by Romans who come here to celebrate life. It's a wonderful experience. Ciao!

Not to be argumentative Michael but I stopped asking the guy at the hotel for restaurants recommendations a long time ago when I found out that a common practice in the big tourist cites is for the restaurants to give kickbacks to hotel people for sending people to their place. That's not to say that you'll get a bad meal by following their recommendations but I stopped asking out of principle. The last thing most of the locals will do is send tourists to eat at their favorite places. A few might but most will not.

High fives to Rik. Karen, check out Tripadvisor.com My previous pick, Vecchia Roma, was #800 out of 2400 places in Rome. Ouch. Tough house. Yelp.com has not gotten to Italy yet. Tripadvisor is the next best thing, IMHO. Personal reviews. Take the one star ratings of a 5 star place with a grain of salt. Then again, there is Michelin guide....

@Rik There's plenty of bad food in Venice...
@Michael Our experience was different. We found plenty of bad food throughout Italy (Venice included), usually when we were in too big a hurry to shop around. Lucky for us we didn't find that bad food. Our experience was that if you take reasonable care in choosing a restaurant away from the throngs, more good ingredients and careful preparation were evident than in the U.S. Never had an inedible meal, never unhappy, never ripped off, but we were pretty careful about our choice of establishments. (Well, Pizzeria Accademia was bad, but it sure is nice there on a sunny day!) @rick in Bellevue, we were at Trattoria La Tellina on a Wednesday. I was surprised when I Googled it just now to find they had a website in English. They were pretty low-key and filled with Italians in October during our visit. @Ted - uncalled for remark.

Karen, we LOVED Sostanza in Florence (still dreaming of the butter-poached chicken breasts). We also had a wonderful dinner at Antiche Carampane in Venice. Great cicchetti at Vini al Bottegon (aka Gia Schiavi) in Venice also. Our favorite place to eat in Rome is Roscioli - fantastic for both lunch and dinner.
If you haven't already, check out chowhound.com.

Find the more local neighborhood and see which place has the most people in it. Agree about finding bad food in Italy. There was this place in Florence that was so bad, both in food and in ownership, I seriously considered standing in front of it and warning others about it. Just off the main piazza, so it had lots of walkbys. But we love Il Latini in Florence, and though hard to find, definitely has lots of tourists coming to it. Most places tend to be pretty good, however. But man, do I ever remember the ones that weren't.

It's not argumentative to disagree if your own experience has been different. And there's no need to characterize a disagreement as a "smackdown." I was sharing my own personal experience. Not surprisingly, others will have different experiences. What I suggested has worked for us. The nice thing about this board is that we all bring different experiences and perspectives and that we respect that. No need for one view to prevail at the expense of another. Happy trails, everyone.

An excellent restaurant in Florence located near the Accademia is Mangiafuoco Bracerie (Via Guelfa, 24/R). It was mentioned by another contributor to this Helpline and we confirm that the food is great and reasonably priced, and that the owners (Barbara, Daniella, et al.) were very friendly and provided excellent service. We actually ate there twice in our 5 days in Florence last month! Another good restaurant in Florence is Acqua Al 2 (Via della Vigna Vecchia 40R). If you like pasta, they offer some sampler dishes that can be shared so everyone gets a taste. Interestingly, they also have restaurants in Washington, DC and San Diego. As for Milan restaurants, we very much enjoyed the Antica Osteria (Vai Camperio 12), which is listed in Rick's Italy book. This cozy, neighborhood place served excellent food (e.g., various risottos, pasta dishes, and pork chop Milanese - the original schnitzel), was reasonably priced, and had a friendly staff. We probably would have gone back there again if we had stayed longer in Milan.

Yeah, you have to watch out when someone tells you you "have to" do something. Despite their best intentions, what they're really wanting to do is take a great time they had and relive it through you. But different people have different tastes and the likelihood that you'll enjoy exactly the same as your friend is not 100%. I have a friend who keeps telling me I have to go to Ravenna and each time we go to Italy I prove her wrong. :-) (Not that there's anything wrong with Ravenna! It just hasn't fit into our itineraries yet.) I try instead to tell people what our experience was, and then they can decide if that sounds interesting to them.

My worst meal in Italy was at the restaurant I went to specifically because a friend back home told me I "had" to go there...she still raves about the place. I walked out of my way to get there and had a terrible night (long story...the food was pretty good, I did get sick later that night but I don't know if there was a correlation). My advice would be use the recommendations in the RS book as a guide and choose places that look good to you in the moment. Always use your own judgement, don't rely on others' preferences.

My first trip to Italy was in 1995. When I returned after 3 weeks after traveling from Milan to Rome I felt I had never had so many bad $30.00 meals (yes, that is at 1995 prices). In 2001 I went to Sicily for two weeks with Elderhostel and loved every meal I ate there. (In neither case did I use RS Guide Books). I am leaving for Italy again in 2 weeks and am taking the RS Italy guide with me this time.