Food and drink in Italy

No museums or sights?
Going there just to eat and drink?

@Roberto, we will definitely be visiting many museums and sites. If you have any suggestions please let me know. I asked specifically about food and drink because for me it's harder to research.

I travel on a budget, too. I always rely on Rick's Italy for great restaurant suggestions. His descriptions and prices help me stay on budget while eating well.

In Napoli, L' Antica Pizzeria da Michele is world-renowned but y may need to wait to get in. The city is the birthplace of pizza, so you could hardly go wrong anywhere in town.

For a cooking class in Sorrento, look at Mami Camilla's (www.mamicamilla.com). We stayed at their B&B in 2013.

What kind of food?

If you are researching pizza, a friend of mine does a really good pizza blog. There are other blogs for general food too, like parla, although I find her suggestions a bit expensive for what I want.

We all work to a budget, and we all have different ideas of what affordable means. What is my affordable may be your really cheap, or maybe your way too expensive. What does affordable mean to you?

Some of the most affordable food in Italy is "street food" or "food trucks". Check out http://www.cibodistrada.it/ and google the cities you're staying in. (You'll need to use google chrome to translate the pages to english) I'm sure you'll find some delicious and affordable places to eat.

My husband and I really enjoyed porcini mushroom pasta while we were in Rome (several restaurants make it).

We just got back from a week in Rome and have a few recommendations for you. If you are looking for a food 'must' then you can't go wrong with the Twilight Trastevere Tour given by Eating Italy Food Tours. It was a 4-hour tasting tour of some of the best traditional foods Trastevere has to offer from fine dining restaurants to take-away food shops to traditional delis. We were completely stuffed by the end and it was hands down the highlight of our week. I wouldn't say it is a budget option but you won't regret splurging on this experience if you can afford it. Eating Italy has a few cooking classes too.

Try Forno Campo di' Fiori for a great take away lunch. They are at one corner of Campo di' Fiori and are famous for their pizza slices.

I also highly recommend Da Enzo, a little family owned trattoria in Trastevere (about a 10-15 min walk from Campo di' Firoi/Piazza Navona). You will have to make reservations well in advance (think weeks), and they are closed on Sundays. Look them up online and give them a call, they speak English very well.

Riscioli is a salumeria just a few blocks from Campo di' Fiori that has a tiny restaurant but great food. I notice their website is offline at the moment but we made our reservations through an online form and they replied within 12 hours.

For gelato, I fell in love with Gelateria del Teatro, (Via dei Coronari, 65/66) about 5 min walk from Piazza Navona but well worth it. We went out of our way just to get our last gelato here. You can really tell the difference between the real stuff and the big fluffy mounds of 'gelato' for the tourists. Go looking for the real thing and you'll understand. Google 'best gelato in Rome' and you'll get lots of articles about it.

We ate pizza at Da Baffetto (recommended in Rick's Book) and loved it. You could taste the wood smoke in the crust. It was packed with locals by 8pm and was doing a bustling take-away business too. It is right between Piazza Navona and Campo di Firoi but right now they are doing some road construction right in front if it so it took us a few tries to find at first but we were really glad we tried.

One sign that gelato is likely to be good quality is to look for an 'artignale' sign. this means it is made using traditional methods on the premises.