For our first venture here in Rome, we knew we wanted good Italian pizza. Yet there are so many pizzerie around it can be difficult to choose. We made our mistakes--stopping in at one or two touristic type places. The pizza is always okay, don't get us wrong, but these places were not quite what we were looking for. We even began to second guess the Roman restaurant scene in general. We wondered, is it really as good as we remember it to be? We've worked so hard on our own home cooking over the last few years, maybe it won't seem as incredible as it once was.
Then we found it: a perfect, delicious, scrumptious, beautiful, unique pizzeria. On the Vicolo del Bologna there is a place, which winds just off of Piazza Santa Maria, a famous square in the neighborhood Trastevere. This pizzeria is called Dar Poeta, meaning "From the Poet" in Romanesco. Don't let its tiny street and wobbly tables on uneven cobblestones fool you, it really is some of the best pizza we've had in Italy. And don't let that 1995 birthdate (see the photo) fool you either. It is a relative newcomer in a city whose restaurants often boast anywhere between 50 and 150 years of family ownership and service, but it is still worth the sometimes long lines and trip into Trastevere.
We of course started with a half caraffe of the house red, costing us a mere 4 euro. There were a lot of tempting edibles on the menu, including a long list of bruschette that we're sure we will delve into another time (a plate of moscardini fritti and an espresso each less than an hour before prevented us from trying some of the bruschette--we wanted to be sure we had room for the pizza!).
Peter ordered the pizza amatriciana, a translation of a famous Roman pasta staple. We had tried making this pizza back in the States on one snowy night, thought maybe we'd invented it even. It has a base of zippy tomato sauce, pancetta, and pecorino romano. You might think it misses the comforts of drippy mozzarella, but the pizza amatriciana is not at all lacking.
Marie ordered the pizza Dar Poeta, specialty of the house. It was topped with mozzarella, zucchine, garlic, spicy peperoncini, and ciauscolo. We weren't quite sure what ciauscolo was, but found out it is a soft, pork sausage made mostly of the pork shoulder, hams, and belly, seasoned with vincotto and garlic.
We of course split the pizze and shared. The two pizze balanced each other nicely: The amatriciana was rossa and the Dar Poeta was bianca. As you can see from the photos and descriptions above, the toppings are clearly chosen well, but the crust is equally sublime. It is definitely rippable (a quality we always look for in a top-notch crust), with a light saltiness that lingers on the tongue, but is not anywhere near overbearing. It also has a light char signifying the wood-burning oven. The crust at Dar Poeta is thicker than the typical Roman pizza, somewhere between Roman and Napolitan styles.
So how is it that Dar Poeta's pizza is soo good? It's more than just a wood-burning pizza oven--really that's what all true pizzerie have. We had to do a little research to figure out some kind of an answer to this question because it just isn't enough to say, "Well it's just that damn good." We found out that first, the Dar Poeta chefs allow their dough to rise in a fridge for a full 48 hours. This length of maturation allows the acetic and lactic acids to reach their full potential, releasing not just agreeable aromas and flavors, but high digestibility, too. As Tuco from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly would say, "It is very good for the digestion." We also found that Dar Poeta's choice of ingredients makes it stand out. There are of course, typical Italian pizze, but those more interesting like the ones we chose, too.
Or maybe it's just that damn good.
Eating at Dar Poeta was both a thrill and a relief: the pizza was delicious (have you started salivating after looking at those pizza pics?) and the Roman restaurant scene really is as good as we remember it to be! Dar Poeta truly awakened our taste buds, serving as a reminder to us that there is so much more to explore here.
Check out the website: http://www.darpoeta.com/ (Available in both Italian and English. The song on the website really is great, too!)
