Americans have a thing about Italian food. I think it’s largely because many American grandmothers from the past century came from Italy. But it also might have to do with the quality of Italian cooking -- or the wonderfully constructive force of celebrity television chefs.

The local cucina romana specialties, in all their offal variety, are one splendid thing. But even better is the fact that over 2500 years Rome has perfected the technique of sucking the surrounding countryside dry of everything worthwhile, from copper to cherries to organic cream. The chestnut “all roads lead to Rome” is better translated “full trucks go to Rome”.

I, for one, dote on the simplest food in Rome, especially the local vegetables, meats, and cheese.

The salad greens, in particular, are flavorful. At home, I’ve been running out of my three current favorites -- rucola, arugula rabe (sprouting flowers), and peppercress -- by the end of the week, because the only place I get them is from the weekend farmers’ markets. Here in Rome, the rucola is easily as good as at home, and there is a lot of chicory called cicoria that I’ve never had before -- sort of a sharper version of dandelion greens.

Plenty of the region’s pasta dishes get their tang and their saltiness from the classic local cheese, pecorino. Most pecorino romano is made in Sardinia, where sheep-grazing land is cheeper. But you can pay somewhat more for a lot of pecorino romano from Lazio as well.

(No one comes to Rome for local wine. There’s plenty of it, but the nearby suppliers in places like Frascati are not as a group supplying the world’s best table wines. They probably never have had to: as long as it’s drinkable, there are millions of Romans and still millions more among the pilgrims who will drink it. Still, the trucks come in from Basilicata, the Alto Adige, and Sicily all the time. And even tiny shops like Roberto Polica’s Antica Caciara, around the corner, have a few shelves of carefully chosen, eminently drinkable wine.)

Gastrotourism is obviously old news to the Romans, since they have been putting out the checked table-cloth to hungry people for a long time. But Rome is also clearly very inwardly focussed in the way it approaches the world of food. Bar after bar, and food stand after food stand, and market after market, stocks essentially the same things. The variety is largely in the quality and the particular selection that day.

In the higher brackets, there are some highly fashionable places, like  mozzarella bars that offer a diverse selection of fresh mozzarella cheeses and dishes based upon them.

There are also some of the truly global cuisines: down the block from us is a felafel- and shwarma place that actually has a range of Lebanese home cooking. There are the kind of pan-Han places, mostly Cantonese, that abound in pretty much every city in the world. I haven’t heard many positive things about them, although a select few get good reviews.

Parts of Rome also have some amount of cooking driven by immigrants -- there are Ethiopian and Somali places around the city, although they seem rarely to make the guide books.

And Rome is full of good ingredients. I have no doubt that some of the sushi bars are outstanding.

All of this is more than a little shocking for someone from one of the places that are described as “without an indiginous cuisine”. At home, I don’t think I’d know what to describe as a local cuisine. It’s certainly not California cuisine. Maybe it’s a Mission-style burrito. But that’s too clearly a development on so much northern Mexican cooking that it’s hard to call it the native cuisine of northern California. I’d like to think that Judy Rodgers or Alice Waters had created an indigenous cuisine, but that would be like pretending that the BMW z8 was the car for every family.

While fountain hunting in the part of the centro storico called Ponte (which it is full of), Alaina said, “Hmm. I think we’re all getting grumpy and peckish. There’s this bakery in via della Scrofa, and the first time I went there it was absolutely packed with Romans. I bet they make a mean pizza.”

And they do. Roman pizza al taglio is usually thicker than the made-to-order round pizzas, and the dough is prepared differently. But it’s ubiquitous, and I’m beginning to understand that the best is made in bakeries.

Notes on Roman transport

Every guidebook in English that I have encountered is confusing about paying for transportation in Rome. Here are the five points that I wish someone had told me. The Roman system is eminently simple -- simpler than any urban system I’ve used outside Asia. You buy one pass, and it’s good for just about everthing. The system is also affordable and comprehensive.

- The easiest place to buy transit passes is at a tobacconists’ shop. These are all well marked, and even if it looks like you are getting lost in a den of lottery games (you are), the person behind one of the cash registers will be able to sell you what you need -- probably a carta settimenale or an abonnemento mensile. Buying tickets from machines is possible in a few places, but I have rarely found ones that worked. 

- If you are under 10 and you are travelling with a paying adult, you travel for free with no ticket. This fact is explained clearly in the legal notice at the end of  busses and tram cars. If you are a military veteran of classes I - VII, the same rule applies.

- The weekly-, monthly-, and annual tickets all apply to all buses, local trains, trams, and metro from the northern Rome suburbs out to the beach, except to Fiumicino airport. All the printed guides, including the ones in Italian, are confusing about this. It is extremely rare for a tourist to feel like they are taking a trip in Rome but to need a ticket other than a standard weekly pass. Note that destinations like Tívoli and the Castelli Romani are outside the urban zone, but train tickets to them are cheap.

- Single tickets are rarely worth bothering with if you are staying in Rome more than a few days. A 3-day tourist pass is currently €11. A 7-day pass is currently €16, and it has been since 2005. A pass for a calendar month is currently €30 for one person. Although single €1 tickets might turn out cheaper for your 4-day trip, having a valid pass in your wallet means you can always jump on a bus -- you might just want six blocks of air-conditioning.

- All tickets need to be stamped in a validation machine on the bus or tram once: the first time you use them. 7-day and monthly passes also must have your name and birthday written on them. Hint: the word cognome means surname. Once your pass is stamped, you can put it in your wallet or purse until an inspector asks to see it or you need it to enter the metro. You don’t need to present it except during spot inspections. 

I’m sure there are frequent articles in Italian papers about secret transport gems or cautions. Every time we take a bus or train, I learn something new.

It helps, for example, to know the names of major streets near your destination, because Roman bus signs list stops by the street along which the bus is travelling, not by the cross street. This is unusual. Most cities follow the same model as New York or Chicago, naming stations the cross street, or they use the London or Tokyo model and name the place or neighborhood.

Some bus lines and some tram lines have new equipment, a lot of it electric or natural gas powered (I had to ask Alaina to understand that BUS A METANO was not a bus to a place called Metano, but just powered by natural gas), and some of it with air conditioning. The standard commuter trains that run around the city from Fara Sabina to Fiumicino airport are all air conditioned.

The two heavy metro lines, linea A and linea B, are mostly well peopled, frequent, and somewhat scruffy. The more suburban lines, including linea E through the fancy Parioli neighborhood, can feel a little threatening. Alaina doesn’t like these lines at night.

Express busses have only a few stops. The 40 from the Vatican to Termini station is popular, and from our apartment we have the H, also to Termini. I have no idea why about five different lines have letter designations rather than numbers. Not all of them are express lines. It’s good to make sure you know that one of the stops will be near your destination. Otherwise, take a local.

There are busses that run all night. They have their own numbers and routes.