It had seven stops, and all of them were good. At the end of the tour, our guide, Luca, asked each person for his/her favorite stop.
I didn't have an answer. I gave one, but I'm not sure it was right. They were all my favorite.
Before this tour, we were more than a little disappointed with the food we had eaten in Rome. That took a 180 over our four-hour dinner.
And Luca, 36, was easily my favorite tour guide of the entire honeymoon. We could be friends, ya know if he didn't live in Rome. He was informative and hilarious.
"You've seen those obnoxious people driving around town on those scooters?"
Tour group: Yes!
Luca: Good. I'm one of em.
Luca: The man who runs this next shop is very proud of his food. So let's be respectful. Ok?
Tour group: Ok.
Luca: Yeah, tell him you hate his food. It'll be great.
The first stop was for an appetizer. Ham, which was the only thing I didn't eat all night, and burrata cheese, which is made with leftover mozzarella curds and cream. It's like butter but way, way better. I put it all over my bread and scarfed it down.
This was our first stop. Luca says de Enzo was featured in The New York Times, doesn't open until 7:30 and is booked a week ahead of time.
But as part of the tour we got a little taste of their food at 6:45. Nicole bought a bottle of their own olive oil.
Stop number 2 was at Spirito di Vino, which has a wine cellar that is intact from B.C. times. The owner's aren't allowed to touch the walls because it's historically protected.
Here's Nicole telling her mom that she's in a really old wine cellar. The dish at this stop was Julius Caesar's favorite, lean pork mazio. It was served in soup form as we still had five stops to go. Excellent.
We had one of the 7,000 bottles of wine on hand, and I drank my first and only glass of wine of the trip. While we were drinking, Luca, who revealed he is an aspiring actor, did a full impression of a wine connoisseur's process of tasting wine. Pretty funny.
Our third stop was our first dessert, three types of cookies at this family-run bakery called Innocenti in the heart of Trastevere. The cookies: lemon-filled butter, brutti ma buoni (ugly but good) and dark chocolate dipped.
All three were good. The oven they were cooked in was installed in the 1960s. This is where you say, "Damn, they don't make em like they used to."
Luca and the owner Stefania seemed to have an almost mother-son relationship. There's a large picture of Stefania's mother working in the store on the wall, and Stefania says if Luca becomes a famous actor, she'll put his picture next to it.
Then it was onto a meat market called Antica Norcineria to taste some cheeses (gorgonzola: not so good; and pecorino Romano: pretty good) and porchetta, moist boneless pork on sandwich bread.
This is what I answered when asked what stop was my favorite. I almost said stop the tour, let's just get the full meal version of porchetta.
The fifth stop was for street food, and I was glad we didn't skip the rest of the tour for more porchetta. We had two samples of street food: suppli and pizza.
Suppli is a fried rice ball with mozzarella in the middle.
Then it was pizza marinara, just marinara, tomato and oregano. No cheese, no meat. Luca says pizza is best when kept simple. That's also my philosophy.
There was an extra piece leftover, and Luca asked who wanted it. After a few seconds of silence, I said, "Send it over."
Luca then said it was time for dinner. Dinner? We all said to each other. There was a ham and cheese appetizer, a pork soup, a pork sandwich, a rice ball, pizza and cookies. And now it's dinner time?
We had three pasta dishes at Enoteca Ferrara: gnocchi, spinach and ricotta ravioli and tonarelli cacio e pepe. I filled up my dish with large portions of the three, and Nicole said I put too much.
But I showed her and ate it all. My favorite was the cacio e pepe (bottom).
Finally, gelato. I got chocolate and strawberry. Nicole got mint and stracciatella.
Luca gave us tips for how to tell good restaurants in Italy from tourists traps and good gelato places from fake gelato.
Which was great because it was the first day of our honeymoon, so we could really put the advice to use. Oh wait, it was our second to last night of the trip.
Bad restaurants have a person outside the joint -- a catcher -- telling you to come in and proudly display their menu and food. Good restaurants don't have any of that.
Fake gelato is made with powder mix and rises in a big puff with flashy colors of weird flavors. Real gelato sits flat in a container and doesn't have smurf blue flavors.
One more Luca joke. "In the United States you must be 21 to drink. In England it's 18. In Italy you must be thirsty."
Our tour sadly ended. No more food. Luca gave each person a hug, and I took a photo of some of the tour group.
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