Located in Via Ruggero di Lauria, it is within walking distance to the Vatican museum and also the Cipro metro station which is on my way home from work. So I could have this while driving home at the end of the day! Hehehe.

By the way, the name bavaglino means bib, like what kids use on their chest while eating. It sounds very cute. Nevertheless, its a classy and cosy looking restaurant. I really liked the beautiful tableware, and how every drinking glass was etched with the logo.

While I have to admit that while I do not have a very sophisticated palate, but my unrefined mouth could tell that food that we had was lovely. And here are what we had :

Antipasti :

Tonno scottato al finocchietto con riduzione di balsamico, fiore di zucca grigliato ripieno di spigola e zucchina romana con coulis di pomodoro

This is my tuna, lightly seared and it was so good paired up with the fennel and balsamic reduction. I would have never thought that the fresh fish and the cream would be so exquisite together.

There is also grilled zucchini flower stuffed with sea bass, which was a classy and upscale (and also healthier) version of my favourite “fior di zucca”

Cart, who is vegetarian, had cheese with vegetables inside, instead of tuna and there was ricotta cheese for the zucchini flower.

Primi :

Paccheri con seppie, fave e pecorino romano con mentuccia croccante

It’s typical to have pasta as a main course in Italy. And since it’s fava beans season, we had paccheri, which is a type of big and round pasta served with pecorino romano, a type of sharp cheese and cuttlefish with a touch of crunchy mint.

I almost expected the dish to be strong, but fortunately it wasn’t. The fava beans were small and sweet (older beans would taste more … grassy) and balanced the cheese well.

Trofie con vongole, asparagi e peperoni concasse al basilico

Trofie, one of my favourite kind of pasta (on account that it’s curly and cute) served with asparagus, peperoni and clams. It was so delicious! And I was sorry when it was all gone from my plate.

Secondi :

Calamaro ripieno con patate viola e fave, Raviolo di spada con caponatina

Second course would usually entail a meat based dish and we had squid stuffed with red potatoes and fava beans. For some reason, it reminds me kind of like eating sushi. The little package on the left is a sort of ravioli, but instead of pasta, it’s made of sword fish and stuffed with caponatina.

Cart’s vegetarian version was really good too.

Oh gosh, look at that parmigiana di melanzana! One of my favourite Italian things to eat! It looks so gorgeous and tasted so good, I was almost wishing that I had that instead. This was accompanied with a medley of seasonal vegetable tempura.

Dolci :

Gelato alla birra, carpaccio di ananas con gelato al riso venere

For desserts, we had gelato alla birra, which I could barely touch. While it didn’t contain any alcohol, I just don’t like strong, bitter tastes.

But I absolutely adore the black rice ice cream, which is amazingly not at all black in colour here. Served with a thin slice of pineapple, it was so light and delicately sweet, it was wonderful.

All in all, I had a very pleasant and lovely evening with good food, and good company in a beautiful place. It’s hard to ask for anything better :-)

Il Bavaglino
Via Ruggero di Lauria 26/A – Roma

Anyway, living in Rome for several years now, I found it interesting that there are recognizable fast food restaurants like Burger Kings and Subway and Macdougals here in Italy, but the strangest thing is that I’ve never seen a KFC branch in Rome before.

But discovered quite by chance by Claire, there is a new alternative in town though, called Kin’s Crunchy Chicken.

Founded by a Muslim man, there are branches in UK and Pakistan. And now most recently in Rome. Claire and I went to the branch in Via Carlo Alberto which is right next to the Vittorio Emanuele metro.

The place seemed so new that even the sign wasn’t revealed yet when we arrived there for the first time!

And look! Everything in there is halal food. Yay!

Coming in the place, there was a sense of familiarity. I have a lot of memories especially when growing in the old house in Singapore, Taman Jurong KFC was just 5 minutes walk from home so I spent quite a fair bit of time there.

Ehm, pardon the blurry picture, but I didn’t want the manager to scream at me …! But see, everything looks pretty much the same, down to the display.

I had the 2 piece chicken and 3 spicy wings combo set with drink and fries. (You could change it to rice if you wanted) I don’t remember how much this costs. I think it was under 6 euro.

I quite liked the chicken. Like the namesake, it was crispy and hot. And it was fast to get. I got it immediately after ordering.  On the other hand, while the Spicy wings were yummy, they weren’t spicy enough for me. But then again, being in Italy, the level of spicyness is seems to always be toned down.

Don’t let the size fool you though, although the portion looked tiny, it was very filling! I could hardly move after I had my meal.

Claire on the other hand, had a chicken fillet burger. This took a while to be cooked as burgers are prepared on order.

This was pretty intriguing to me as it had … a hashbrown in it! Does the combination taste really good this way? Claire seems to think so!

I’ll try to remember to do this the next time I make a bur-gher!

The second time that we went there, Claire tried the combo meal that I had the first time while I decided to go for the grilled chicken burger. This one I liked a lot! I think that they put in black pepper sauce inside and with the mayo and the grilled chicken combination, it was oh so good! Fattening, but I really didn’t care.

Next time, I want to get the double grilled chicken burger! Twice the happiness!

Oh, another thing I wanted to mention before I forget, Claire and I were playing the “Count how many Italians are in this restaurant” game while we were there. Not surprisingly, there weren’t that much Italian (or Italian looking people) there. Also the fact that the restaurant was situated in Vittorio Emanuele / Termini, where there are a lot of foreigners.

Nevertheless, to me, eating there was a good experience and we’d definitely go there again when we are hankering for fried chicken!

Oh! But just one thing … though the restaurant is clean …  be careful of their toilet.

Monsters seem to lurk there …

The supermarket that we normally go to happened to have an offer on this particular brand and while I had no intention of buying it, thanks to DK’s suggestion, I’m going to give it a try.

From the instructions on the box, although you could put it in the microwave oven, I thought that was a tad too blasphemous, so I chose to defrost it in the fridge in the evening before. Amazingly, it was still rather hard after I checked it next afternoon, so I let it go till the evening.

The types of sushi in the pack are as follows : 2 sweet egg maki, 2 prawn maki, 2 imitation crab maki, 2 california roll, 2 prawn nigiri, 1 abalone nigiri and 1 salmon nigiri.

And this is how it looked like when I took it out of the box :

It looks so … empty of life … But I’m a pretty easy going person, so it’s not so much about how it looked like and about how it tastes. I can look past the faded, dull colours, so I was still willing to give it a try.

But … eating it, the whole experience just tastes unnatural to me.

The rice especially, has this strange, dry, crumbly texture instead of the soft, fluffy rice that one is used to. It was kind of like eating edible styrofoam. You know how when you put a slice of apple in the freezer and when you take it out to defrost, the texture has completely changed. It was kind of like that for me when I tasted the rice.

Flat top sushi

The seafood itself, while not completely horrible, it tasted old … like I was eating seafood from the dinosaur age, and it wasn’t anything that I would want to eat again. It was really dry, and no amount of soy sauce can rehydrate it again.

To put a long story short, my advice to all who is thinking of buying frozen sushi … Don’t. Even if I am a sushi monster and haven’t eaten sushi for months and months, and don’t have any other means. I’d rather wait more than eat this.

For the first time I’m celebrating Christmas in Rome when normally around this time, we’d be back in Singapore. It feels a little strange for me to celebrate it as a non Catholic/Christian and at the back of my mind, it’s not the same thing as Hari Raya but nevertheless, I don’t see anything wrong with sharing happiness together.

Anyway, we spent Christmas eve at Cart’s sister, Paola’s house. Entering the house, the tree was the most eye catching item in the room with the presents at the bottom. The dining table was already set with cutleries and appetizers.

By the way, the tradition here in Italy is to eat fish which is a “non rich food” instead of meat on this day so you’ll see loads of families cooking fish related items. And since I love eating seafood, I had a lot of fun, because there were so many wonderful things for me to eat!

We started off with L’insalata russa which is basically a potato salad.

And then little mozzarella balls. Not the type that is yellow and solid and comes in rectangle shapes by the way.

And then mixed Seafood salad.

And then I had smoked salmon slices with tuna salad at the side. The green vegetable that you see in the picture is called valeriana and it’s interesting to me as it tastes a little bit like mint.

And then there are baked crochette of potatoes and olives. Cart and I prefer them fried though *coughs* Perangai budak gemok *coughs*

And then these are ravioli stuffed with crab and served with creamy crab  sauce. Oh gosh, these was such a dream. It was so delicious! I normally don’t like creamy based pasta, but these were so light and yummy!

So good that I ate them all up. I need to ask Paola how she made it!

And here is Cart manually grating parmigiano on his pasta. If you’re wondering what we were watching on the telley, it was a show which was rather inappropriate for christmas

And this my linguini with a sort of arabbiata sauce with tuna.

My niece and nephew are very picky eaters though. They won’t touch anything if they think that it contains things that they don’t like. And to my horror, I saw that my nephew is eating pasta. Plain. Not even with a hint of oil nor cheese.

Anyway, after that we had a sort of quiche with the puff pastry and zucchini and cheese inside. This thing is awesome! But we still had more to go!

These are roasted fish called pesce persico but by this time, I was feeling so stuffed. Even though I was really greedy and I wanted to eat them, I could only pick at them and not finish. Sheepishly asked to have them put in a container so I could eat them later.

And then these are mussels cooked in tomato sauce which was supposed to be used for pasta. But Paola seeing how stuffed we all were, just served them as it is. I could only manage to eat one!

And these are artichokes. But at this point of time, I was already too stuffed to take another bite. Le sigh! How sad! I wanted to try everything!

I felt so full that I had to waddle to the sofa for a bit and soon after I felt sleepy and decided to take a  snooze on Cart’s belly while watching the kids getting ready, stacking their presents to unwrap them. Eating is tiring work!

And when I woke up from my power nap, I found these ready for me. More food! Pandoro with lemon and strawberry ice cream!

I was so stuffed! This is probably what it feels like for a goose being fed for foie gras. And I didn’t even get to try everything!

Nevertheless, it was approaching midnight and we started unwrapping our presents.

Here is Cart opening his present.

Here is Paola inspecting the present that we got for her. It’s a hi-George teddy bear! With inbuilt speakers on it’s little feet.

Here are my in laws inspecting the olive oil bottle stand that we got for them.

Nephew has an Angry bird action set! Now you don’t even need to switch on the computer or phone. I couldn’t believe that it exists! And I blame it on Cart for introducing this horrible game.

Here’s the niece playing a Play doh Smashed Potato game. I couldn’t play this one though. The poor potatoes keep getting smashed and cut and diced …

And after playing for a little while with them and opening our presents, soonafter it was time to go home. It was a lovely gathering. And while I do miss my family and friends in Singapore, it’s nice to be with my other family too.

But it wasn’t over yet, because the next day, there was a xmas lunch! More food! I could hardly even eat breakfast. I was that full. And instead we waited for lunch and had Pasta with funghi.

I added some chili flakes because I like hot food. I’m still Malay after all.

And then baked potatoes with rosemary and roasted lamb. Not only for xmas, but they eat lamb during easter too. I suppose it’s a tradition to eat lamb here on accordance that there are a lot of lambs in Italy and also of it’s religious significance.

MIL asked me if we Malays eat lambs but in all honesty, beef and chicken are more popular meats to eat even though there are loads of ducks and goats around. Not sure what happened to make those meats less popular.

And to end it, a slice of pandoro, a popular xmas and new year sweetcake.

So good! But oh boy, I’m so stuffed! How does one even lose weight this way?!

We’re both very unromantic people that we didn’t plan anything for the day. In fact, even when we’ve finally decided to go out for dinner, we were clueless at which restaurant to go to. But in the end, we went to this little charming place called Checco Dallo Scapicollo.

See if you can spot Woody Allen and Francesco Totti

It’s an unreal looking place, we were driving around Laurentina which is a busy urban area, and then suddenly we found ourselves in a country looking place. It was so pretty and felt so tranquil with the sound of the water flow from the fountains and the shade of the trees. It was gorgeous. I was a little sorry that we weren’t here during daylight. It would have been something to behold.

Inside the restaurant, it looked like a country house with the fireplace and the wooden ceiling and bricks. To be honest, I was really scared to go inside, everything looked so … expensive from the furnishings to the waiters in their little waistcoats.

But Cart was adamant that we have a lovely evening in a lovely food and pointed out that it wasn’t every day that we had our anniversary. So we went ahead.

While the place was gorgeous, service was a little slow though. Even though there were practically only 4 other tables, it took a while for them to take our order and then have it cooked, and then serve our food.

The food was lovely though. Cart had ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach and served with zucchini and mushroom sauce with parmigiano shavings on top.

While I had a sort of seafood Saltimbocca. It doesn’t look very pretty, but it was delicious. On top is grilled octopus slices shaped into a sheet and underneath that layer is some prawns and underneath that is a piece of fish, dressed with lemon sauce. I thought the portions was small, but nevertheless, I felt quite full after eating this!

We also had carciofi alla romana, but as much as I like artichokes, I think they went overboard on the flavourings and I found this much too salty for my liking.

We then had a cheese platter. It was accompanied with 4 different type of condiments : kiwi conserve, fig jam, onion jam and honey. By this time, I was feeling quite full, but I wanted to try one anyway. So I sliced a cheese into four and tried all the condiments with each. They all tasted really good.

I wonder who was the first person to try eating cheese with jam together. It’s amazingly good together.

And we ended our dinner with a nice dessert called “assasino” which is basically molten lava cake topped with tiramisu cream on top. When you cut it open, chocolate flows out. It’s so sinful! And it’s so rich, henceforth the name “assasin” as it’ll kill you! But it’s oh so yummy!

It was a lovely way to end the evening and we both enjoyed our evening together.

But looking at the bill later, I looked at Cartcart, smiled and said, “Happy anniversary! Thank you for the wonderful dinner … but let’s not come back here too soon ”

Before I end this post, just wanted to share with you a picture that amused me so much.

Wow, I’ve never seen one of these things before!

Frozen sushi.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought the whole philosophy of sushi is about the freshness of the seafood, so that one can savour a small piece of the sea when they eat it.

Instead, you’d have to defrost this in the microwave oven … *gasps* And it’s not even cheap at 8 euro for 12 sushi!

First, it was frozen durian, now frozen sushi … what else?

At 6.50 euro, it’s still not cheap, but it’s a once in a while treat. Moreoever, cooking it yourself is definitely cheaper than in restaurants and it’s not that difficult to do.

The hardest part is probably gutting and cleaning a fish, but luckily, most of the work was already done for me at the counter.

All that I had to do was to cut away the fins on top, the side and the bottom and scrape away any scales that was still there.

Nice clean fish!

Dry it with a paper towel, then sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper and cover it with  some slices of lemon on the outside.

And in the inside where the gills used to be, sprinkle some salt and pepper and stuff with some garlic and parsley.

Wrap in an aluminium foil on top of a bed of potatoes (already mixed with olive oil, salt and rosemary) and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes at 220 degrees Celsius.

The fish will be cooked in it’s own liquid mixed with the lovely ingredients that you’ve added. And when it’s done, the most amazing smell wafts out as you open the foil.

Using a fork to pierce through the flesh, the fish is wonderfully tender and moist. I just couldn’t wait to eat this!

And I did. And it was so delicious and I ate with gusto! (Hence the lack of pictures) All that’s rest are bones.

Le sigh! I wish I could just share with you a taste. It might sound extremely simple, but trust me, it was very very good!