Author: rinaz

Cart and I were invited for the opening of a restaurant called “Il Bavaglino” last weekend.

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

This post is probably gonna make a couple of food traditionalists eyes roll but oh well

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.

Pardon the blurry picture, 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 hash-brown 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!

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 …

Remember when I spotted frozen sushi at the supermarket?

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 but more 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 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 than eat this.