![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Restaurant Project: L
Jan. 10th, 2013 07:27 pmAll right - I'm way the heck behind on writing these up, but the project is still ongoing, and with any luck I'll get caught up over the next few days and be able to move on to new and shiny restaurants.
So way back in October we went to Rome. And we ate in a lot of restaurants and the food in them was invariably delicious, and I had a half-hearted idea that I wanted to try to hit a Project restaurant, but I was mostly just picking and choosing whatever places looked tasty and interesting. And so by our third day I had rather resigned myself to the idea that it just wouldn't happen.
That was the day that we went wandering by the Spanish Steps and dawdled at the fountain at the bottom before deciding to look for a place to eat lunch. We wound up heading slightly off the beaten path, ducking into alleys and piazzas, until we found a little square with a handful of cafes and food shops. We picked one with a decent-looking menu, took our seats outside on the plaza, and it wasn't until I looked at the full menu our server placed in front of me that I realized that we were at the Leonardo Ristorante, making this a perfect choice for L.
We never made it inside the restaurant - this was true of most of the places we ate in Rome. The weather was gorgeous and every place had an outside terrace, so there was no reason to come in from the glorious sun and breeze. And the plaza here was quiet and shady and peaceful, and the people were polite, and it was just perfect.
We started out with an antipasto plate for the two of us to share, and, like the restaurant itself, it was perfect. There were artichokes that were rich and buttery, and olives that made me swoon, salami and prosciutto that were thinly sliced enough to be delicate but not chewy or tough, and slivers of gouda and swiss and balls of mozzarella (I think Italy in general spoiled me for mozzarella - I've never had any that good before).
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran ordered a panino with turkey, avocado, and tomato, which was decently good. To my surprise, at least, it wasn't grilled - I'm used to panini being hot, pressed sandwiches. But all of the individual ingredients were incredibly high quality, and the flavors were well-balanced. The bread was rich and flavorful, and though there were no condiments on the sandwich, it was still tasty and refreshing.
The true winner of the meal, though, was my lunch. I ordered bruschettoni with tomatoes, mozzarella, olives, capers, and tuna. (Bruschettoni, as far as I can tell, is a single large piece of bruschetta.) This amounted to, functionally speaking, an open-faced Italian tuna melt, and it was seven kinds of heavenly. The bread itself was crisp and rich and a little sweet, brushed with just enough olive oil to balance the flavors, the tuna was high-quality, chunky, and strongly-flavored, and the olives and capers were salty and sharp and the tomatoes were fresh and the whole thing was just exactly what I needed on a sunny afternoon after walking across half of Rome.
We didn't order dessert at the restaurant, deciding instead to save ourselves for gelato later, but all in all this was one of the best food experiences we had in Italy....
So way back in October we went to Rome. And we ate in a lot of restaurants and the food in them was invariably delicious, and I had a half-hearted idea that I wanted to try to hit a Project restaurant, but I was mostly just picking and choosing whatever places looked tasty and interesting. And so by our third day I had rather resigned myself to the idea that it just wouldn't happen.
That was the day that we went wandering by the Spanish Steps and dawdled at the fountain at the bottom before deciding to look for a place to eat lunch. We wound up heading slightly off the beaten path, ducking into alleys and piazzas, until we found a little square with a handful of cafes and food shops. We picked one with a decent-looking menu, took our seats outside on the plaza, and it wasn't until I looked at the full menu our server placed in front of me that I realized that we were at the Leonardo Ristorante, making this a perfect choice for L.
We never made it inside the restaurant - this was true of most of the places we ate in Rome. The weather was gorgeous and every place had an outside terrace, so there was no reason to come in from the glorious sun and breeze. And the plaza here was quiet and shady and peaceful, and the people were polite, and it was just perfect.
We started out with an antipasto plate for the two of us to share, and, like the restaurant itself, it was perfect. There were artichokes that were rich and buttery, and olives that made me swoon, salami and prosciutto that were thinly sliced enough to be delicate but not chewy or tough, and slivers of gouda and swiss and balls of mozzarella (I think Italy in general spoiled me for mozzarella - I've never had any that good before).
umbran ordered a panino with turkey, avocado, and tomato, which was decently good. To my surprise, at least, it wasn't grilled - I'm used to panini being hot, pressed sandwiches. But all of the individual ingredients were incredibly high quality, and the flavors were well-balanced. The bread was rich and flavorful, and though there were no condiments on the sandwich, it was still tasty and refreshing.The true winner of the meal, though, was my lunch. I ordered bruschettoni with tomatoes, mozzarella, olives, capers, and tuna. (Bruschettoni, as far as I can tell, is a single large piece of bruschetta.) This amounted to, functionally speaking, an open-faced Italian tuna melt, and it was seven kinds of heavenly. The bread itself was crisp and rich and a little sweet, brushed with just enough olive oil to balance the flavors, the tuna was high-quality, chunky, and strongly-flavored, and the olives and capers were salty and sharp and the tomatoes were fresh and the whole thing was just exactly what I needed on a sunny afternoon after walking across half of Rome.
We didn't order dessert at the restaurant, deciding instead to save ourselves for gelato later, but all in all this was one of the best food experiences we had in Italy....
