you've been to rome. its stories have been told and retold on stage and screen, the city of toga's and gladiators, power and intrigue, empire and ruin, even if you've never been to roam th e good life. i'm stanley tucci. i'm italian on both sides and i'm travelling across italy to discover how the food in each of this country's 20 regions is as unique as the people and their past... the famous ancients of rome once ruled the world... ...but i'm here to discover how it's the food of ordinary romans that has conquered our hearts. but i'm going to warn you, if you're on a low carb diet beware... ...you're going to see a lot of pasta in this show. i mean, like, a lot of it. like, a lot. i'm sorry. i've been visiting rome for decades. its beauty and history still leave me breathless but sometimes it's difficult to find a good meal if you don't know where to look. rome is situated in lazio, a region sometimes overlooked in favor of its grander gastronomic neighbors like tuscany and umbria. but lazio has fed rome for centuries and every part of the sheep and pigs raised here is put to use in kitchens across the city to make deeply flavorsome food. to start my journey, i'm catching up with my old friend claudia. she's lived here virtually her whole life... -there you are. -...and her cardinal rule for good food is, 'when in rome, eat as the romans do.' -are you ok? good. -i'm good. you ok? -i'm so happy to see you. -it was a long time. it was a long time. somehow almost 30 years has slipped by since we first became friends when we worked on a movie here together. i think that you came first time for a... well, the very first time was like '95. no, i think '93, because it was the undercover blues . -i didn't know i was that old. -i know, me neither. let's not mention it. [laughter] claudia wants to take me for a classic roman pasta lunch but with an hour to kill, we decide to get a coffee and reminisce. well the san calisto is a real institution. that's where we went a long time ago. yeah, yeah, we were there every evening, you know. back in the '90s we used to hang out in a great café in trastavere, a grimy part of town, very much on the wrong side of the river. -here we are. -yeah, and here we are. and i was pleased to hear it was still going strong. -so you remember marcello? -yes i do, i do. look what's there. the picture you gave them in '93. it's exactly in the same place. i think nothing changed in this place. no it hasn't changed. a little espresso would be just enough to whet our appetites before we go to lunch... ...or so i thought. -i know, i know. -what's that? -that's... -who's joining us? these are maritozzi, roman breakfast with a 2,000-year-old history. you cannot resist one of these. in the middle ages they were one of the few sweet things the church allowed you to eat during lent... ...it doesn't seem very saintly to me. -[tucci] is it like a brioche? -yeah, it's like a brioche. -'cause it looks like a brioche. -and it's even healthier compared to this. this is bomba con la crema. it's fried. it's a sort of donut with egg cream. but italians don't eat breakfast like americans eat breakfast or the british eat breakfast or the dutch eat breakfast. [tucci] yeah, 'cause they don't do eggs and bacon and... -it's always something sweet. -yeah. nice to see you again. as we staggered off our breakfast and headed through trastevere, i noticed that the area was much busier and hipper than years ago. this was the poor quarters, you see the buildings, as nice as they are, -are very small. -right. and then of course, as it happens you know, the old quarters got very trendy and everybody -wanted to live here. -yeah and they become -more gentrified and... yeah. -yeah. the city may be changing, but one thing that's as constant as the ancient landmarks is how much people in rome love their pasta. four star dishes in particular have become an emblem of the city and claudia is taking me to find out more at a place she says is the pantheon of pasta... [tucci] the restaurant is fully booked... -but we don't care. [laughs] -yeah, we don't care. well tell me some more about pasta in rome. pasta in rome is like, you eat it every day. i mean you don't live without pasta. every day? and everybody has its own recipe and of course it's the best ever, you know, and yours is nothing compared to mine. right, it's true. it does become very territorial -doesn't it? -yeah. romans revere what they call the four pastas. [tucci] nice to see you, thank you for having me. simple but iconic dishes of staggering deliciousness. they are creamy cacio e pepe, made with mainly sheep's cheese and pepper. the ancient gricia, which has added pork. its luxurious cousin carbonara, which is elevated with egg yolks. and finally, our lunch today, amatriciana, made with tomatoes... ...and this roman favorite, guanciale, fatty pork cheek. [tucci] the guanciale are a base for a lot of different dishes in rome. we would normally use pancetta but the taste is totally different. -terrible. terrible. -no. -no, no, terrible. -yes. [tucci] thank you. [tucci] thank you so much. -it's very good. -[tucci] [speaks italian] pasta's delicious. delicious. the sauce is actually quite light, which is nice, and the guanciale are really delicate. yeah, yeah it is. no, no. i kept some space in my stomach for this. ah. because we didn't eat the... -my god. -no. across this city, every single day, romans eat pasta that has ancient bonds to their surrounding countryside. now it's hard to imagine, but this iconic food was once at risk of being banned in italy... sitting at the big, warm, carbohydrate-loaded heart of italian cuisine is pasta. and fittingly for the nation's capital, rome is obsessed with the stuff. i've been promised the best carbonara in the city and i've been told to come to the working-class backstreets behind termini station and to ask for the don. [tucci] tell me what you do. i'm passionate about popular food and for a long time i made a show where i play vinyl music disc and that's... -like a dj? as a dj. -as a dj, yeah. but at the same time... daniele di michele is a chef, historian and dj who cooks italian food while he spins records. his stage name is don pasta. oh i have seen some of the stuff... -yeah, yeah. it's crazy. -oh it's really fantastic. i was pretending for the audience that i didn't know, -but why lie? -it's a joke. it's really great. don pasta has promised me the greatest dish of spaghetti carbonara i've ever tasted, and on the way he tells me why pasta matters so much to him. i realised that italian food is popular food, roots food. italian food is the resistance of the normal people or the working-class people that eat well because the working-class people create the roots of italian food. yes. today we may think of a bowl of pasta as the ultimate comfort food but there's a distinctly uncomfortable history of italians fighting oppression through pasta. in the early 1930s, mussolini and his fascists imposed import bans on various foreign goods. this lead to food shortages, malnutrition and a lack of wheat which raised the prospect of italian tables with no pasta. [speaks italian] in typical style, rather than lifting the import bans, mussolini tried to convince italians that eating pasta would make them weak, lazy and even sexually impotent and that a high protein diet would make them more productive and war-like. the campaign was clearly not a success. when the fascism arrived a big part of italy is with mussolini... -yeah. -...but 30-40% is against mussolini. in fact pasta actually became a powerful symbol of the resistance against his fascist regime. armed with their guns and sheets of pasta many of the partisans who stood up to mussolini lived in these very streets. [archive] and the great access railyards from which troops and supplies are poured into southern italy are blasted... [tucci] during world war two, this area bore the brunt of allied bombings that aimed to disrupt the nearby rail hub. tragically, over a thousand people were killed. this is in essence like a monument. yeah, you can see the effect of the war. yeah. people died, the families died, and all this area is bombed. this particular square was home to a hugely popular local trattoria before the war. the owner's wife and all but one of their children died when their building was hit during the bombing. after the war, the local community raised funds for the surviving father and son to reopen the restaurant again. the boy started work here aged just eight and amazingly he's still here today. the story of roman food, aldo pomudollo. [tucci] aldo... beautiful. aldo now runs the restaurant alongside his daughter rossana. people come from across the city, and apparently further afield, to enjoy the comfort of aldo's family food. so tell me about carbonara. carbonara is a roman dish but we don't know when it was invented, right? one story i'd always heard is that carbonara came about when the american soldiers in rome during the war started missing their bacon and eggs from back home and wanted them added to spaghetti. aldo, however, has his own theory. it seems some things are destined to remain roman myths. what everyone can agree on is that the carbonara here is incredible. you have basically four ingredients - pasta, eggs, the guanciale, and cheese. that's it. but when i try it at home it's never this good. my mother does that too. you could just die now. when i taste pasta like this, i understand why it remains so important to this city. rome may be the seat of power and religion but it's overwhelmingly a working class town. this is simple food that has been elevated over centuries by people making the best of what little they had available. they are rightly proud that their humble food has come to define italy to the entire world. i'm daniel lurie and i've spent my career fighting poverty, helping people right here in san francisco. i'm also a father raising two kids in the city. deeply concerned that city hall is allowing crime and lawlessness to spread. now we can do something about it by voting yes on prop e. a common sense solution that ensures we use community safety cameras to catch repeat offenders and hold them accountable. vote yes on e. i've headed five miles out of the city center using the newly extended metro line. romans have a reputation for resisting change and the arrival of the subway in 2014 has shaken up old poor neighborhoods of the city, nowhere more so than centocelle. i'm meeting massimiliano who's the editor of italy's most prestigious food journal to find out what's going on. gentrification is moving in on this neighborhood and food is on the front line. [massimiliano] the neighbourhood was born during the roman empire. centocelle is a roman name, cento carceri is '100 jails' in english. -100 jails? -jails, yeah, exactly. there may never have actually been one hundred jails here, but what this area does have is three new subway stations all within close proximity. [massimiliano] these things change up the game, ok? a lot of people came here to try to invest a bit. -is this where we're going? -yeah, it's here. let's go in and see what he's got. centocelle has long had a rough reputation. no, he turns and stops right at the end. that was an interception. that's how long the ball was i n two leading candidates for senate. two very different visions for california. steve garvey, the leading republican, is too conservative for california. he voted for trump twice and supported republicans for years, including far right conservatives. adam schiff, the leading democrat, defended democracy against trump and the insurrectionists. he helped build affordable housing, lower drug costs, and bring good jobs back home. the choice is clear. i'm adam schiff, and i approve this message. growing up, my parents wanted me to become a doctor or an engineer. those are good careers! but i chose a different path. first, as mayor and then in the legislature. i enshrined abortion rights in our california constitution. in the face of trump, i strengthened hate crime laws and lowered the costs for the middle class. now i'm running to bring the fight to congress. you were always stubborn. and on that note, i'm evan low, and i approve this message. for now signs of its former life are wherever. >> and where is the -- >> you see the tracks for it. >> katy is renowned food writer who swapped new jersey for rome almost 20 years ago. -right. -the pellanda. [katie] it's an organised place with so many pavilions. -covering a vast area. -right. and really influencing the types of foods that would be eaten just across the street at the trattorias of the late 19th and early 20th century. in butchery, the animal is quartered and those cuts went straight to the upper and middle-class kitchens everything that's left over, the blood, brains and intestines, was called the quinto quarto - the fifth quarter - and those were left to the poor. some workers were even paid in offal instead of money, so they had little choice but to make the best of it. one restaurant keeping these historic flavors alive and taking them into the 21st century is santo palato. if you know how to cook offal, you can turn the poorest guts into the richest of dishes... [katie] we're hungry right? -starving. -follow me. i haven't eaten in like an hour. ...and katie wants me to meet sara, a young chef with a growing reputation for doing amazing things with innards. -[sara] bonjourno . -[tucci] stanley. [katie] she's gonna make a frittata for us and it's topped with chicken innards. so everything we focus on here in your restaurant is offal. -yes. -yes, good. -one egg per person. ok. yep. -yes. -...throughout the day. -oh yeah. have it for breakfast, lunch, dinner. yeah. -i like it in a sandwich. -[tucci] yes in a sandwich. that's what i used to take when i was a kid to school. yeah. i'm very down with that. chef sara gave up medical school to pursue her dream of opening a restaurant. [tucci] woah, yes. [tucci] so the stomach, the heart and the liver. [sara] yes. in rome you find frittata and chicken organs, but separately. -[tucci] but separately. -[katie] yeah, and she has combined them. [katie] it's ready. [tucci] oh wow. -[katie] smell it. wow, rich. -[tucci] oh yeah that's nice. don't forget about this bread. -oh wow, yeah, nice and hot too. -[katie] so good. yeah. mmm. that's great. thank you. [laughs] -great. -this is really special. and i think it's a really good demonstration of what sara does really well which is taking roman classic flavors and combining them... -yeah. yeah. -...in a way that's new but not like revolutionary or extra contemporary they just make sense in the cuisine today. sara gets her scalpel into some beef heart and we take a seat in the dining room. what's that? really, this is a really unusual texture too isn't it? alright so if we break down what the offal are we have heart, liver, lungs, stomach... -brain. -...brain, -sweetbreads... -...intestines... -...intestines... -...snout. -snout? -cartilaginous things -on the face? -oh yeah. the whole head really, if you think about it. the whole head. yeah. if pasta is the first pillar of roman food the astonishing use of offal is definitely the second. somehow poor romans turn these unpromising cuts into sheer culinary poetry. yeah. -[tucci] dude, i love oxtail. -[katie] i'm so into it. -[katie] so tasty. -that's really good. and this is definitely a more carnivorous city than it is -a fish eating city. -without question, yeah. -even though we're 15 miles from the sea... -i know. -that was really really far in pre-1970s standards before ice and refrigeration became more common. [tucci] yeah. [katie] so this is that honeycomb tripe with all those really beautiful pockets. [katie] lots of nice stomach geometry going on. i've never heard it described as stomach geometry. it makes it sound much, much more palatable. -that is really good. -it's boiled multiple times often with vinegar, that tenderises it and cleans it, and then it's cooked in tomato sauce with pecorino and mint. -so in rome... -pecorino and mint? yeah. in rome this is really the only way you find tripe, in fact the dish is called ''trippa alla romana' and go to another place, florence included, and the tripe is prepared differently. stewed stomach may not sound appealing, i know, but believe me, these are really tasty flavors. the roman poor didn't have much to work with, but against the odds, they wound up making some of the very best food in the city. what can i say? thanks a lot. thank you so much katie. thank you, thank you. we're here in rome and it's the most wonderful time of the year. no, it's not christmas, it's artichoke season. right now, markets across the city are humming with the sound of people hacking away at rome's favorite vegetable. so show me the artichokes. as i've been finding out, with roman food, you sometimes have to dig a little to get to the good stuff. so this is for the carciofi ro... -alla romana. -...alla romana. or alla giudia once trimmed, they can be deep fried to make one of my all-time favorite roman foods. carciofi alla giudia - jewish fried artichokes. you know my grandmother and my mother would make these. ask anyone here and they'll tell you that this weird looking vegetable is a definitive roman food... -thank you so much. -thank you. -bye-bye. -ciao, ciao, ciao. ...but what i love is that under those rough outer leaves it contains an entire history. a story of how society's outcasts can change the habits of an entire city. these picturesque ruins once contained the misery of rome's jewish ghetto. from the 1500s onwards, the city's entire jewish community was locked in this walled area, only allowed to leave to do menial jobs in the daytime before being locked in at night. italia tagliacozzo is in her 80s and has lived here her whole life. when the nazis seized rome in october 1943, the ghetto was a sitting target and it's 1,204 residents were sent to the gas chambers. italia was one of just a handful who escaped when her uncle hid her outside the city. for the few who survived, food became a vital link back to their past. the jews of rome had lived in poverty for centuries and were forced to rely on the cheapest of ingredients. using typical roman inventiveness, the jews transformed unloved ingredients like anchovies, eggplants and artichokes into dishes that the entire city would eventually take to its heart. alongside pasta and offal, the influence of jewish cooking is the third pillar of roman cuisine today. italia set up a restaurant serving the best jewish food in the ghetto. in this kitchen, italia and her crack team raise the humble artichoke into food for the ages. -georgio. -georgio. ok, so this is that that was done yesterday - cooked in the oil and then refrigerated. alright so he's spreading out the leaves. so cooked, pre-cooked look at how beautiful that is. that's the best one i've had. that is delicious. it's so addictive. it's like eating candy. you just can't stop, it's so crispy. that people love. yeah. this dish tells a story. it has survived the darkest of times and links us to a past that was almost wiped out. to me it's a type of historical monument in italian cooking, now beloved by everyone, and proudly embraced by the entire city. i'm daniel lurie and i've spent my career fighting poverty, helping people right here in san francisco. i'm also a father raising two kids in the city. deeply concerned that city hall is allowing crime and lawlessness to spread. now we can do something about it by voting yes on prop e. a common sense solution that ensures we use community safety cameras to catch repeat offenders and hold them accountable. vote yes on e. not all christian mccaffrey's are the same. some are all-pro running backs. some aren't. i'm christian mccaffrey and i make tacos. just like not all internet providers are the same. don't settle for slow. yikes. or unreliable. that's going to leave a mark. or weak. get real deal speed, reliability and power with xfinity. hey, you okay? i'm gonna pass out if that's alright. get the real deal, get xfinity. it's my last night in rome. during my time here, i've learned that, above all else, food in italy is about who you are and where you're from. but where does that leave you if you're an outsider? i've come to bistro 64, a restaurant that has won a michelin star for serving up some of the best italian food in the city. the surprising thing is that the chef is an out-of-towner... ...and no he's not from naples, or even milan, he's from japan. -stanley. -kotaro. -nice to meet you. -pleasure. nice to meet you too. kotaro noda was lured here 20 years ago by his obsession with the flavors of italian cuisine. noda's food has won praise for its creativity but tonight he's making the simplest roman classic. it's one of the famous four pastas, cacio e pepe, literally 'cheese and pepper.' there are just three main ingredients but it takes great skill to make this roman favorite perfect. of course, another italian kitchen secret. could take a while. i know you may be thinking this is ludicrously simple food but believe me, it's extraordinary and don't just take my word for it. where's karen? karen? come here. right. -ok. -ok. ok. this is karen who works with us, one of the producers. she's from rome. -so you tell us what you think. -ok. ok. no pressure. no. no pressure, no pressure. he's not nervous at all. [noda] i'm not nervous. [tucci] he doesn't care about our opinion. -[noda] va bene? -it's divine. yes, it's so good. it's perfectly creamy. it's not too intense, it's not overloaded with flavor. -yeah. -it's the perfect -amount of pepper... -yeah. and it really respects, you know, how it would be cooked in a family. there's always a secret. there's always a secret, that's true. there's always a secret. when it comes to food, romans know what they like and like what they know. beyond his masterful take on the classics noda's menu is full of incredible innovations, from sweetbreads with heart to purple potato cream with plum gelato. i was curious how the city had taken to his creations. the downside of rome being so steeped in history is that sometimes great things are resisted because they're new and not what people are used to. missing food this good is a real shame. i'm sorry. but here's the thing - the one thing romans can't resist is a good meal and i'm hopeful that soon noda's food will be another culinary landmark in this eternal city. [upbeat music] so bologna. i haven't been here for a very long time. very happy to be back. the people of bologna have been hit hard