the price of pizza

One of the things that's kind of a drag about being in Italy right now is the state of US currency: day after day, the euro keeps taking the dollar back behind the woodshed and beating it until George Washington bleeds green. Which means that lots of things are pretty expensive, including food. It doesn't have to be expensive to go out to eat, but it's tough to do it on the cheap, if you want something other than, say, pizza. I'll grant you that that's in part because of being in Rome, but even food at markets isn't cheap.

Fortunately, I've found a couple of exceptions. Outdoor markets seem to be a little bit cheaper than stores; this is a good thing, because they basically rule. There's one in Monteverde, a couple of blocks from my apartment, where I've done a little bit of shopping. It's a little bit like the Italian Market in Philadelphia (oddly enough), only clean, and with a huge variety of really good quality produce (I counted four different kinds of peaches this morning. You know that's a good thing.)

The other exception is wine, which is ridiculously, laughably cheap. It's super-easy to get a bottle of good wine for less than $10, and decent wine for 6 or 7 bucks. Wine in restaurants is more expensive, of course, but lots of places have a good house wine that's not expensive at all. What that means is that the average cost for a restaurant meal, with a bottle or two of wine, winds up being pretty comparable to a meal in the US.

Best of all, there's a store up the block from me that sells vino sfuso: "loose" wine. They have giant vats of wine; you bring a bottle (like a mineral water bottle) and fill it with whatever you want. I bought a 1.5 liter bottle of a totally acceptable Montepulciano for 2,20 euros: eat your heart out, Two-Buck Chuck!