Italy $100 Street Food Challenge!! Italians Really Eat This??

World Cuisine Travel
33 followers
10 Video Views·Jul 1, 2024
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Now, on to the show.
In this video, I'll be attempting to spend over $100 on street food here in Rome, Italy.
But first, let's back up.
Rome is not a typical street food city.
Here you'll find all kinds of shops or street-side eateries selling pasta or pizza.
But when it comes to actual street food, you gotta come to a place like this.
Welcome to Trionfale Market.
Here they have all your Italian favorites.
Wine, pasta, cured meats, cheeses, almost everything you can imagine is here.
Today, my mission is to try out a bunch of new Italian foods I've never had before and to see how much it costs.
In the end, will I be able to spend over $100?
Let's find out.
All right, folks, we're gonna start right here at the butcher shop.
They have a ton of different beef cuts.
A lot of this looks really normal until you get over here.
They have two different variations of cow stomach.
They have this one version that looks a bit more silky, smooth, and thin.
And then they have the shag carpet version right here.
This is a good old, like, bathroom mat-type texture.
So if you're looking for something more thick, boom, right there.
And also, if you're into feet, they've got this right here.
These are veal feet.
It's like a teenage cow.
Next to the butcher, we have another meat department, but everything here is cured.
Plus, there's a lot of cheese in different shapes, sizes, and smells.
Take a look at these.
What the heck is that?
I'm not gonna tell you.
Mainly because I don't know.
Right here, we have the porchetta.
Essentially, they debone a pig carcass, they roll it up, and then they roast it.
And in the end, it looks like this.
It's basically Italian lechon.
You can see, the skin here is absolutely stunning, and it's looking quite crispy as well.
Right now, we're here with the guy who runs this joint.
This is Massimo.
Ciao.
So he's taken some of the crunchy skin, he's sliced it up into a bite-sized piece.
You wanna try some, too?
Look, I'm very generous.
I'm offering his own porchetta to him.
Cheers.
Right?
Good?
Very good.
It's so crunchy, so fatty.
Delicioso.
Now that we have our meat, we're gonna put it into a sandwich.
Oh, look at this.
You can even see some of the herbs and the flavoring, the seasoning they put inside.
He's gonna put the porchetta into the sandwich roll.
Oh, and he puts a little bit of skin, too.
He has some spicy provolone.
And then this green mass right here is known as chicory.
He's putting a lot of it on there, so I hope I like it.
The sandwich is complete.
Massimo, thank you very much.
Grazie.
Prego.
All right, folks, we have our first food of the day right here.
This guy is not running a sandwich shop.
He's running a deli, and he offered to make a sandwich.
This, he said, if you were selling it, he'd sell it for about nine euros, which is slightly under $10.
Not bad.
It's got color, it has pizzazz.
The bread itself is slightly dry and a little bit hard.
Let's see how it goes.
Cheers.
What's interesting about the porchetta is there's some parts like this that are more dry.
This certainly has much less fat, so it's not gonna be as juicy as some of the other pieces.
Then we have the chicory.
The chicory tastes a lot like spinach.
It tastes like you put wet, cold spinach in the sandwich.
The cheese, the texture is very different from any provolone I've tried before.
Most of the provolone I've had has been, like, sliced, and it's soft.
And this is very hard, like a hard piece of parmesan.
And it tastes like parmesan, too.
In the end, a fascinating sandwich and a curious combination of ingredients.
All right, guys, since we're here with Massimo, there's one more food I wanted to show you.
This right here, this giant meat monstrosity is called coppa.
This is the head of a pig that's been boiled for eight to ten hours.
Oh, wow, look at those layers.
Outstanding.
So he's carefully carving, making just one fat, long, wide slice.
From here, he opens up this bun.
This is gonna be a one-ingredient sandwich.
Yeah, good. He drops some of the meat, so he kicks it under.
Finish? Thank you, sir.
All right, folks, just gaze deeply into these chunks of pig head.
It's a lot of pig faces in one big meat glob.
Massimo told me that when you enjoy this meat, you just have to have it alone.
No cheese, which is sad.
No chicory, which is actually fine with me.
Let's try it out.
Wow, it's really good.
It tastes like bologna.
And what's amazing is when you look at it, you see all these different portions of the head.
And you assume when you bite into it, you're gonna feel, like, cartilage from an ear or a piece of the snout.
But it's all one uniform texture.
It's greasy. It's like a nice, big, meaty bite.
So far, best sandwich of the day.
I think the bakery guy and the meat guy, they join forces and they make something special.
For now, they're segregated. It makes me sad.
But I see a big future here.
This is good.
I was gonna leave Massimo, but I cannot.
He has more interesting foods for me to try.
First of all, this is smoked mozzarella using hay.
Let me grab some to show you.
It smells like an ashtray.
It's like a brutally intense type of smoke.
Beyond that, this is not made with cow milk, but with buffalo milk.
And make sure you're milking the females.
If you get a male buffalo mad at you, it's not gonna end well.
So from here, I'm gonna break it in half and see what it looks like on the inside.
Oh, yes.
The inside smells a little bit more fresh.
But that smokiness has really penetrated every bit of this cheese.
Let's try it out.
Cheers.
How many of these can I fit in my pockets as I go through TSA?
I have to steal as much cheese from this country as I can.
It's salty.
It's creamy.
If you thought that getting a big ball of mozzarella and eating it like an apple would not be satisfying,
you were wrong, because that was really good.
But how much for this delicious ball of cheese, Sonny?
Is it $500?
No.
$300?
No.
For this ball of cheese, $3.
That's remarkable.
My friend Massimo, he's been amazing.
It's tall here.
Oh, my God.
I want to move in.
But at last, I must move on.
We have come to our second location.
Finally, the bakery next door.
But Massimo is not far away, my meat man.
And this is my baker.
Meet Eddie.
Eddie.
What's your name?
Sorry, I didn't put enough Italian spin on it.
This is not Eddie.
This is Eddie.
Eddie.
Right here is what I want to try.
Come take a look at this.
This is a pastry, or a bread, and it's stuffed with something very unique.
Eddie.
Un...
Ah, yes.
So this is called a tiella.
It looks like a little bread pie.
On the inside of this one, we have tomato and we have pulpo.
That is octopus.
When you rip it apart, you can begin to see the tomato, the sauce inside, and the pulpo.
We have our octopod pie.
Let's give it a try.
Cheers.
Wow, I'm confused.
I'm bewildered.
I'm nervous.
The outside texture of the pie is almost damp.
It's cold.
It's soft.
The texture of the octopus itself is very kind of chewy.
And then there's just a load of fragrant and delicious savory sauce in there, including tomatoes.
In general, I like it.
But how much for this cold meat pie?
Well, this one comes in at 9 euros and 91 cents.
Not cheap.
If you want good octopus, you're gonna have to pay a little bit extra.
If you're hoping to come to Italy and eat pizza all day and not gain weight, I have found the solution for you.
Literally, the smallest pizza in all of Italy and perhaps all the world.
This is a legitimate form of pizza that they're selling here, and I love it.
First of all, there's a whole sheet full of these.
It's not called a pizza.
It's called a pizzette, also known as little pizza, I assume.
So we have some cooked up for us already.
When you order it, they take it, they throw it in the oven, they give it back to you.
And you can see that it consists only of the essentials, dough and sauce.
The fun thing about Italy is you come here thinking, surely they're not just eating pizza all over the place.
And then you come here actually and realize, yes, they really do have pizza and they have it all over the place.
There's a little round one.
That one has eggplant on it.
Under here, there's an onion pizza.
Let's try out our mini pizza now.
Overall, very nice.
It's very simple, of course, right?
It's just flaky dough.
And then you got a little bit of seasoning or savoriness flavor coming from that sauce.
And that's about it.
There's not just pizza, but there's also pizzette.
So right now, we've come to a pasta shop that has every different type of pasta you've never heard of before.
And they also have this.
It is lasagna.
What do people like about it?
I don't know.
It's layers usually of big flat noodles, cheese, more cheese, meat, sauce, savory tomato sauce.
This has all of those elements except for the noodle part has been replaced with eggplant.
I'm told this is very famous, very popular here.
You can see a gorgeous layer of cheese on top.
I'm gonna peel this back and show you some of those layers.
Yeah, that is unmistakably eggplant.
So let's see what happens when you replace lasagna noodles with eggplant.
Cheers.
First of all, the cheese on top, outstanding.
It's become kind of like this melty cheese skin on top.
I swear you could take that cheese off and make a taco out of it.
It's got that kind of consistency to it.
Underneath, you can't really tell at first that this is eggplant and not noodle.
Right here, we just got pure eggplant.
Let's try it out.
They know what they're doing.
I swear the texture is very similar to a flat noodle.
All the other flavors are very familiar.
Cheese, an excellent savory Italian tomato sauce.
And then just layers and layers of eggplant.
I thought it would be weird.
Turns out, just a little bit weird.
Let's talk price.
This right here, 8.5 euros.
Not bad.
We're getting closer to our goal of 100, but we still have a ways to go.
Let's keep moving.
At the market, you got to see Italy's smallest micro pizza.
Here, they have a pizza pocket.
And let me tell you, Hot Pocket has nothing on this.
Let's go in the kitchen and take a look.
Welcome to the Trapizzino kitchen.
This is where all the action happens in this small condensed place.
Let's take a look at how it works.
Starting with the bread.
Take a freshly baked loaf of bread, still warm and aromatic.
Slice it with purpose.
Cutting it into sharp, perfect triangles.
Ready to be stuffed with a variety of delicious options.
Here, you'll see they have three different sauces.
Right here, we have the eggplant.
Right here, we have the beef meatball.
And right here, we have the chicken.
I'm going to get one of each of these.
Everything, of course, starts with the bread right here.
She grabs half and top it with that beautiful Italian giant meatball.
Hit it with a little bit of sauce and put it away.
She grabs another bread cone.
And this one is getting stuffed with chicken.
And this is our plate for today.
We take that to the table and try it out.
Here's what I learned about pizza so far in Rome.
It has bread and it has sauce.
It can be called a pizza.
It doesn't even matter the shape at this point because this is a cone.
It's called Trapizzino.
And I think that means triangle.
What I love too is they have these perfect little monkey bars to hang your pizza inside of.
This one has a giant meatball inside.
This one right here, that is full of chicken.
Now, let's look at the anatomy here.
When you take off its little bread underwear, you're left with this.
This is a little bread basket, a triangle, a cone, ready to receive all this meat.
Did I say receive the meat?
That's not good, right?
That's not, I'm sorry.
The bread is kind of fluffy, kind of flaky.
I love the texture of it.
And the chicken smells amazing.
Let's give it a shot.
I took too big of a bite.
That was delicious.
Oh, my God.
Beautifully seasoned chicken.
It's so creamy.
And the bread cone is stronger than it looks.
Here's the thing.
It'd be easy to have this on a plate, you know, chicken on one side, bread on the other.
But when you put it together, something magical happens.
Somehow, it becomes a pizza.
Let's take one more bite.
Oh, my God.
It's so rich and buttery.
I love it.
That first pizza brings me to my second pizza right here, the meatball.
If you didn't see this being made, you might think, oh, great, a sauce-filled pizza pocket.
No, it's not like that at all.
When she made this, I saw her really jam-force a meatball in there.
And then she covered it with a thin layer of sauce.
I'm very excited.
Most of you know that my favorite shape of food is ball.
It's the best food shape of all the food shapes.
And now I'm gonna put this ball in my mouth.
Cheers.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Just beneath the surface, lurking in the shallow depths of that tomato sauce, is a giant meatball.
What I'm gonna do now is completely dismember this meatball.
Uh-oh.
If you eat too much of it, this no longer works.
Let's take another bite.
Keep in mind, this is my first time eating in Italy, so I didn't know what to expect.
I didn't know if they had some hard rules around traditional pizza.
This is a fairly new concept in Rome, and I absolutely love it.
Let's talk about the price.
For each one of these, €5.
I think super reasonable.
So far, we are well into our journey of attempting to spend $100 on street food.
We have one location remaining.
Let's see if we can get that $100.
At last, we have come to our final location.
Right behind me, Supli Roma.
A supli is a very special, iconic Italian food, especially popular in this city.
Let's take a quick tour inside to see what they have today.
Starting here, they have all the pizza.
This first one right here, big, beautiful, yellow, and made with potato.
Basically, potato slices or potato chips on top of the pizza, but we're not here for the pizza.
As you move down, you see even more pizza selections, and then you get to this right here.
These are the suplis.
Supli are crispy, golden risotto balls stuffed with mozzarella and ragu,
embodying the rustic, soulful flavors of Roman cuisine.
This whole section, though, is the brown section, and there's a reason for that,
and that's because just about everything here is fried.
You might notice even this right here, a sandwich, completely brown because it's been fried.
Next to it, they have some fried chicken, but they have a lot to choose from.
I'm gonna go with the supli, and I gotta try this fried sandwich.
Let's check it out and see what's inside.
All right, folks, right here, we have our final meal.
There is no table, but there's a thin railing.
They asked me which one I wanted.
They have a ham and cheese, and they have an anchovy, so I said both.
I don't know which one is anchovy.
I mean, certainly, the shape is probably what helps them tell it apart.
So right here, we have the rectangle.
I'm gonna assume this one's anchovy.
I don't know what that is.
The first bite is just fried bread and cheese.
It's interesting because it's fried, but not fried that recently.
Let's break it open and see what it truly is inside.
Oh, yeah, that's an anchovy.
That's the secret.
You have to break into its core.
The anchovy is not on the edges.
Let's give it a shot.
Cheers.
This is a meal that demands a Diet Coke.
The anchovies are intensely salty.
It's a little bit of an awkward pairing with that cold cheese and fried bread.
I think I'm gonna like the ham and cheese a lot more.
Maybe I can give this one to the birds.
These are some of the most bold, brazen birds I've ever seen in my life.
And now I have bird flu.
Sandwich number two, ham and cheese.
This one, I'm just gonna break apart.
And you can see from the beginning, the amazing cheese pull.
There might be a cheese pull if this was freshly fried, but it is not.
It's been sitting there for a minute.
Let's try it out regardless.
Cheers.
Interesting.
I think this would be good if you had it as soon as it came out of the fryer.
If the cheese was still gooey.
It's been hanging out a minute.
It's okay.
But you know what?
We're not ending with that because we have this.
This is the souple.
It's a little fried egg of goodness.
Hey, bud.
I had everything perfectly balanced.
And a bird landed on my tray, tipped it over.
And where are they now?
These birds are absolute thugs.
But I still have my souple right here.
And they can't take that from me, can they?
Epic cheese pull.
Super epic.
Let's give it a shot.
Now that is delicious.
This is a wild combination.
I gotta say, I've never had anything like this before.
I'm told that folks in Italy believe that their pizza is so healthy.
So before the healthy pizza, they're eating fried souple.
Cheers.
I like this because it's multi-dimensional.
It's not just about the cheese, but it's about everything else inside.
The amazing Italian herbs, spices, and seasonings.
The risotto is creamy.
It's filled with sauce.
And then it's crunchy and fried on the outside.
This is Italy inside a fried ball.
And just so you guys know, none of this food will go to waste as we're donating it to a homeless bird foundation.
Okay, guys.
Today, we tried a bunch of different foods with the aim of spending over $100 on Italian street food.
But here's the thing.
Right now, I think we're coming up a little bit short.
If we look at our total, it's only...
But I have a plan.
Massimo, here I come.
Massimo's my meat dude.
He's also my cheese dude.
So basically, I'm gonna pick out a bunch of different cheeses and see what it comes out to.
Am I gonna educate you about each cheese?
No.
So I've just purchased 81 euros of cheese.
But is this gonna help us to get us over $100?
Let's find out.
So if you include everything we ate today, plus the cheese, we indeed did spend well over $100.
Is that cheating?
No.
It's cheesing.
My wife approves.
Worst joke of my life.
Alright, guys.
Before we go, I wanna say a huge thank you to The Roman Food Tour for making this video possible.
Today, I worked with their guides, Luca and Stephanie, as they brought me to different locations and introduced me to local people and local food.
The Roman Food Tour offers a range of award-winning culinary experiences in Rome, including food and wine tours, as well as cooking classes.
Traveling with Roman Food Tour, you can also skip long lines, and you'll be provided dining spaces even at the most crowded of locations.
Outside of Rome, you can also find them in Florence, Venice, and Sorrento.
Make the most of your holiday when you are here in Rome.
Work with The Roman Food Tour, I promise.
This is the way to get the most bang for your buck.
You can learn more about The Roman Food Tour by going to their YouTube channel or clicking on the website down below in the description.
So that is it for this video.
But in our next video, we're gonna be exploring pizza in Rome.
And I'm talking a pizza that costs over $1,000.
How does that work?
You'll find out next week.
Anyways, that is it for this one.
Thank you so much for watching.
I will see you next time.
I think I had enough carbs for a lifetime.
Soupy.
