Al Supermercato Italiano

Most of my time in Rome has been spent eating. I’m not even kidding. I’ve traveled a good amount, I’ve been to some great museums and I’ve enjoyed my classes with IES Abroad. But in terms of total waking hours, the vast majority of my visit to the Eternal City has been spent finding ways to indulge my lack of gastronomic self-control. A few people I know say they have gotten bored of Italian food after a few months in Rome, but I have never tired of it. Unfortunately, my wallet certainly has.

Italy is not an especially expensive country, but Rome is among its’ more expensive cities, and the district I live in (Prati), is like the Roman equivalent of the Upper West Side in New York City. So if you eat out more than once a week, especially if you wash your food down with an generous amount of alcohol as many students choose to, you will be faced with a pretty grim credit card bill by the end of the month.

It’s easy to justify eating out a lot—because immersing oneself in the local culture means trying new foods and developing a taste for i piatti tipici of wherever you’re studying. Furthermore, if you’re trying to keep to a budget, cooking the same meals you eat back home might feel like you’re missing out on a key part of study abroad. But the good news is that Italian supermarkets are nearly as amazing as Italian restaurants, and offer a great variety of products you might not find in the US at very reasonable prices. Even if you don’t consider yourself much of a chef back home, I would definitely recommend a stroll around an Italian supermarket—it may become one of your favorite parts of study abroad.

Most supermarkets in Rome have a good selection of produce, as seen here. Even smaller markets and convenience stores will usually sell a few staples like onions, tomatoes and potatoes. Campania and Sicily produce delicious tomatoes, citrus fruits, peppers, and more. A can of mouthwatering D.O.P San Marzano tomatoes costs a fraction of they would in the U.S.A., but I try not to buy them because I heard the Mafia controls all the tomato farms and uses slave labor.

Butcher shops at the supermarket offer chicken, pork, beef and veal, both pre-prepared and regular cuts. I found meat surprisingly cheap in Italy, in spite of the strict agricultural standards that Italian farmers are held to. At the Pewex supermarket near my house, you can usually find two sirloin steaks for €8 Euro, which would be unheard of back home. Italian supermarkets also have a better selection of organ meat, (livers, kidneys, brains, etc) which sound gross but can be a really cheap source of protein if you learn how to cook them right.

Another underrated strength of the Italian supermarkets are the great canned sauces and preserves offered: pepper relish, cream of artichoke, caponata, cream of hazelnut, and so on. These can be used to transform any simple cold-cut sandwich into a panino worthy of a Roman salumeria.

Seems unfair to go this whole time without mentioning the wine, so here you go. This is a picture of one part of one of the wine shelves at Pewex. There's a wide range of prices and flavors, but I usually stick with the bottles in the €2-3 Euro range, which still taste pretty good for their price. Or at least I think they do. I don't really know anything about wine.That's why I drink the cheap stuff.

If there's one weakness of the supermarkets in Rome, its' that you'll have a hard time finding "international" food products that is, anything from outside of Italy. Most larger markets will have a little shelf like this one with Asian or Mexican foods, but this will be pretty disappointing to most of you familiar with those cuisines. However, Rome is a big international city, so you won't have such a hard time finding a specialty store, particularly for food from East or South Asia.