Here’s the nightmare. You’re in Rome for a week. You’re hungry. You’ve eaten, but you can’t be satisfied. Something gnaws at your gut. You want meat. In fact, your body screams for flesh but you can’t find any. There’s only what the young and undeniably hip call “carbs”: meatless pizza, pasta, polenta. Finally, you decide to do something you vowed never to do. You belly up to the Bancomat and get money for a trip to the one place that can save your life: McDonalds.
Yes! The sliver-thin patty of mystery beef sends your quivering body into ecstasy. You feel a satisfying fullness like you’ve not felt ever before in meatless Italy. You give a little prayer, “thanks for the heart-rendering goodness of industrial food, God. I’ll never forget this moment.”
Ok, so you think I’m making this all up, don’t you?
Well, buddy, the joke’s on you. It’s true. It’s all found in the documentation of a young American journalist in Rome. It’s not a nightmare, it’s the truth!
A journalist who couldn’t find meat in the Eternal City. Now you know what’s wrong with American journalism, eh?
If Abby Lubbers had bothered to actually ask herself why she couldn’t find meat in Rome, she would have learned of Rome’s fascination with animal flesh. She would have learned of the true Roman cuisine borne from beef cut low off the cow in Testaccio butcher shops. She would have made her delicate fingertips susceptible to the hot bite of scottadita, the little, finger-burning grilled lamb ribs quite popular with Romans.
Meatless Rome. Who’d a thunk?
Read and weep over the state of youth of America: A Taste of America in Rome