Sunday 25 July return to Roma

Well our restaurant last night did not live up to the standard of the Gambero Rozzo or our expectations. A few things went wrong, first despite having confirmed our reservation with us, it was not in their book. We had a table but again it was in an odd corner of the restaurant. The restaurant itself has lots of character in its décor, frescoes, wook beamed ceilings. The waiter took his time in bringing the menus, then brought the white wine just left the bottle on the table, we had to ask for an ice bucket. The waiter looked indifferent not caring much, distant, the room was half empty.

The food was ordinary, really not worth the price, poor quality to euro value. I had a sea food salad which is usually about 8 euros in any restaurant in Rome, here it was 20 euros, main course monkfish, good but again nothing special with a side dish of fiori di zucca, just the flowers no stuffing, good but again I thought this is not freshly made, they have been sitting on the counter. For dessert fruiti di bosco, only the raspberries where good and sweet, the other berries were sour. Will did not have much luck either, his antipasto was prosciutto with figs which he liked but the main dish was overdone with mozzarella. Will write to Gambero to tell them that this recommendation was a huge disappointment. After dinner we went walking in central Milan, very quiet at night but so many beautiful shop windows, something we do not see in Rome.

Il Duomo Milan

Speaking of which, big scandal yesterday, the Italian police raided a sweatshop where dozens of Chinese workers do piecemeal work on clothing. Now all of them had their papers in order, no illegal workers here. The discovery was that all the work they were doing for a few centimes per item, all of it is for known Italian designer brands, customers usually pay large sums of money for one clothing item thinking that it was done by professionals, not so. This is a growing problem in Italy, you get a lot of made in China copies of designer items, cheaply made and you also get now items made in Italian sweatshops. In both cases the items are not worth the price tag. A retired tailor who worked for 50 yrs for one well known designer told me that nowadays people want labels they do not look for quality in workmanship as was the fashion years ago. Designers know this and give the public the labels, nothing more, sad really. The same can be said of the actual work of the designers, today the big names are too busy managing their image and business empire to actually design, sketch or draw new patterns for clothes or other items. They have apprentice to do this work, they may look over the work, give general instructions, make sure it is more or less what they want or has their trade mark, that is were it ends. You pay for the name, so buyer beware!