Rome – The best thing about eating in Italy isn’t the pizza. It’s not the mandatory fresh ingredients. It’s not the ability to eat outside nine months a year. The best thing is antipasti, the Italian word for heaven.
Where in the world can you find a better pre-dinner tradition than antipasti, Italy’s famous appetizer consisting of just about anything but (and before) pasta? Tapas in Spain are too heavy. Foie gras in France is too gross. Chips and dip in the U.S? Please. We do lead the world in obesity for a reason.
But antipasti in Italy are the perfect blend of delicious flavors and healthy ingredients. Fresh, lean prosciutto. Big, fat olives of green, brown and black. Ripe, hard chunks of Grana Padano cheese. Since returning from a year and a half in Rome, I often entertain guests on my 14th-floor balcony, my view of the Rockies surpassed only by the mosaic of antipasti in my Tunisian serving tray.
Unfortunately, I left Rome too soon. A city built by war, soothed by religion and flourished by art recently turned antipasti into an art form. Romans have discovered that antipasti are not just hors d’oeuvres anymore. Deep inside the narrow, windy alleys that snake around the majestic piazzas of Centro Storico is a place that has made antipasti a star.
Welcome to Obiká, the first mozzarella bar.
This isn’t easy. Bufala mozzarella, made from unpasteurized water buffalo milk, is the true centerpiece of any antipasti spread. It’s also the hardest to find. At Wild Oats and Sunflower Market on Colorado Boulevard I can find prosciutto, olives and cheese that taste within the same time zone of the Italian originals. But outside Italy I have a better shot at finding a brontosaurus singing the score to “Guys and Dolls” than flavorful mozzarella.
You’ve seen it. They are the round, white balls floating in murky liquid inside small plastic tubs. It looks like a lab experiment. However, most bufala mozzarella has all the flavor of a soggy mattress. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just blah. It adds the color white to the reds, greens and oranges of an antipasti spread. That’s it.
At Obiká it’s different. Bufala is the meal.
I heard about Obiká on my Italian instructional tape and visited during my recent European foray to the World Cup and Tour de France. I found the restaurant while wandering lost, as usual, in Centro Storico. It’s on the quiet little street of Via dei Prefetti on a corner of Piazza di Firenze, one of Rome’s many underrated piazzas, just five minutes from Piazza Navona.
I opened a giant glass door to a glass bar bearing giant baskets of fruit. The place was all modern glass and archways. Big and airy with modern jazz playing over the loud speaker, it appeared new, very un-Roman. Considering Rome is nearly 3,000 years old, the 2-year-old restaurant is new.
The outside tables, all candle lit on a perfect summer evening, were packed with locals and tourists alike. I sat down inside in the back where my candle helped illuminate an arch framing a back wall stacked with wine bottles.
What threw me off was the dishware. The plates were square with what appeared to be a Japanese design. Hmm. Isn’t Obiká a sushi bar in Osaka? No, Obiká (pronounced Oh-bee-KAU) comes from obiccá, the word in the Neapolitan dialect meaning, “Here it is.”
The owner, Silvio Ursini, is a Naples native and Bvlgari jewelry executive who loves two things: mozzarella and Japanese culture.
“Naples has no K in its alphabet,” Obiká manager Ricardo Gioulioni said. “He wanted it to look like Japan.”
The menu is weird. There aren’t any real dishes. There is a mix of salads such as cherry tomatoes, arugula and baby spinach; meats, including bresaola, prosciutto and smoked fishes; and some primi piatti (first dishes) such as couscous, pasta pie and handmade ravioli.
But at Obiká the mozzarella takes center stage. I ordered the wild boar peppery salami from Tuscany (don’t look for this at Wild Oats) for 10.50 euro (about $13.15) and Piana del Volturno mozzarella (8.50 euro, $10.65). Out came six huge strips of lean, spicy salami surrounded by ripe cherry tomatoes on a bed of greens. Sitting atop were huge mounds of bufala mozzarella the size of baseballs.
Using a serrated knife to prevent the milky fluid from pouring out the middle, I sliced into what would be the best bufala of my life. It burst with so much flavor it was almost sweet. With most bufala mozzarella you mix with a cracker or wrap prosciutto around it. With Obiká’s bufala, that would be like putting caviar with Spam.
It stands alone. It’s that good. Here’s why: Ursini gets his mozzarella from the water buffaloes owned by dairy farmers in the Piana del Volturno and Paestum regions surrounding Naples. How fresh is it? It’s hand- pressed every morning and in Obiká restaurants in Rome, Milan and London by 10 a.m.
The next day, they throw out whatever’s left. It’s no longer up to Obiká standards. I asked Giulioni, a Rome native, why most bufala outside Italy not only has the same look of a baseball but also the same flavor.
“Because most of the time there are special products to keep mozzarella fresh,” he said. “They keep it in water to keep it from drying up. But this mozzarella is no good the next day. Other mozzarella tastes like plastic.”
Many Romans were in no hurry to leave Obiká. They didn’t view it as the first stop of a Roman food tour: prima piatta at Obiká, seconda piatta at the Pantheon, dolce at Piazza Navona. The antipasti served as the whole meal.
“It’s becoming a tradition,” Giulioni said. “Not everybody wants a heavy meal. You can try different things and a glass of wine instead of a main course. It’s like a buffet. You have a table of six. Try all different plates and share.”
Along with bread and a glass of Morellino wine from Tuscany and Telaro from Campania, my total bill came to 31 euro ($38.75). Yeah, it’s not cheap. But you save money on pasta later.
Now that’s what I call antipasti.
Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road. He can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
