Tables on the Tiber. Consumer’s Guide to Roman Restaurants.

Jean Campbell Harris

Frascati: [self published?]

1960

54 hand-drawn maps in text.

Since my junior year abroad in Rome, I have collected books about Rome and especially Americans in Rome -- many wonderful titles and many awful ones, ranging from artist’s and fine press books to comics and cookbooks. My favorites are those that I associate with personal experiences of the city, among them of course happy restaurant meals. A sojourn at the American Academy in 1977-1978 afforded many such pleasures, and soon afterwards I discovered this oddball restaurant guide for Americans, apparently self-published twenty-odd years before my fellowship year. It’s a perfect period piece.

I know nothing about the author except that she is neither the similarly named Baroness Trumpington nor the notorious Lady Jeanne Campbell. The introduction implies that she was somehow associated with the American Academy. Fully fifty four restaurants are profiled in some detail and each is provided with a (not entirely reliable) locator map. (By my count only three are still in business today.) Some of the additional information is still highly useful, everything from the structure of the classic Italian meal to how to hail a waiter. But totally miscellaneous information also abounds, for example, that, although even in 1960 Italians tended to be more formal than Americans at table, the way in which restaurants were graded socially meant that in some contexts, “Don’t be shocked if the men remove their jackets... in the trattorias this is standard hot-weather procedure.” Some things Roman never change, like the summer swelter.

Paul F. Gehl