Outtakes: a time-warp deli in Rome

Cut from the Rome chapter. 

“Rome is a difficult town in which to find a budget restaurant,” Arthur Frommer writes in Europe on $5 a Day. “There are only three small areas in this entire large city where you'll discover anything resembling a cluster of good, low-cost eating spots.”

Thankfully, that's changed.Even when I found one of Arthur's recommendations still open, it turned out still to be budget-friendly—and good. Just now, I tracked down a place called Il Delfino for a late lunch. It's basically a Roman deli with, Arthur says, “a marvelous array of spit-roasted chickens, hors d'oeuvre counters, pizza ovens.” Exactly. Arthur commanded me to have pizza, and who was I to disobey? I munched contentedly as I soaked up the atmosphere: the conversations at a low-level buzz and, as far as I could tell, all in Italian (read: no tourists); the families with kids bearing sauce-enhanced grins; the endless array of foods spread behind the counter. It felt exactly like Arthur described it, like I'd stepped into a portal back to the 1960s. If Norman Rockwell were Italian, he would have painted this scene.