They say that it is impossible to get a bad meal in Italy. I have, in the past, found this to be more or less truth. It seems as true as ever now.
Our impossibly good first meal we put together ourselves with odds and ends from the Carrefour market — a bottle of grassy green olive oil, some bufala mozzarella, a heavenly soft salumi and a nearly perfect San Marzano tomato, paired with a crusty whole wheat bread and a fine $2.99 bottle of Montepulciano.

Salumi, bread, tomato, bufala mozzarella and olive oil and vino rosso in our flat
We attempted to have a bad meal at a dirty looking casual pizza joint our first night in Rome. The salad came, and it appeared of the sort you might choke down at your neighborhood pizzeria called Little Tony’s or Rocco’s back home — lettuce, tomato wedges, black olives, pickled vegetables, artichoke hearts, oil and vinegar. Except that here, the lettuce was exceptionally flavorful, the tomatoes perfectly ripe, the black olives briny and toothsome, each pickled mushroom and celery and pepper cured I’m sure in a vat in the back of that very restaurant.