Meet Maria Pasquale, Whose Book of Recipes and Stories from Rome Comes Out Next Week

Issue #21

Feb 23, 2023

Born in Australia to Italian parents, Maria Pasquale grew up living and breathing Italian culture, visited often, and finally moved to Rome at 33 years old. A freelance journalist covering food and travel with bylines in USA Today, CNN, the Telegraph, and Fodor’s Travel, among others, she is also the author of three books. Her newest book, The Eternal City: Recipes and Stories from Rome is available for pre-order now and will be released globally next week. Stay tuned for book launch events in Rome, Boston, and Toronto, which will be announced soon.

When it comes to knowing where and what to eat in Rome and beyond, Maria is the person you want to know. A passionate foodie, she has written about everything from the most popular street food in every Italian region to what it’s like dining at Osteria Francescana, which was crowned the #1 best restaurant in the world in 2016. She also introduced me to Da Enzo al 29 and the wonderful family who runs it, for which I will be forever grateful. I caught up with Maria over lunch last week and am excited to share her story as part of an ongoing series of interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs in Italy.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. It means a lot to me because you were one of my first friends here in Rome. We met in 2016, three years before I moved back. It was my first big press trip in Italy and I’m so glad that we have remained in touch since then and appreciate all you have done to help me integrate into life here and expand my social circle.

My gosh, it’s almost ten years.

You had been living in Rome for how long at that point?

I moved to Rome in 2011, so I’d been here for five years. We’re going on 12 years this year.

Do you still love it as much as you did then?

I do. It still frustrates me as much as it did then. I get asked this question very often. The love that I have for Rome I often equate it with—when you say it out loud, it sounds so cliché—but it is eternal. Because this city is never-ending, so I think your experience here and your rapport with it is never-ending. So yes, Rome thrills me, it excites me, it gets on my nerves, I love it—and all in the same moment sometimes.

You were born to two Italian parents from Abruzzo who immigrated to Australia. Did they meet here or there?

They met in Australia. And I always say the disclaimer right up front is it wasn’t an arranged marriage because it was quite strange for the period. It was that post-World War II period when there was a massive wave of migration, not just to Australia as you know, but they both immigrated at different times. So my mom immigrated in 1957; she was only three years old. She immigrated with her parents. And back then, it took a month to arrive to Australia. The ships left from Naples I believe. From Naples it would go to South Africa and do this massive trip around the world. It was a huge trip.

And my dad arrived in 1968; he was 18 at the time. And they met because they were both from the same village in Italy. So my mother always tells us this story that she remembers her mom telling her, “These young two boys have arrived and we need to go and welcome them to Australia.” And she says, “Oh I didn't like him in the beginning.” Four years later, they reconnected and married and the rest is history. So from the same village, and I’m talking about a town of maybe 1,500, so it’s not like they came from a big city or anything like that.

And your grandparents still live there or they did when you were growing up?

Both sets of grandparents have passed on, but my paternal grandparents never immigrated to Australia, and so we always had very strong ties to Italy because I was a young child navigating what it was like to grow up in a migrant household in Australia. And my mother immigrated so young, she was practically a native English speaker, but my father wasn’t and his parents lived in Italy, so as a kid growing up in Australia it was phone calls—no video calls, this was the ‘80s—and sending VHS videos across the seas of us opening up our Christmas presents and those sorts of things.

I went to Italy for the first time when I was six years old in 1985 and that was the first time my dad went back to see them. It was the first time he could afford to. He immigrated as an 18-year-old and he went back in his mid-thirties with a wife and two kids. It was a crazy migrant journey that I don’t take for granted because there’s so much more mobility now.

What was it like navigating that dual identity growing up? And what language did you guys speak at home?

I didn’t realize until I was an adult that I’d grown up bilingual—it was just normal to me. And I’m not 100% fluent, I still make mistakes—Italian grammar is very difficult and so different to English. But we spoke a hybrid of Italian, English. I say I’m trilingual because I speak Abruzzese dialect as well. To this day, that’s what my parents still speak amongst themselves. And if you overheard right now a phone call between me and my dad, it would be a hybrid of dialect, Italian, and English or he would speak to me in Italian and I would respond in English, but it’s a completely bilingual conversation.

He sent me and my brother to Italian school, like a Saturday school situation, and we hated it because all the other kids were outside playing and had the day off because you’d go to school Monday to Friday and then we had to go to Italian school on Saturday. I’m very grateful for it now because obviously as an adult you appreciate having had the opportunity to learn another language and when you’re a kid you kind of appreciate it a little less.

So do you feel more Italian or more Australian?

There are times in Italy when I feel more Australian and they’re the times when I’m most frustrated with something like Italy’s well documented institutional and bureaucratic instability. There are those moments when I’m like, “Gosh, I’m so Australian I can’t deal with this.” And there are moments when I’m in Australia and I’m dealing with our rigid approach to opening hours and little things like that where I’m so Italian. I’ve always felt very Italian. I’ve always been drawn to Italian culture, the language, the people. It’s my heritage, it’s in my roots and I’m always very proud to say I’m Italian.

Do you consider yourself Roman?

Yeah, I think I can after this many years. I think I’ve done my dues. The way I interact with a Roman taxi driver or banter with someone at a local market... Often when I travel to northern Italy, people find it quite strange when they ask me where I’m from and then they’ll say, “We’ve never met an Australian that has a Roman accent,” and then I’m like “Crap, I need to reign in my Roman cadenza.” I’m definitely Roman on things like punctuality. I think I’m reasonably Australian with my punctuality, but when I’m in Australia, I’m a lot more relaxed, like “Oh, what’s the rush?” I think that’s just a very Roman thing.

You grew up visiting here a lot, but what was that moment that pushed you to move here?

There were many moments and epiphanies, I think. But there was one year when I traveled here as a 16 year old and that’s when I remember falling in love with Italy and making a decision in my mind that one day I’m going to live here because I felt so drawn to the culture, the people, and also its difference for me. Because I think 16 is a formative year as an adolescent going into adulthood and that was when I started to realize that it was very different to my life in Australia, but also very familiar, which is very weird and very hard to explain. I’ve been Italian my whole life, but I’m also Australian. I was born there. So I think that’s probably something that most people that have two cultures have to navigate.

How did your parents feel about you moving back to the country that they had left?

Not impressed, in short. I remember having conversations with my father and he said to me, “What do you think you’re going to find in Italy?” This is someone who had left and created a life for himself in another country to give his kids those better opportunities than perhaps he had access to. My brother and sister and I all studied and went to university and had wonderful jobs and careers in Australia and then I think he probably thought, “Where did I go wrong?” when his first-born child who had always in a sense done everything by the book said, “Oh I’m going to move to Italy.”

The situation with the economy is still the same here in Italy, but 12 years ago, unemployment was at a record high. The global financial crisis was at its peak and the labor market in Australia was very different, where you could walk into any job you wanted. So to walk away from a full time job in Australia to come to Italy was very foreign to him. But my parents are also very supportive. They would much rather me be living way closer to them, but they’re also happy if I’m happy.

And you had a whole other career then, which I don’t know a whole lot about. Would you tell me about what you were doing in Australia?

My formal qualifications are an arts degree with a major in history and political science and then a bachelor of public policy and management. So I did two degrees at the University of Melbourne. I was there for five years and then I moved on to a public sector career. I was a policy advisor for the state government in Australia for about six or seven years. I worked in the multicultural affairs portfolio. I was very fortunate to be working at that period of my time in government, I saw two legislations through parliament. One was on racial and religious vilification and the other was more on multicultural institutionalism like the governance of how migrant programs are managed. And I also worked through September 11, dealing with the fallout of multicultural community interaction at that time.

It was very fascinating. I loved working in government. Initially I wanted to be a politician and then I worked with politicians for a few years. That straight away gave me the idea that it was definitely not something I wanted to do. So I moved from policy into communications, so I was an events manager and managed some major events for the Commonwealth Games in 2006.

And then I moved into multicultural and indigenous PR in the corporate sector. I was always in this social justice space. I loved communications, I loved writing. I always wanted to be a journalist, so I took a very long road to get there. When I moved to Italy, I was working on some major events in Australia because I’d opened up my own PR and events company, which I still run to this day—not many people realize that.

So this was a really big change.

I had a very thrilling career. I had a quick rise, which I’m very proud of, but those sorts of moments in life also make you stop and think “What’s next?” and “What do I really want to be doing?” That’s when I decided to move to Italy because traveling here on holiday every year just wasn’t enough.

So how did you get a foothold in journalism, writing for CNN, USA Today, Fodor’s, the Telegraph? It’s not easy.

No, it’s not—you know that. So when I moved here I had one friend in Rome. I had worked long and hard in Australia for many years. I thought I can afford to not work for a year; let’s see how this goes. You know, in Italy, sending out CVs, it just doesn’t work like that. I learned very quickly that you had to network and make some meaningful connections to be able to move through living here and working here.

I started writing a blog. I didn’t even know what a blog was. I still am hopeless with digital technology like that, which comes as a surprise to most people because I work in social media. I started a blog because I wanted to document my life here and what I was doing and it was just my mom and my sister reading it at the time. Nobody was reading it.

And I was doing exactly what I was doing in Melbourne, always wanting to know what the new openings were, what the hottest place in town was, I was always obsessed with food and dining out, so I started the blog and then through friends met someone working in food tourism and started doing PR because he needed someone to do marketing, PR, social media, press office, and I could do all of that.

Was that Eating Rome?

Eating Italy Food tours, which is now Eating Europe. I began when they were only running one tour in Rome and because of very hard work and years of PR and managing a team of people with a whole lot of growth, they’re now in six or seven cities across Europe, so there was this exponential growth that they had.

So I used to host a lot of journalists on our tours and one day there was a guy on the tour who said, “10 Best USA Today are looking for someone in Rome. Do you know anyone? Can you recommend someone?” And I was like, “Maybe I could do that.” I was just writing on my blog. I mean, I had done professional writing in the corporate world. And so he said, “Okay, here’s the contact details, just get in touch with them.” And I emailed them and literally the next day got assignments.

Luck is winning the lottery—it’s not just luck, as you know. You need to know how to write. You need to be professional and know what you’re doing, but timing also is super important. So it was the right place, right time and having the skill set to be able to do that.

So I started writing for USA Today and I’ve been the local expert, as they call them, for the last 11 years. And that opened a lot of doors for me in Rome and in Italy. Generally, Italians love big American newspapers. USA Today is a huge brand and Italians respect it. So slowly I started pitching. I’ve sent out thousands of pitches that have never been responded to, but you just keep at it. I got a couple of breaks with the Telegraph and CNN, who I’ve done a few pieces for now, and I think with social media and a blog your profile starts to build and you become a bit more visible.

You have a huge following on social media. How did you get there?

Organic growth. I was one of the first Instagrammers. My blog started gaining traction because my first year that I’d been in Rome, I went back to Australia for Christmas as I do every year and my brother said, “You’ve got a blog now, you should get on Twitter because everybody that has a blog is on Twitter.” And I did, I opened up an account. I have a small profile on Twitter, but Instagram has been very good to me and Facebook. I’m very proud to have grown an organic and authentic community of people who care about me and what I’m doing.

Well, you’re also a fantastic photographer and videographer. All your Instagram content is always so beautiful and inspiring.

Thank you. Look, it sounds a bit cheesy, but I think it’s the same as my writing. I really love traveling, I have a thirst for new experiences. I love Italy. So you see things through the eyes of beauty and love and I think that helps. I’m a hopeless romantic. I’ve said it many times before, but Rome is my greatest love story. And like any love story, you have ups and downs and times when you want to call it quits, but I love it. You see its flaws, but you still see its beauty.

I try to be as real as I can on social media. That's my only tip for people that are on social media. There are people at the end of a phone watching you and there’s no need to be who you’re not, at least for me

So how did you get into book writing?

So in 2015, I’d been working for Eating Italy food tours. I was the PR director for four or five years and I was getting invited to a lot of press trips, the blog gained traction, USA Today came along, some other freelance things came along, so I got to a point where I realized I didn’t want to be doing both, I wanted to be doing my writing, so I decided to walk away from that gig. And about a year before that, someone had asked me to submit a book proposal about transforming my blog into a book and so I did that and it never went anywhere. And a year later, when I walked away from that job, I remember a couple of family members asked, “What ever happened to that book proposal?”

And so I dusted it off and I sent it cold. Probably your American audience will find this incredible, because it doesn’t work like this generally in the States. But I sent this proposal cold to three publishing houses. One never got back to me. One asked me some questions and then that died. And then the third, Smith Street Books in Melbourne, signed me. This was in August and by December, I had the contract in my hands. That was in 2017. And then in 2021, I wrote How to Be Italian, which was the most unexpected contract of my life. I’ve been quoted on the record saying it honestly saved me from a mental health standpoint and gave me something to do after so much other work had been lost during that emergency phase.

Well, you spent a huge chunk of time…

Yeah, I got stuck in Australia for 16 months because of strict and draconian border closures in Australia. And so How to Be Italian came out in 2021. If I Heart Rome is a love letter to Rome, then How to Be Italian is a celebration of Italy. And now my third title, Eternal City, is due out in March.

Yes, thank you for bringing a copy, by the way. Is it the second edition of the first book or something completely different?

It’s a brand-new title, as you can see. It’s been completely redesigned. The recipes are the recipes for I Heart Rome, which is a collection of recipes from Rome’s bakers, chefs, trattorias, and friends in Rome. It has over 70 recipes featured in I Heart Rome and this has an expanded and updated guide to the city. There’s more than 80 places to drink and eat, so it’s my entire guide to Rome in a sense, from rooftop bars to gelaterie to trattorie to fine dining. It’s my little address book to Rome. And the stories are of these custodians of Roman cuisine. For me it’s been an absolute privilege to tell their story and engender pride in them because in any city you live in, you kind of take your city for granted.

It looks beautiful. I’m just flipping through it now. Do you cook a lot at home?

I can cook. I know how to cook. And everyone is always so surprised to know that I cook because I eat out probably 300 nights a year or something like that, which is crazy. But yes, I do. I made carbonara the other day and I used the recipe in this book, which was generously given to me by Da Enzo trattoria in Trastevere, which is one of my favorite places to eat Roman cuisine.

And I owe everything I know about cooking to my mother. But we chose not to include my family recipes in this book because the book is about Rome and we wanted to stay true and authentic to that and my family are not from Rome.

And it’s coming out in March?

Yeah, let’s say first of March.

In the U.S.?

U.S., U.K. I believe there are two dates flying around: 28^th of February and the first of March. So let’s say first of March globally and it’ll be available anywhere books are sold.

What’s next? Another book?

Writing is definitely part of the next chapter of my life. I love telling stories about Italy, and not just about Rome. Italy is such a dynamic country and there are so many stories to tell, so I have a couple of projects in the pipeline with my publisher, so I’m hoping to be able to announce later this year what’s next.

What’s the next book about?

It’s going to be a regional guide on what to eat in the whole of Italy. It’s probably going to showcase about 1,000 – 2,000 dishes.

With recipes?

No, not with recipes and not with locations because it’s going to be an evergreen guide. The purpose is to encourage readers to become more curious and research every region and know that the food changes. We’re gonna cap it at about 20-30 dishes per region, so it’ll be the dishes not to miss. Then it’ll be the produce not to miss in every region. So you’ll know that if you’re in Sicily and couscous is on the menu, that’s something you should try, but if there’s something with almonds or something with pistachio di Bronte, you should try that too. And then it’s going to showcase sagre, so there will be maybe up to 10 food festivals per region and food experiences per region, like truffle hunting in Piemonte or a stay at an Etna wine resort.

This book is gonna be massive!

I know. It’ll be like How to Be Italian because cookbooks stay in that larger format, whereas anything lifestyle stays in this format. I’ve just started putting some things together.

You should get an honorary PhD after that.

They came to me last year and asked me if I could get a book out within like six months and I said no. How to Be Italian has sold out three times in the States.

I’m excited to hear more about this new book project. I love this topic as well, sharing tips with people who maybe don’t know that they should try a sfogliatella when they’re in Naples or the Amalfi Coast. Or they’re going to Sicily and they’ve heard about arancini, but maybe they haven’t heard about sfincione or pane cunzatu. But what’s in Molise, Maria? I have no idea.

Pecora… a lot of things. Also, Molise is a region I’ve been to. So when I tell people that I’ve been to every single region in Italy except one, Italians usually say, “I bet you haven’t been to Molise.” And I say, “No, I’ve been to Molise many times!” Because my family are from Abruzzo and when I grew up, it was gli Abruzzi because it combined the two regions. But Molise is great. Campobasso is a beautiful town.

So which region have you not been to?

Val d’Aosta, which I will be getting to this year. It’s the only region I haven’t been to.

That’s the other very small one, right?

Right. So I’ll get to Aosta, I’ll go to Courmayeur. And I’m not a skier. That’s not to say that it’s not a great place to visit at other times of year, but having that alpine territory…

So that’s gonna be the purpose of the book. We don’t just eat pizza and pasta in Italy, though we eat a lot of pizza and pasta.

And there are so many types of pasta!

Absolutely. There are so many people that are surprised to hear that things like apple strudel or couscous are national dishes in this country. We don’t have this homogenous cuisine and that’s what’s so fascinating about Italy’s cuisine.

Going back to your life in Rome for a moment, you live in one of the most charming neighborhoods in Rome, but it’s a neighborhood that’s changed a lot over the years. How have you seen this evolution and what is it like actually living there? Is it getting too popular for its own good?

Trastevere is one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Rome, cuore di Roma, as Romans like to call it. Heart of the city. At night, I’ve started to tolerate it slightly less than I used to, but that also coincides with me being older. I moved here when I was 33 and now I’m 12 years older. So I think your needs and the things you like in a neighborhood change. During the day, Trastevere still has this beautiful spirit of community and it’s quiet. You live this… I don’t know how to say it in English.

Just say it in Italian.

Si vive proprio il quartiere. Everybody knows each other, it’s like a little village. You know that scene from Beauty and the Beast—there’s the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. That’s Trastevere, everybody knows each other. The guy from the alimentari downstairs in my palazzo knows that I’ve just come back from a trip. And Romans aren’t nosy, but they like to talk and they like to feel a part of something. So Trastevere still has that. It’s unique, it has its own identity.

It has changed a lot. Airbnb is everywhere, and there aren’t many hotels in Trastevere, but you’re finding tourists and foreigners that are in the neighborhood and using its supermarkets and facilities. And that is frustrating sometimes, but Trastevere for me is a microcosm of Rome in the sense that it repays you with the beauty that it offers.

Hot tip: go to Trastevere during the day.

Go to Trastevere during the day. You don’t need a map. There’s nothing that you need to see. Trastevere doesn’t have the monuments like the historical center, but it has over 40 churches and beautiful piazzas…

It has the Villa Farnesina, which is beautiful.

It does, it does. And it has some great places to eat, some not great places to eat obviously, being such a tourist attraction. People come from all over the world to visit Trastevere, so there are some places that are not great. But if you want to come and have a nice lunch and a lazy walk around, you get to experience what in a sense is the old town of Rome—you know those cobblestone streets, the alleys for pedestrians only, the ivy hanging off the buildings, the Fiat 500 parked on the street. If you Google image Rome or Trastevere, that’s what you’ll see and that’s what you actually get when you walk there. It’s like a film set.

Maybe just avoid Friday and Saturday nights.

Yeah, probably.

So that’s a good segue to my last question for you. Can you share a couple of your favorite places to eat in Rome?

For Roman pizza, I love Remo in Testaccio. For new Roman pizza, Seu Pizza Illuminati is my favorite. For trattoria, I would say Da Enzo or Osteria der Belli. They’re not Roman, they’re Sardinian, but that’s my Sunday lunch go-to for the food but also for the hospitality. For gelato, Otaleg. I love Pianostrada—all women owned contemporary bistro dining. For innovative, let’s say Retrobottega.

Meet Maria Pasquale, Whose Book of Recipes and Stories from Rome Comes Out Next Week

Issue #21

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