siennese kroeg.

Habits can sneak up on you can't they. Unless you're me right now and you've lately been going through a period of rigorous self-analysis, tehn nothing sneaks up on no one. The closest I get to a new habit these days is undoing an old bad habit into its opposite, not really the same thing. But I say all that to say this: I didn't realize how often I checked on Klary's blog until she went on vacation in Italy for a couple of weeks. The good news is, she's back and hopefully there will be gazillions of Italian photos to follow.

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When we lived in Italy quite a few years back, way before we knew a single thing about anything, one of our main evening beer-drinking and pizza-eating hangouts was this place with a then-mysterious name, Kroeg.

We truly stumbled across it, tucked away behind a busy street, and the name mystified us...until we took our Dutch friend Birre there and she became even more excited than normal at the prospect of drinking beer.


















Not known for being a regular squealer, she nonetheless squealed, "I can't believe this, it's a Dutch bar!" It was actually Belgian, but that didn't matter...it was dark inside (the top photo above, taken from their website, is approximately 18 times more well-lit than it was when we were there) they had all of Birre's favorite beers, and they made decent caipirinhas and mojitos, so this became a bit of a Plan A destination for the rest of the semester.

The beers were nice, but the bigger draw was the awesomely amazing pizzas and cicaccini they served. I'm reasonably certain that these were consistently the best pizzas we'd ever had up to this point in our tiny lives. Here's the menu, circa 2001, taken from their website, which was probably last updated in 2001:

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Pizza Margherita £ 8000
Pizza ai 4 formaggi £ 9000
Pizza al salame piccante e peperoni £ 9000
Pizza al salame piccante £ 9000
Pizza taleggio, melanzane e prosciutto cotto £ 9000
Pizza vegetariana £ 9000
Pizza ai wurstel £ 9000
Ciaccino prosciutto cotto, taleggio e zucchine £ 9000
Ciaccino gorgonzola, mela, rucola £ 9000
Ciaccino peperoni, salsa tartufata, mozzarella £ 9000
Ciaccino gorgonzola, prosciutto cotto, asparagi £ 9000
Ciaccino caprese £ 9000
Ciaccino rucola, parmigiano, bresaola £ 9000
Ciaccino pomodoro, taleggio, rucola £ 9000
Ciaccino salsiccia, salsa tartufata, mozzarella £ 9000
Ciaccino prosciutto cotto, porcini, mozzarella £ 9000
Ciaccino spinaci, mozzarella £ 9000
Focaccia rustica al prosciutto cotto e mozzarella £ 11000

These prices are all in Italian lire, I'd wager that when the Euro showed up, the bar owners just changed the lire sign to a Euro sign and kept the numbers the same.

Anyway, after a couple of beers, our ciaccini selections were invariably variable, but we usually tried to save room for the apple (or sometimes pear), arugula, and gorgonzola version. Seriously great, and costing us about 5 U.S. dollars apiece when we were there. Oh, Europe.

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