ITALY
ROME
LA PERGOLA AT ROME CAVALIERI WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL

La Pergola at Rome Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Rome, Italy | Bown's Best

Friends do not guarantee a magnificent dinner. When, however, those friends include one of mankind’s greatest chefs, a restaurant manager famous throughout Europe and beyond for his pursuit of perfection and a sommelier who presides over a cellar of surpassing magnificence, one might wish to concede that the omens are good. And a few other details might be clues, too: a napkin specially embroidered with one’s own initials, the very finest Riedel glassware, an offering of numerous varieties of sea salt, silver-gilt table settings originally made for George IV and a ‘water menu’ containing bottles of some of the most expensive waters in the world. It will come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that my visits to the Ristorante La Pergola are times of pure, unadulterated joy.

I use the word ‘friends’, and such I am proud to regard the magnificent gentlemen who have made this restaurant a place which everyone who cares about great gastronomic experiences longs to visit and re-visit. I hope that the pictures I bring before you of the great Chef Heinz Beck and of myself with the Sommelier and the Restaurant Manager impart some sense of the pleasure which filled my bosom on the occasion of my last excursion to this Temple of Culinary Delight.