At the table
Water and wine, and what people actually drink
You will be asked one question about water before anything else. Wine comes by the quarter, the half and the litre, and the house one is usually the right answer.
Drinks in an Italian restaurant are simpler than the wine list suggests, because most of the table is drinking two things: water and wine. What trips visitors up is the vocabulary and the sizes, both of which take about a minute to learn.
The water question comes first
Almost before you have sat down you will be asked naturale o frizzante. Still or sparkling. Answer it and the meal begins.
Water arrives bottled and it is paid for. Tap water is safe everywhere in Italy and comes out of street fountains all over Rome, but asking for it at a restaurant table is unusual, sometimes met with a shrug, and occasionally refused. Acqua del rubinetto is the phrase if you want to try; expect it to be a small conversation rather than a routine one.
A bottle usually feeds the whole table rather than a glass each, and a second one appears when it is empty. That is normal and it is on the bill.
Wine comes in sizes, and the smallest is a quarter of a litre
A carafe of the house wine, vino della casa or vino sfuso, is sold by volume:
- un quartino, a quarter litre, about two glasses
- un mezzo litro, half a litre
- un litro, a litre
Ordering un quarto di rosso is a completely ordinary thing to say at lunch and gets you a small carafe of red. There is nothing apologetic about it, and nobody reads it as being cheap.
The house wine is usually the right answer in an ordinary trattoria. It is local, it is bought in bulk, it is chosen to go with what the kitchen cooks, and in most places it is decent. In a restaurant with a serious list it is worth looking at the list instead, and the tell is whether the list exists at all.
Red with everything is a myth
The pairing rules are looser than the stereotype. What actually happens is that people drink what the region grows, which is why the wine on the table in Bologna is different from the wine on the table in Naples, and why asking for qualcosa del posto, something from around here, is both easy and usually good.
Ordering a white with a meat dish will surprise nobody. Ordering a heavy red with a plate of raw fish will.
Cocktails belong before the meal
A spritz or a negroni in the evening is an aperitivo and it happens before you sit down to eat. Ordering a cocktail to drink alongside dinner is unusual and it reads as foreign. Beer with pizza, on the other hand, is entirely normal and extremely common.
After the meal there may be an offer of a digestivo: amaro, limoncello, grappa. In a small family place it sometimes arrives unasked and unbilled, which is a courtesy rather than a mistake.
Coffee comes after, and never during
Coffee is the full stop at the end of the meal. It arrives after the dessert has gone, it is an espresso, and it does not come with milk in it. The rules around that are worth their own page, and they are in the coffee guide.
What to say
Una bottiglia di naturale, a bottle of still water. Un quarto di rosso della casa, a quarter litre of the house red. Un altro mezzo, another half litre. Vorrei qualcosa del posto, I would like something local.
That is enough vocabulary for almost every meal you will eat here.