A Table Already Booked at Casa Bleve, with a Sommelier

Casa Bleve takes bookings weeks out and turns people away at the door. On this evening the table is held for you, which is the practical value of the ticket before anything reaches it. Two and a half hours, hosted by a professional sommelier. It opens with an aperitivo, then three courses of Roman and Italian cooking in the dining room of a Renaissance palace, a family-run place a few streets from both the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. Each course comes with a different regional wine, so the meal moves around the map: what grows in one part of Italy against what is cooked in another, and why the two developed together. The sommelier explains the pairing technique as it happens rather than lecturing first, which means by the third glass you can predict what is coming and why. The group is capped at ten, small enough to ask questions across the table. Meet your host at Piazza della Minerva, by the elephant statue.