There's no pizza in Rome without supplì. And yet, the king of fried foods in the Italian capital’s culinary tradition is as famous inside the city as it is unknown outside. Excellent as both and appetizer and by itself, the reason that supplì hasn’t received its due credit outside of Rome remains an unsolved mystery.

Of course, the explosion on a national scale in Italy of its main "competitor,” the Sicilian arancini, has not helped. So in the face of a cuisine with a strong tendency for export like the Roman one, supplì has remained a “diamond in the rough” to be appreciated almost exclusively in the shadow of the Rome’s greatest landmarks.