The ham/bacon they use is guanciale and the sauce is actually not made from cream but instead eggs. They are added into the pasta while it’s still hot, which cooks them.
There’s two shops here in Berlin that sell guanciale, and pecorino romano is quite easy to find too. It took me a few years to perfect my carbonara, but I can make it quite good nowadays.
If you go into any restaurant and order carbonara here, you get cream and bacon. Oh, oh, and the last time I was in the US, I had to see the Olive Garden with my own eyes. I got some trolly pictures there, take a look at their idea of what carbonara is:
Took me a while to understand where the name carbonara comes from. In Italy it means the coal miner. So you put enough black pepper to it that they look like a little coal pieces sprinkled around the pasta. Delicious.
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