Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (55 page)

 

The name of a place also says a lot. It is felt generally that restaurants whose name includes the preposition
da
(at so-and-so's place)—“Da Peppino,” “Da Vasco e Giulia,”
³
and so on—are reliable. Again except for laudable exceptions, one should be wary of places whose name does not bear the word
osteria
but rather the affected, pseudoantique
hostaria
. Anyone who glimpses such obtuse witticisms as “In wine, wisdom; in grappa, strength; in water, microbes” on the menu, or framed mottos on the walls that read “Melons, like men, soften over time,” “Credit is only given to ninety-year-olds accompanied by their parents,” and other banalities that immediately set your teeth on edge should consider himself forewarned. Anyone with knowledge of the typical dishes of a region (to which this entire book is dedicated) understands that a simple reading of the menu can safeguard against many misfortunes. If on Ischia we are offered a menu designed to include “1. Pasta alla Norma, 2. Agnolotti . . . ” it is best to get up from the table and leave immediately.

The ritual of choosing the dishes at a restaurant is the highlight of the evening and the culmination of friendly conversation, a dialogue with table companions and with the waiter or restaurant manager, which confirms and elevates the gastronomic class of the entire table. Such talk gives us a wealth of new information and enriches the stores of our language with new dialects.

Reading the menu is useful and enjoyable because reading is always useful and enjoyable. Nevertheless, to choose well, it is best to consult with the waiter, and also have a look at the “chef's specials”: on a piece of paper stapled to the menu—sometimes in crooked writing that is not quite legible—the restaurant suggests additional dishes, made with the best “bargains” they were able to buy that very morning.

They immediately bring bread and wine to the table, then go off to boil or roast the rest. They also bring water, after discussing whether it should be carbonated or not, thus highlighting affinities and differences among those at the table.

In some restaurants the first thing they bring to the table, by way of “compliments of the house,” is pizza or focaccia. Not infrequently the appetizers end here. In reality appetizers are not customary in regional cuisine. The custom of the introductory course came to Italy from France and caught on mainly in Piedmont, where anchovies in green sauce, vegetables fried in batter, and veal in tuna sauce are usually served at the beginning of
the meal. In most cases appetizers, both at the restaurant and at home, are a mark of extravagance, a sign of celebration. The tradition of being obliged to serve appetizers became widespread in Italy in the 1960s.

Regional cuisine reacted in its own way to this innovation. Wherever appetizers are served in simple, unpretentious Italian inns and trattorias, they are more often than not typical local products or dishes: marinated olives, sweet-and-sour pearl onions, mushrooms in oil, stuffed olives, stuffed mushroom caps, bruschetta with truffles or capers, or vegetables in oil (small artichokes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, dried tomatoes, white beans). Freshly sliced prosciutto,
crudo
(cured) or
cotto
(cooked), mortadella, salami, Bresaola sausage. Seafood salads, which can be with or without sauce, cold or warm. Oysters. Marinated mussels.
Tuna bottarga
. Mozzarella with a drizzle of oil, mozzarella and tomato (Caprese), Parmesan, salted ricotta; focaccia in Liguria; in Puglia, garlic shoots boiled and dressed with oil and vinegar.

In any case, the “authenticity” and simplicity of both the setting and the menu was prized back in Dickens's time:

 

In not the least picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the visitor may derive good entertainment from real Genoese dishes, such as Tagliarini; Ravioli; German sausages, strong of garlick, sliced and eaten with fresh green figs; cocks' combs and sheep-kidneys, chopped up with mutton-chops and liver; small pieces of some unknown part of a calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and served up in a great dish like white-bait; and other curiosities of that kind. They often get wine at these suburban Trattorie, from France and Spain and Portugal.
⁴

 

The antipasti can also be hot: various
zuppette
(light soups) of fish or seafood in tomato sauce, or thinly sliced meat.

 

Unlike the starters, first courses, namely, pastas and risottos, are essential and are served at any restaurant in Italy. If the first course is neither pasta nor rice, but a vegetable or meat soup, it is considered a rarity and a line or two about it will be noted in the margin of the menu. This absence of liquid soups on the traditional Italian menu often makes things difficult for foreigners from the north, for whom a lunch without soup is not a lunch. Everyone knows that for Russians, soups are the foundation of the diet. But, as we can see, its absence is also distressing for inhabitants of Germany, such as Heinrich Heine:
“First course: no soup. A terrible thing, especially for a well-born man like me, accustomed, since his youth, to having soup each day and who until that moment could not conceive of a world in which the sun did not rise in the morning and soup was not served at midday.”
⁵

Tourists must bear in mind that in Italy pizza is not considered a first course (see “Pizza”). Usually people order pizza (if they are not very hungry) or else a “normal” meal, with a first course, second course, and fruit.

The second courses on the menu are divided into two categories: fish and meat. Depending on the place, the fish dishes may be
baccalà
(dried cod) Vicenza-style, fish
in saòr
(fried and then marinated), fish in foil, or fish cooked in a thousand other ways. Meat dishes are prepared in a particular way each time; for example, game
alla cacciatora
, or hunter-style (stewed in a liquid sauce with tomatoes, wine, and spices), stew with Barolo wine, saltimbocca (pieces of lean meat or roulades fried in hot oil), or rabbit with rosemary and Taggia olives.

Side dishes, in Italian restaurants, are ordered expressly and are often served on a separate plate. Mixed salads or other vegetables, such as baked chicory, grilled eggplant, eggplant baked with mint, and spinach molds, are usually preferred over potatoes, which are less common here than in other national cuisines.

Desserts are often the pride of restaurants, but they are ordered more frequently by tourists unable to resist them than by local residents. The locals are accustomed to stoically overcoming the sugary temptation and try not to look at the dessert cart when it comes by. Among the most obvious desserts of any restaurant are macedonia (fruit cup); tiramisù, which has by now been around the globe and has lost all its exotic attraction for tourists; and zuppa inglese (trifle), neither a soup nor an exact replica of the English dessert, but a sponge cake thoroughly soaked in liqueur, with cream and chocolate.

After the seasonal fruit, the cheese cart is finally brought to the tables. This moment is the apotheosis of gourmandizing, of exchanging information, of satisfying curiosities, of attention to the typical products of distant regions. At a restaurant or a friend's home, it is usually possible to taste cheeses that you would never think of buying in a store—and which you might from that moment begin to adore and later buy.

The order of the courses in restaurants is sacrosanct, incontestable. To assail it would be tantamount to a revolution.

An amusing attempt to subvert the customs and habits of Italians was the Backwards Dinner, held by avant-garde artists at the Politeama Rossetti of Trieste on January 12, 1910, the first of many propagandistic evenings that Marinetti's Futurist Cookery movement organized during the thirty years of its history. During this dinner, dishes with arcane,
polemical names were served, though, in reality, there was nothing really new about them: for example, “blood clots in broth,” “roast mummy with professor's liver,” and “jam of the glorious deceased.” The most astounding aspect was the reverse order in which the courses were served, beginning with coffee and ending with antipasto.

A classic dinner, however, always ends with an espresso. A person may drink it or not; it's a personal matter. But giving the waiter prior notice at the beginning of the meal that coffee will be ordered and drunk after dessert is an eccentricity that would only occur to a tourist. A delightful story on the subject is contained in Galina Muravieva's comparative analysis of customs:

 

“For me, spaghetti, steak, and coffee, please,” a Russian woman orders in an Italian restaurant. Her Italian friends laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” The Russian woman, piqued, doesn't understand. How can we help laughing: you ordered your meal and coffee at the same time.

Don't you understand? Coffee is not just the ending of a meal, it is something distinct from lunch or dinner. With coffee, you don't eat anything, and after coffee, at most you may drink something: brandy, cognac, or the like. The Italians, like other Europeans, like to move to another place to drink their coffee, for example, to another room or, if dining in a restaurant, to a bar. You can also drink coffee at the restaurant, but it is ridiculous to order it right away.
⁶

 

Often restaurants may have a social reputation and history that is more valued than their cuisine. It is interesting to dine in Roman restaurants near the Parliament, because they are “parceled out” among the parties and the gastronomic rituals celebrated in each of them are rich in symbols, which are curious to decipher and understand. When the Christian Democrat Party still existed, its parliamentarians dined in a restaurant run by nuns known as the Travailleuses Missionaires. Deputies and senators of this historic Italian party, in fact, lived in accordance with Catholic rules: and so their meals were served to them by nuns. The sisters, at the beginning of the meal, arranged a moment of meditation in the dining room and prayed together with their customers. Having been prepared in this manner, the diners felt that they were absolved in advance from a certain sinfulness in their dining, a pleasure . . . gluttony . . . extravagance . . . almost as if they had been granted an indulgence.

In past decades, an excellent coffee could be had in Rome at the Communist bar Vezio, near Piazza Campitelli, in the ghetto. Now the bar has been moved. Who knows if
portraits of Lenin and Stalin hang on the walls along with postcards of Red Square and various other Soviet kitsch symbols?

 

Pastry and confectionery shops are places for the rich. Well-known are the elegant pastry shops Cova on Via Montenapoleone in Milan (since 1817) and Sant' Ambroeus, also in Milan, under the arcades of Corso Matteotti. In Genoa the confectionery Romanengo Pietro fu Stefano (in existence since 1780) is renowned: here chocolate bars, candied fruit, pralines, and sugared almonds are prepared by hand in accordance with exclusive recipes.

Cafés do not always manage to reproduce the ancient noble prototype of the refined, uncommon haunt, but often they strive to equal it. In the old historic centers there are the literary cafés: Pedrocchi in Padua, 250 years old; San Marco in Trieste; the Caffè dell'Orologio in Modena. Then there are cafés for gourmets: in Turin the Caffè Torino, the Neuv Caval'd Brôns, the San Carlo, and the tiny Bicerin, on Piazza Consolata. This is where the Turinese specialty of the same name was born, which includes coffee, chocolate, boiling milk, and sweet syrup, and which can be drunk in three different ways:
pur e fiur
(coffee and milk),
pur e barba
(coffee and chocolate), and
'n po'd'tut
(a bit of everything). Originally this drink was called
bavareisa
; then the artificially anonymous term
bicerin
prevailed, indicating a glass cup with a metal holder, identical to those in which tea is served on Russian trains.

Trattorias are found on the
tratte
(tracts), along stretches of road. That is, they are the premises where travelers stop along the way. Up until a few years ago, there was a large number of Tuscan trattorias in Milan, for some reason. The restaurant Bagutta, located in the “fashionable triangle,” as chic and expensive as it is, is still a Tuscan trattoria in terms of its cooking and decor. Writers love to meet in this spot, which has been open since 1924 and protected by the Ministry of Culture since 1991; the Bagutta literary prize is awarded there, and the walls are adorned with artistic and literary memorabilia. At the Antica Trattoria della Pesa, open in Milan since 1880, everything is folksy instead: the decor, the food, and the dialect.

Restaurant managers may have the most original traditions and gimmicks. In some places, like Il Pallaro in Rome, near the Campo dei Fiori, you can't order food according to your own taste or reject what you can't finish, because they bring the same dishes, beautifully cooked, to everyone, in Pantagruelian quantities. The customer is overfed but satisfied, and the joyful experience must be booked a month in advance.

If a locale is open until late at night, it is called a
dopoteatro
(after theater): one example is the Biffi Scala, near the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, or the Santa Lucia, also in Milan's center. You can go there at eleven or even twelve: no one is sent away, but, in terms of food, they'll serve you a
risotto al salto
: the saffron risotto left over from dinner, sautéed in a pan.

From a historical point of view, restaurants with a particularly judicious wine cellar should be called
osterie
(taverns). They are characteristic of port cities. The Antica Osteria del Bai in Genoa, to name one in particular, has existed since the eighteenth century. Today it is an elegant locale, famous for cuttlefish
in zimino
(in a sauce made of spinach, garlic, parsley, and chard).