Eat, Pray, Love

Luca has traveled a fair amount, though he claims he could never live anywhere but in
Rome, near his mother, since he is an Italian man, after all—what can he say? But it’s not just
his mamma who keeps him around. He’s in his early thirties, and has had the same girlfriend
since he was a teenager (the lovely Giuliana, whom Luca describes fondly and aptly as acqua
e sapone—“soap and water” in her sweet innocence). All his friends are the same friends he’s
had since childhood, and all from the same neighborhood. They watch the soccer matches to-
gether every Sunday—either at the stadium or in a bar (if the Roman teams are playing
away)—and then they all return separately to the homes where they grew up, in order to eat
the big Sunday afternoon meals cooked by their respective mothers and grandmothers.
I wouldn’t move from Rome, either, if I were Luca Spaghetti.
Luca has visited America a few times, though, and likes it. He finds New York City fascin-
ating but thinks that people work too hard there, though he admits they seem to enjoy it.
Whereas Romans work hard and resent it massively. What Luca Spaghetti doesn’t like is
American food, which he says can be described in two words: “Amtrak Pizza.”
I was with Luca the first time I ever tried eating the intestines of a newborn lamb. This is a
Roman specialty. Food-wise, Rome is actually a pretty rough town, known for its coarse tradi-
tional fare like guts and tongues—all the parts of the animal the rich people up north throw
away. My lamb intestines tasted OK, as long as I didn’t think too much about what they were.
They were served in a heavy, buttery, savory gravy that itself was terrific, but the intestines
had a kind of... well... intestinal consistency. Kind of like liver, but mushier. I did well with
them until I started trying to think how I would describe this dish, and I thought, It doesn’t look
like intestines. It actually looks like tapeworms. Then I pushed it aside and asked for a salad.
“You don’t like it?” asked Luca, who loves the stuff.
“I bet Gandhi never ate lamb intestines in his life,” I said.
“He could have.”
“No, he couldn’t have, Luca. Gandhi was a vegetarian.”
“But vegetarians can eat this,” Luca insisted. “Because intestines aren’t even meat, Liz.
They’re just shit.”
Eat, Pray, Love