244 animal, vegetable, miracleIn the whole of Italy we could not find a bad meal. Not that we were look-
ing. But a spontaneous traveler inevitably will end up with the tummy
gauge suddenly on empty, in some place where cuisine is not really the
point: a museum cafeteria, or late- night snack bar across from the con-
cert hall.
Eating establishments where cuisine isn’t the point—is that a strange
notion? Maybe, but in the United States we have them galore: fast- food
joints where “fast” is the point; cafeterias where it’s all about effi cient ca-
loric load; sports bars where the purported agenda is “sports” and the real
one is to close down the arteries to the diameter of a pin. In most airport
restaurants the premise is “captive starving audience.” In our country it’s
a reasonable presumption that unless you have gone out of your way to
find good food, you’ll be settling for mediocre at best.
What we discovered in Italy was that if an establishment serves food,
then food is the point. Museum cafeterias offer crusty panini and home-
made desserts; any simple diner serving the lunch crowd is likely to roll
and cut its own pasta, served up with truffles or special house combina-
tions. Pizzerias smother their pizzas with fresh local ingredients in widely
recognized combinations with evocative names. I took to reading these
aloud from the menu. Most of the named meals I’d ever known about had
butch monikers like Whopper, Monster, and Gulp. I was enchanted with
the idea of a lunch named Margherita, Capricciosa, or Quattro Stagioni.
Reading the menus was reliable entertainment for other reasons too.
More Italians were going to chef school, apparently, than translator
school. This is not a complaint; it’s my belief that when in Rome, you
speak the best darn Italian you can muster. So we mustered. I speak some
languages, but that isn’t one of them. Steven’s Italian consisted of only
the endearments and swear words he grew up hearing from his Nonnie. I
knew the Italian vocabulary of classical music, plus that one song from
Lady and the Tramp. But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of
those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-
louder En glish. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed
Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining words from their
Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pro-
nunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.