144 GOURMET TRAVELLER
country by a fine thread of coastline, hemmed in by
Yugoslavia. A poll carried out a few years ago claimed
70 per cent of Italians didn’t realise Trieste was part
of Italy at all. “We are at the eastern limit of Latinity
and the southern extremity of Germanness,” said
a former mayor.
In a city with an Austrian past, I’m lucky to have
a couple of Viennese friends as guides: writer Georges
Desrues, who lives in Trieste, and his partner, stage
actor Karin Kofler, who commutes from Vienna,
a five-hour drive away.O
n my first evening, they take me to the Carso
Plateau, atop the cliffs that rear steeply above
the dusty San Giusto quarter, the Old City.
We follow the route of the tramway that
climbs to the Slavic village of Opicina. The tram is an
attraction in itself: at some points, the gradient is so
steep it has to be shunted by a funicular engine. The
plateau is a place of pliable limestone that has produced
a dramatic landscape dotted with depressions, crevasses
and gorges. It’s German name, Karst, and the adjective
“karstic” have been adopted by geologists to describe
this phenomenon tout court.
Our destination, halfway up, is an osmiza, a sort of
country inn characteristic of the Carso since 1784, when
Emperor Joseph II issued a decree allowing peasants to
sell their produce at their cottages for eight days a year
(osmiza derives from the Slovenian “osem”, meaning
eight). Today osmize serve charcuterie, hard-boiled eggs,cheese, bread and wine, and are marked by a frasca,
a leafy branch, hanging at the gate or on the roadside,
where the signs are bilingual, in Italian and Slovene.
We settle on a terrace with a few tables and
benches under a pergola. Georges tells me that his
countrymen are buying property in Trieste, seeking a
residence on the sea just as the Habsburgs used to do.
One such is his friend Erich, an architect, who joins
us with his wife, Barbara, and their teenage daughter,
Nina. They’re renovating a house in the city and are
here on a weekend break from Vienna. Erich tells
me they’ve been visiting the city for at least 20 years,
that they’re in love with the place.
“You watch, it’ll grow on you too,” he says.
I walk to the balustrade and take in the view:
the Istrian peninsula to the south, the cranes and
warehouses down at the docks, the ferry setting sail
for Istanbul, the grid pattern of the city piazze and
avenues, the purple sunset over the Adriatic to the
west, the backdrop of the Carso. I’ve been here only
a couple of hours but Erich is right – Trieste is growing
on me already.
At the next table, a bunch of boisterous Istrians are
drinking white wine and talking loudly about cattle
breeds and beef. I catch the attention of one, a dapper
man with a grey goatee. He’s called Fabio, and I ask
him if meat is all they eat.
“No, no,” he says. “We eat lots of vegetables, too.
Bobici, for example.”
“What’s that?” I ask.Clockwise, from
left: Gran Malabar
wine bar; the
charcuterie and
cheese platter at
Osmiza Zidarich in
Prepotto; view to
Trieste from the
Carso Plateau;
buffet restaurant
Trattoria da
Giovanni; Palazzo
del Governo
in Piazza
dell’Unità d’Italia.