GOURMET TRAVELLER 145“Corn on the cob in Istrian dialect. We mix it
with potatoes and beans and sausage to make a soup,
minestra di bobici. It’s a great delicacy of ours.”
“Interesting. Maybe I’ll try some tomorrow.”
“No, it’s a hearty dish. Not for eating in summer.”
The folk of Trieste evidently don’t share Fabio’s
notion of where winter food ends and summer food
begins, as I discover the next day when Georges
takes me on a buffet crawl. Banish all thoughts
of dainty finger food. In Trieste “buffet” is the
name of a gastronomic institution, referring to
a trattoria specialising in nose-to-tail pork cooking
- another remnant of the city’s Austro-Hungarian
past. At the counter of every buffet is a caldaia, an
encased stainless-steel boiler that bubbles away all
day long, replenished from time to time according
to necessity. In it simmer salsicce Vienna, the local
name for frankfurters; cotechino, boiling sausage;
Kaiserfleisch, or smoked pork loin; porzina, pork
neck; and more besides. If Fergus Henderson
had been born a Triestino, he would certainly
have run a buffet.
We begin at the oldest of all, Buffet da Pepi,
open since 1897, just off Piazza dell’Unità. The air
is thick with the smell of pork and cabbage, and
the bespectacled caldaia operative is busy slicing
and cutting with the precision of a heart surgeon.
Some customers are grabbing porzina or Prague
ham sandwiches to take away. We sit down to an
oval dish of corned tongue and pig’s cheek, served ➤