GOURMET TRAVELLER 147with the essential accompaniment of crauti, or
sauerkraut, and cren, grated horseradish. Not exactly
summer fare, but irresistibly, unctuously delicious.
Who cares if the temperature today hovers around
30 degrees and the sea beckons just 100 metres away?
Next stop is Trattoria da Giovanni in Via San
Lazzaro. Here the blackboard menu also offers tripe,
goulash, jota, a bean and cabbage soup, and fish
dishes, including baccalà, every Friday. The steam
of cooking gets the gastric juices flowing again, but
business is hotting up as lunchtime approaches, and
it’s hard to find a seat inside or out. We limit ourselves
to a glass of Terrano, a red wine from the Carso, before
moving on for more porcine delights at L’Approdo,
a five-minute walk away.
Between buffets, we also visit a couple of cafés:
Caffè degli Specchi on Piazza dell’Unità, where the list
of coffee styles is encyclopaedic, and Caffè San Marco,
where students play chess, professors read, and writers
write. Café culture is another Viennese legacy and the
scent of coffee – especially Illy coffee, a linchpin of the
local economy – lingers ubiquitously.
Our last buffet stop, Buffet da Siora Rosa, is on
the corner of Piazza Attilio Hortis and Via Torino,
a pedestrian precinct of wine bars and restaurants,
the hub of Trieste’s movida. Having overshot our
cholesterol count for the day, we settle for a glass
of Vitoska, another Carso wine, this time white.
The waiter is about to serve it with a bowl of crisps,
but the caldaia man intervenes. “Che tristezza!”
he says, “how sad”, offering us a slice of hot
smoked ham on the tip of his formidable carving
knife instead.
Running a buffet, open from dawn to dusk for
meals and snacks, must be hard work, yet the staff
smile and chat throughout. Bonhomie seems to be
a trait of the Triestini. That morning, for example,
not content with giving me directions, a waitress in
a bar had insisted on accompanying me personally to
the baker’s to buy bread and to the newsagent’s to buy
Il Piccolo, the city’s daily newspaper.I
n the evening we meet at Sapore di Vino, a trim
little wine bar in the Borgo Giuseppino where
locals gather. It’s run by the amiable Guerrino,
a dead ringer for the Italian spaghetti western
actor Gian Maria Volontè.
A regular comes in with a pram in which a tiny
baby is fast asleep. “This is my granddaughter,” he says
proudly. “It’s time to wean her off my daughter’s milk
and onto red wine,” he laughs. A thin, ginger-haired
man called Paolo, a former dockworker, starts telling
me about shipbuilding in Trieste and how the harbour
is one of the deepest on the Adriatic. He’s interrupted
by Don Luigi, a balding pensioner who used to be in
charge of logistics at the port. He takes up the story
with an authoritative air, launching into a long
explanation about the technicalities of loading and
unloading cargo on ships and trains: boxes of oranges,
sacks of coffee, drums of oil, cars. ➤Above, from
left: sunbathing
at Barcola;
swimming
at Barcola
harbour.
Opposite:
misto marinato
at Tavernetta
al Molo in
Grignano.