In Search of an American Burger with a Sicilian Surrealist in a Forsaken and Deserted City

In continuation from here...

 

 

After the dinner Giorgio’s wife made for us, we sat around in his drawing room sipping on Cynar. It was August and Rome was stifling hot, humid and deserted by all but the tourists and the stalwart Romanisti. It was nice, though, for it felt like family and was very familiar. Giorgio was sketching something near me or behind me, I don’t know what. But he was intent on capturing something in the light of the room. I was exhausted from a day of roaming around the city and had a few more days before I was to go back home and to college at Santa Clara.

Fettuccine and Forastera with a Sicilian Surrealist

Una favola continuava

It was 7:00 PM and Giorgio’s residence was about 15 minutes away from the pensione I was staying in. But I wasn’t that familiar with Rome, and we didn’t have GPS in 1971. So, I gathered my myself, a little gift I had gotten In Sicily for his wife, and my camera, and headed out. I thought I should probably take a bottle of wine, and earlier in the day I had gone into a shop which sold wine, beer and liquor and looked for something appropriate. I knew little to nothing about wine, despite the fact that my dorm mates  at university had last names like Mondavi, Sebastiani, Heitz, Pellegrini and Filice. My uncle back in California was a wine merchant and he told me a little about Italian wines.

The store had what I would now call a selection of tourist recognizable wines from places like Umbria (Orvieto),  Lazio (Est! Est!! Est!!!) and Campania (Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio). The white wines all looked more amber-like, so I tried to find one that wasn’t as dark. On a display I found a white wine, simply called Ischia Bianco, from the eponymous island that was a popular day trip for vacationers.

Caffè and Cannoli with a Sicilian Surrealist

una favola...

My first trip to Italy was in 1971. I was a student on summer break and spent days in Rome, wandering the streets at all hours with my camera. One night I happened to be near the Spanish steps when it was very late. In fact, it was almost dawn. And down the street from the steps on the Via Condotti, the familiar noises of a coffee machine, the grinding, the steaming and the drip, drip, dripping, sounded. With the aroma of fresh coffee, I was drawn like an insect to light.  It was there where I first encountered the Sicilian Surrealist.