“Italy is a mess”, a Sicilian friend told me in a recent conversation. “It is like the 1970’s, with more potential for an explosive revolution, sitting below the surface, like a volcano ready to erupt.” As we proceeded through the evening I pressed my colleague further. What is the motive, who is doing this, what will we see? “They are changing the rules. It has become a society of Dottores, minute people with large diplomas and important connections. It is just like it used to be, but now instead of a mafia alone, now they have their fraternal organizations, their unspoken unions, their society of entitlement.”
We talked about the education in Italy. I learned that, with all the education I have received in the United States, in Italy I would also be called Dottore. I howled. We were shown the gates of hell those years at the University. One teacher opened up the future and laid it all out. Oh he missed computers in the pocket and instant communication, but he got all the rest. The inability to assimilate all the information that is being thrown at us. He was prophetic.I hear that Slow Food and Gambero Rosso might be parting ways soon. Being more of a Slow Food’er than a Gambero Rosso’er, I don’t know what to make of that. One more Italian wine authority climbing on that Tower of Babel?
I have my doubts about the legend of how Slow Food got its inspiration. The story has it that Carlo Petrini inadvertently founded the international movement when he joined in a protest against the opening of a McDonald's Restaurant at the foot of the famous Spanish Steps in Rome in 1986. However, a distinct memory has it that that McDonald's was there back in 1971 when I first went to Rome. I remember going into it because it seemed so strange to see it there. I also remember buying a hamburger for the curiosity of it all. The bun was a hard crusty bread and the “burger” was leaner, maybe a lower fat content meat. Probably grass fed. Somewhere I have a picture of it. Curious that a movement, called Slow Food, would find a fast food joint after it had been there for 15 years. They were a bit "slow" on the uptake.
The matter of another wine guide, though, is just too much.
I get emails, all the time, from wineries, from importers, from everywhere, touting this wine or that, and the rating they got. The selling world, however, sees those things as bullets without the rifle. One must still load up the blunderbuss and go out hunting. Bring ‘em back, dead or alive. But get an order. Get an order.
The reality is that there still have to be those folks out there on the front line. There are enough REMF’s putting their heads on their comfortable pillows every night. Teachers who don’t know how to teach something as simple as a follow up letter after an interview. Because they never had to do it. The ranks of the unqualified aft are growing faster than the price of a barrel of oil.
Scrambling for the gold and the silver, whether it be wineries or lap dancers. That’s the mantra of the day. Go for the gold, get your silver buckle, get yours, get it, go get it, fetch, retrieve, bring it back, dead or alive.
And by the time you get your gold medal or your 95 points or you exceed your quota, then what? Will the rules change again? Will things be what they appear to be? Will it all be worth it?
Italy has never been what people think it is. It isn’t spaghetti and meat balls. It isn’t California wines on the list. It isn’t Caesar salad. It isn’t Porterhouse steak. It isn’t any one thing, for it is a world in motion. And it is a world that you really need to slow down and pay close attention to, using your mind and your heart and your soul and taking it one heartbeat at a time.
Things don’t always end up being what they seem to be. But try telling that to the experts.
Photo by Chema Madoz
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We eat some really stupid things out. I have been looking at new menus lately and reading old books about Italian food, what a difference. If only some of the famous chefs would look into these older books, they might see something special, food that is interesting, complex, but not affected. Simple,simple...
Ladies in the kitchen. We were in a Sudanese restaurant in the neighborhood, recently. Ladies running the food there. Just like the little place in the Veneto above Valpolicella, pictures of them line the stairway up to the dining room. Pristine food, served slow, cooked as ordered, no one in a hurry to eat and go somewhere else.
Roasted meats, potatoes from the oven, wild greens tossed lightly so you could taste the place them come from. Pasta made earlier in the day, just a taste, all one needs. Why complain that we seldom see it like this in The States? Forget about it. Go there. You can.
Four from Italy, six from America and one from Lebanon. Today will be about the Italians in remembering one of their countrymen who made it over so long ago. However you feel about Columbus, today is a little moment in history that will soon be forgotten. Thanks to the generosity of many of those seated at the table, we broke bread, tasted wine, told lies and enjoyed each others company, if only for an hour or so. The dream of America; a moment of calm, of peace, of prosperity, of hope.
Alessio – Adelmo’s old buddy, with his little trattoria on the east side of town, in the “ghetto”. Still smiling, though time has weathered his body, inside and out, with a grittier block of sandpaper. And it has also smoothed out the rough edges, he is now a round pebble that sails upon the surface of the water, playing dodge ball with Phantom Crane flies. He can still cook like a sonofabitch. From Piemonte.
Tasca d’Almerita Cygnus 2002 
Terra di Lavoro 2004 
There is no real reason to continue. I have fallen off the Italian wine trail. Ken Burns did it to me. I sat there and looked at all those bloody war pictures. It was like someone taking a carton of cigarettes to a desert island and smoking them until they were gone. Finally cured.
The catering company had already ordered the wines. They were good enough, but they were not the Italian that the Maserati was. Nor as well-tanned.
Maybe that Italian wine trail isn’t such a bad idea after all.
So, France was cool. I had just watched Antonioni’s L’Avventura, so it all influenced me a bunch. Monica Vitti, what an actor. She nailed that certain period in one’s life when there just needs to be a direction and all there seems to be is one endless drama after another. I can relate to it, but not right now. Life is good.
After traveling around France for a week or so, staying far from urban centers and deep in the country, I am happy that owls still shriek at night and bull frogs still bellow into the early morning.
Yeah, yeah, no one cares about my blog or your blog or Myanmar or Ahmadinejad .
