$280 for a Pasta Dish in a Rome Restaurant? · Jul 2, 12:40 PM by James Martin
If you’ve followed me on twitter, you already know of a Japanese couple who were charged euro695 for a meal at an expensive and well-established restaurant in Rome.
Every once in a while you hear these kinds of stories about Italian restaurants. A waiter suggests something, a customer bites, and the charge is astronomical, a rip-off made possible because at no time was price mentioned. In this case, not only were the charges much higher than the published menu price but a “tip” was added to the bill (which should never be the case in Italy) so the restaurant was (temporarily) shut down.
The Japanese couple did the right thing. They went to the police. (I’m assuming they questioned the bill at the restaurant first).
I live in a rural area of Italy. People depend upon each other in the Lunigiana. Someone who would rip anyone off wouldn’t last long in these parts.
Thus, when I’m at home in the Lunigiana, I almost never consult a restaurant menu. Many restaurants don’t even have menus here. You get what the cook wants to cook, mostly dependent upon what’s fresh in the local markets. If you’re Italian restaurant savvy, you find out what’s fresh and good by yacking a while about the food with the waiter (See: Ordering Good Food in Italy).
I seldom spend more than Euro 25 for a meal—including wine in the Lunigiana. I certainly have never spend Euro 140 for a bottle of “Sauvignon”. Heck, I wouldn’t pay that for a case. I seldom ask for a price unless what’s offered seems rare and is likely to be expensive. I’ve never been ripped off under these conditions.
But big, tourist cities? Well, that’s another story.
So what advice to give travelers? First of all, you can get ripped off anywhere on earth, as you know. So, if you find yourself in unfamiliar territory it’s good to consult the waiter to find out what’s good, but don’t be afraid to ask the price. Keep in mind that price can be based on weight in Italy (Tuscany’s famous Bistecca alla Fiorentina is almost always charged based on the weight in fractions of a kilo, for example), so be sure to ask about typical portion size, especially if you’re on a budget. And remember the weight is “before cooking” so things can shrink a bit.
It is illegal for a restaurant in Italy to not give you an itemized bill or receipt. It’s called a ricevuta fiscale. You can learn what’s supposed to be on an Italian Restaurant Receipt and see a typical one by following the link. Do not leave a restaurant without one.
But believe me, my experience tells me that these kinds of things are rare these days in Italy. I’ve actually been ripped off many more times in my neighborhood in San Francisco than I have in Italy. I even know a restaurant I love for its breakfasts but will never return to. Why? Because I’ve never been there when they didn’t overcharge me. When I mention that the bill is wrong they snap it from my fingers and fix it without consulting me about exactly what I’m protesting. The hassle just became too much to deal with.
I mean there’s only so much cat and mouse you can play—and who wants those kinds of things in a restaurant?
Filed in: Food Italy Travel Tips
Live Like an Italian? Orto, Schmorto · Jun 26, 06:03 PM by James Martin
I don’t know what it is about Italy, but I do know that Italy has rubbed off on me. You see, each year we spend many hours on our Italian balcony (on days whose numbers are dictated by the phase of the moon) watching tanned and toned Enrico wrestle the soil beneath us into a vegetable garden, an orto of monumental proportions, lettuces here, beans there, zucchini flowering at the perifery, tomatoes snug in their little tripods.
So this year Martha bought the lot adjacent to our California home. I can tell you why. It was a garden, an orto of similar proportions to Enrico’s. It has a shed, a chicken coop, a watering system (disconnected, its tawdry tubes proudly erect, clacking together in the evening breezes). Grapes of an indeterminate type tangle tantalizingly on the trellis.
So this morning, the first morning of our ownership, I, like Enrico, turned the soil by hand in the corner of the garden that still had shade. I felt my flab ripple. Just a little. I felt the sun on my ample forehead. It was hot.
But, for a moment I was a gardener. Or at least I was the one who did the earth moving. Martha will plant the seeds. It is a reversal of the usual dictates of gender.
I will soon be picking little things to eat out of my garden. Or, that is the, ahem, dream. Actually, it is supposed to be over 100 degrees for a while, which means pretty much everything in and near the garden will likely commit suicide, except for the gardeners and probably a few sassy gophers.
But it’s a start. By the time we pay somebody to build a fence, fix the watering system, and trim the fruit trees I’ll have so many tomatoes in my garden I’ll have to start selling them.
Anybody want a $500 tomato? Eating like an Italian doesn’t come cheap you know.
Filed in: Living in Italy Food
It's Clean out the Fridge Time · Jun 18, 12:33 PM by James Martin
Tomorrow we leave our humble abode for Bassano del Grappa, then on to Austria for a few (evidently rainy) days, and finally to Frankfurt, where the big steel tube will carry us to the US. That means it’s the last supper in the Luniagiana. For a while.
I’ve already had the appetizer. Yes, I sliced a few thin strips of Armando’s Lardo and laid it reverently on some very dry toast. I nibbled and washed it down with an artisanal beer made near here, in the Garfagnana, out of farro: La Petrognola. It’s like a sweet stout. Good for cooking; we found it in a stewed chicken we had in Lucca, and just had to ask. A few years ago farro was just about gone from menus, but today is starting to appear in everything.
Martha is removing all the cheeses we have yet to eat from the fridge. They are numerous and, in some cases, colorful—or at least more colorful than they were when we bought them. We will dig through them. There will be prized bits to eat. There is also some salami for the red meat eaters present (which would be me).
We’ve had our “real” meal at Feudo dei Malaspina in Pallerone. Pasta with porcini, then stuffed vegetables and spinaci al burro for me, spaghetti with lemon and ricotta for Martha, with a second of grilled chicken and the spinach. So, we don’t have to eat much.
It is a sad dinner. But I like it when we clean out the fridge and make a meal out of the better bits. It’s a challenge and a closure.
If you are not tired of hearing about lardo, here’s something I found that I like: You’ll gain weight just looking at this post. Lardo
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
We Won a Torta! · Jun 16, 11:16 AM by James Martin
Ok, I figure we’re finally socially acceptable. We’ve won the torta you see all dolled up in transparent frippery over there in the left.
It went like this. We were in the car a couple nights ago with Armando, who, as you remember if you have enough spare time you don’t mind wasting reading this blog, was singing in the Lunigiana chorus over at Terrarossa castle.
Armando informed us that this was a charity concert. Evidently there’s a network of folks here in the Lunigiana, many of them nuns, who work with unfortunate children in countries the developed world could care less about because they don’t do adequate trade or hobnob with our power figures enough. Poor ones, in other words.
Well, it turns out that between Martha and I we had exactly 1 bill between us. €50. No change. We were worried.
So we sat three hours at the concert, hearing enough free music to sate us, especially as I had lost the feeling in my buttocks. Then they herded us downstairs, where there was enough food to feed the army my father was always going on about. We ate. For free.
So, when I saw the donation basket, I kinda felt obligated. After all, it was my adapted community. So, I did what any red-blooded American would do with the €50 I had.
I asked for change.
It took nearly all they had, a sad fact in itself. Then I gave them €20 back. The old women manning the basket nearly swooned. I though maybe they thought I was being some kinda pretentious rich foreigner for a minute, then they suddenly started stuffing numerous and uncounted raffle tickets in our hands as if the torn off strips of paper were incriminating evidence and the cops were on the way. We had no idea there was a raffle.
So we stuffed the raffle tickets in Francesca’s hand—Armando’s wife—telling her to win something for us. We were heading home. It was, after all, nearing midnight and we were early risers. Well, I’m an early riser anyway.
The next morning Francesca shows up with the prize. So I’ve won an Italian raffle. Well, third prize anyway. We distributed bits of the torta to our little community on the hill. I feel like a king.
I wondered for a while what first prize was. Now I wonder if women can “man” a basket. I wish I was better at English.
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Lardo, My Lardo · Jun 14, 07:41 AM by James Martin
Last night we took neighbor Armando to Terrarossa castle. He was singing there with the Coro Lunigiana. It was a benefit concert. Armando is a big and bronzed man; he sings bass.
I drove. As I inched my way timidly through the blockage in our crowded, park-anywhere-you-wish community lot, he posed a question that set me back. Way back.
“Did you eat the lardo?” he bellowed in his authoritative bass voice.
Armando raises pigs; Maiale good enough to make trophy salami. Earlier he had given us an enormous brick of lardo—larger than any I had seen in a store.
We had discussed his gift earlier. He wanted us to take some home to the US. We tried to dissuade him. I can’t imagine it’s legal. He figured otherwise. Shrink wrap cures all, he advised. Not in those exact words of course, but close. Armando doesn’t speak a word of English.
“Eat the lardo?” I repeated in disbelief. It had only been hours since he gave it to us.
“The whole thing? Martha added incredulously from the back seat.
Armando whirled in his seat, dervish quick. “Of course not the whole thing! That would kill you!” he said in a way that made it clear he was amazed that he had to explain these things.
I stopped the car. I couldn’t do the surgical backing out thing and think about the level of Lardo consumption an Italian would think reasonable at the same time.
“No, he said, if you want to take some home I’ll give you more, a bigger package.” This one, he explained, was to eat here. My mind did not have the capacity to imagine a larger package. Of lardo.
We have five days to go in Italy, As much as I love lardo, I was getting painted into a corner. One one hand, I’m sure my arteries look like the kinda pipes the rotor rooter man likes to make you look at on the TV so you’ll give him a bunch of your hard-earned money with no questions asked. I’m just as sure that eating good, natural food and being happy about it is also a key to long and happy life (ok, maybe just a happy one, but who has those these days?). In any case, that’s how I keep from thinking, as most of my countrymen do, that a few, paper thin slices of lardo are going to do me in pronto, or at least anytime soon. But eat maybe a kilo and a half of lardo in 5 days?
You gotta admit, that’s a bit much.
So, um, you wanna come over? We have lardo a plenty. We have wine. We even have beer and bread.
Free. If you’re nice, maybe I’ll even kick in a little for gas.
(Here’s more on Lardo if you have no idea of what I’m talkin’ about. Mmmm, especially melted over grilled bread. Maybe now is the time to start drawing down the supply…)
Filed in: Food The Lunigiana
Simple Italian Food - Pasta with Onions · Jun 9, 11:09 AM by James Martin
If you live in Italy long enough, you get to know darned well what makes the food distinctive. You use as few ingredients as you can get away with and still have something on the plate. You depend on the freshness and flavor of those ingredients to make the dish tasty. You eat it with a decent wine. You eat it outdoors if the weather is fine.
Today Martha made a recipe we first learned about in Sardinia. How many ingredients? Well, you have some spaghetti (ours was ala chitarra), olive oil, grating cheese and onions.
You simply cook the onions (in this case the reliable Tropea onions we get at the store plus one of indeterminate heritage our neighbor gave us) for a long time in a little olive oil. Martha cooked them half an hour. Don’t let them brown much if you can help it, just let them get limp and flavor the oil. Cook the pasta, then combine everything. Dust with the cheese. Serve.
How hard was that?
Tonight we’re having salt baked fish. Rinse a whole, gutted fish in water, put it in a pile of salt—letting its tail stick out, cook for 400 degrees F or 200 C for 25 minutes or so. It’s primitive. It’s delicious.
Or we might grill it, if the winds don’t kick up. Primitive, too.
(I’m going to miss my fish guy and his little truck. I head to California in two weeks. Dead fish pieces hacked by an idiot and trapped for an indeterminate time in Styrofoam trays. Yuck.)
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Food Festivals in Italy - Sapori di Fivizzano · Jun 1, 08:58 AM by James Martin
Ah, those food festivals just keep on coming. They’re one of the sweet pleasures of this almost summer in Italy.
We arrived in Fivizzano just as a storm threatened to make a windy mess of things. It was a monday—noonish—and there admittedly wasn’t much going on at the four day festival. At night the streets will be full of food and wine stands; there were covered tables where folks could eat, now empty. You could see the potential. There were a few open food stands selling wine, cheese, cured meats, and cherries.
You could also smell the smoke of a wood fire burning. We threaded our way through the medieval town, following our noses. Wood spice, a bit yeasty, got stronger as we left the city center through the remaining gate.
Aha! Focacette! Yes, flat breads cooked in a wood oven then stuffed with cheese or meat or fat (yes, that famous lardo di Colonnata, a wonderful thing when combined with hot bread, fresh out of the oven. And don’t let me hear you whining about lardo—you use butter or some even worse chemical pseudo fat concoction on yours so it’s a tie, but lardo definitely wins for flavor).
Anyway, a cool day, two focacette, one with straccino cheese and one with porchetta, a “glass” of wine and a half liter of fizzy water: €6. Feeds two. And, oh my did that warm bread, cooked just minutes before, feel good in the hands.
Afterwords we hit the stands and bought a mess o’ cheese and some wine.
Filed in: Food Italy Festivals
Cantine Aperte at Cantine Lunae in Castelnuovo Magra · May 31, 12:52 PM by James Martin
We had a great time at Cantine Lunae in Castelnuovo Magra, where the Colle di Luni Cantine Aperte was celebrated. Somehow, of all the pictures I took, this picture reminds us most that the star of the show was the wine (The music was great, the lardo man was overwhelmed with demands for his thinly sliced lard, but the wine was the thing)…
Cantine Aperte means “open cantina”, where tastings and (sometimes) entertainment like the band in the picture take place. We ate the food of the region as well. And they gave us these neat pouches that hang around your neck so that you have a place to put your wine glass when you need your hands free to grab some of the free food.
In Italy, wineries aren’t like they are in California. Here, wine is an agricultural product, and many wineries are underwhelming if you go to them thinking they will be palaces of wine snobbery. Often you must reserve ahead for a tasting and tour. Cantine Aperte is a repeated festival that allows folks to just show up and taste. The Cantine Lunae is a place that reminds one of California in that they have a fine shop and tasting room as well as a museum of old wine implements. I’ll write more on them later. Right now it’s time to sit back and have some of their fine wines for dinner.
Filed in: Food Living in Italy