In 2006, I went with a singles group to Italy for 10 days. There were quite a few memorable moments on that trip but best of all was the food.
We started in Rome at Alfredo’s restaurant. This is where they invented fettuccine Alfredo. It is a cute, smallish place full of local atmosphere and pictures on the walls of all the celebrities who have come over the years. I spotted Anthony Quinn, Maureen O’Hara, Martin and Lewis and lots of royalty and other notables papering all the walls.
Dinner in Italy is a lot more casual affair than dinner here. In America, it’s all about speed of service and turning the tables for the next diners. Not in Italy. The object is to relax, have a little wine, enjoy a four-course meal, eat, drink and be merry. If a meal takes less than two hours, you are doing something very wrong. They even have a guitar player and an accordion player to serenade you and get you all involved in songs — to which we almost knew the lyrics. We were good and loud in the choruses, though, and that was both acceptable and expected.
Fettuccine Alfredo in Italy is not at all what you get here. There is no cream sauce. There are only three noticeable ingredients. Fettuccine, butter and cheese — lots of all of it. They bring a platter with the butter under the hot fettuccini and a ton of cheese on top, mix it at the table and dole it out. The waiter, Marco, mixed everybody’s portions and then gave me the platter with my portion — that’s good luck, they say.
I will never look at fettuccine Alfredo here with the same relish. It was rich and decadent and wonderful. The rest of the meal was good: scampi and tiramisu for dessert.
Dinner started at 8 p.m. and ended at 11ish. Then some of us went dancing and the rest went for nightcaps at the hotel terrace overlooking the garden. There was a wedding reception going on with singing and dancing. I was even asked to dance. Finally I went to bed at 2 a.m.
Day two in Rome: We were shopping in the rain but had a lovely lunch in a little bistro. Caprese salad (sliced tomatoes and sliced mozzarella with a drizzle of olive oil and spice) and pasta e fagioli soup (which is a bean soup I like to call Italian chili). Yummy. I should tell you that on the table there is no salt and pepper. You have to ask for it and the salt is mixed with rice to keep it from clumping in the humidity. There is, however, a bottle of olive oil and a bottle of balsamic vinegar. All the extra spice you need, right?
Next stop Tuscany, where we stayed in the Villa Pitiana, which was built in the 13th century as a monastery and added onto and made into a private villa in the 18th century. There are 59 guest rooms, all different. Some are like monks’ cells, with a bed and a tiny bath, and some are huge with lofts. The space my roommate and I had took up most of one wing between two courtyards. It had a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and two baths. It was truly a unique and beautiful setting.
Oh yes, food. We had dinner in the main dining room and took up three long tables with our group. Some poor unfortunate people tried to have a civilized meal on the perimeter of the room. I felt bad for them as we were a large, rowdy group. The menu was all local food with a flair. Most of it I had no idea about until we took a cooking class the next day. Things like stracci with wild boar ragout, sausage-stuffed guinea hen and sirloin steak. The sirloin steak caught my eye as I had eaten no red meat since I left home. The only catch to the steak was that it cost 49 euros and could only be ordered for two people. Fortunately, one of the others was just as meat-hungry as I and willing to split the cost and the steak.
By the way, in Italy you aren’t asked how you want the steak cooked. You get char-rare and enjoy it. It was served with roasted potatoes. It was the biggest hunk of meat I had seen in ages. At least 2 inches thick and a good 8 inches around. The waiter sliced it and divided it and we were ready to go. I really like my steak char-rare, so it was right up my alley. Oh my, was it good! I was enjoying it thoroughly when the girls at the table started chuckling. Then they started saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Once the laughter subsided, they all asked for a bite. They got a very small one as I sort of pigged out. When I was done, I just sat back and sighed and chuckles broke out again. Well, it was good, what can I say?
