” But the food. Oh, the food.”
have you seen the movie The Big Night? Those dishes which are even unheard of we all had. By the time i got back stateside, I had Italian food withdrawals including chills.
Oh yeah, Max. Oh yeah. Mafioso Nonno, who used to race Formula 1 cars and proved it on the autoroutes in Italy, scaring me to death, took us to restaurants by the sea in Anzio and just ordered things that weren’t on the menu. Everything was sensational. Things I didn’t think I would like, like the tiny tiny fried fish.
At his house he had an African cook but he did the specialty dishes. The fish buried in salt and grilled, then chopped out of the melted salt in the end was so good. He had his own vineyard and olive orchard so there was a three foot tall bottle under the counter filled with rich green homemade olive oil. Every lunch started with a tiny bit of pasta (not a heaping plateful, just a small delicious amount in a soup plate) with his pasta sauce, which was light pink, with a bit of fresh tomato plus cream in it etc. and then he would step out onto the patio where he had a little pepperoncini bush and take one, and chop it into his plate. I said I wanted one too, and he told me no. He thought I was like the Swiss, like his son. They can’t tolerate any spice. I insisted, yes, I’m from southern California, near Mexico, we eat spicy food. But being so blonde and white he didn’t believe me. When I got one and chopped it into my pasta and loved it, boy, did he have respect for me.
Even though I hadn’t killed anyone. Lol. (He probably didn’t kill anyone either, but I bet he defended a lot of people who had.)