EATING DANTE

LE MARCHE

Le Marche is the smallest of Italy’s regions being, according to one guidebook, only about the size of Rhode Island. It is a narrow strip of a city that reminded me of Virginia Beach in winter. Much like that city, Pesaro’s strip was largely empty, and there was certainly no shortage of available hotel rooms. The city had that deserted look that often comes over seaside resort town during the off-season. Many of the restaurants I passed during my stroll down the main drag from my hotel were closed and Pesaro turned out to be one of the few places in Italy I had a tough time tracking down a decent meal. It was also the first place where I saw dogs running loose and dog feces on the sidewalk. It was not an auspicious introduction.

I finally found a sandwich truck, ironically in the parking lot behind my hotel. I bought a pork sandwich, which was really delicious. I had not however, come to Italy to eat something I could have whipped up in my kitchen. I had a glass of wine at a neighborhood bar and went to bed early. The next day after a breakfast of hot rolls and cappuccino, I decided I had sampled what little Pesaro had to offer in winter. I checked out of the hotel and decided to head for the Abruzzo and another, more sizeable seaside town called Pescara.

THE ABRUZZI (Abruzzo and Molise)

I left Pesaro at first light the next morning and made for the Abruzzo. That headed me back into the mountains. I passed through numberless small towns. As I passed through one of these, the road narrowed, and I pulled into a service station to gas up and get some coffee. Heading into the little café attached to the gas station I passed a couple hunters coming out of it. They were tacked out in camouflage clothes with belts of shotgun ammunition around their waists. They headed toward a small pickup truck where a large dog sat quietly.

In the café was a selection of locals drinking coffee and eating brioche. One elderly man, already smoking a cigar, ordered an espresso. The guy behind the counter topped up the old guy’s coffee with a slug of Sambuca, the Roman anise liqueur. The guy saw me watching and winked at me. I got my cappuccino, without the topper, and headed out.

Driving out of town, I passed a lingerie store called “Sexy Shop,” a nationwide chain of women’s underwear stores, sort of like Victoria’s Secret. This place was in the middle of nowhere, but it had its own Sexy Shop. The name struck me very funny and I pictured the two hunters stopping off in there, browsing to pick up something for the wife. The image started me laughing so hard I had to pull the car over.

The name of the store highlighted something that I had noticed all over the country. English has a sort of cache in Italy, especially used in advertising. Once, in a pharmacy in Udine, I was half listening to a radio spiel for perfume. The announcer stopped in the middle of the ad and said “alluring woman,” in English, then switched back to Italian. Another time I was driving in my rental car listening to an ad for the radio station I had tuned into. In middle of a torrent of Italian the announcer said “One Station, One Nation.” There must be perfectly good Italian phrases for all of the above but Italian advertisers must feel that using English to say them adds something.

The amazing thing about the Abruzzo was how the mountains marched right down to the sea. My drive toward Pescara took me up a twisting highway. To my left were towering hills, sculpted by Italian farmers who were obviously hipped to the advantages of contour farming. To my right, towering rock walls sprang up right from the edge of the highway, often enough covered with fine wire mesh to prevent rock falls.

The other remarkable thing about this region was how empty it appeared. The emptiness of this mountainous region was broken only by a few towns perched at the tops of hills or nestled in the gaps between mountain ridges. Typically, the road I was on was the only one through the towns I passed and I couldn’t help but notice that every inch of soil near a town was under cultivation. There was no shoulder to the road so the farms came right up to the road, and it was in the Abruzzo that I first concluded that the national motto of Italy should be find dirt, plant something, eat it.

In early afternoon, I pulled into the city of L’Aquila, which translates to the eagle. I parked the car and headed off to see the sights. There was some sort of street fair going on and a number of streets had been blocked off and given over to street vendors, who were selling everything they could think of. There were clothes vendors, a guy selling luggage, multiple vendors of jewelry and plenty of people peddling foods. I passed a trailer selling pastries and I was immediately intrigued by one cookie for sale called “van dei morti,” dead man’s bones. They were anise cookies that are twice baked to make them extra crispy. I tasted one, and it was delicious so I ordered some. There seemed to have been some kind of miscommunication because I ended up with a pound of the things.

I wondered where the name dead man’s bones could have come from. What the hell could be the connection between a corpse devoid of flesh and a cookie? According to one book I consulted on the subject, the name came from Roman times, commemorating a devastating Roman defeat at the hands of Hannibal. The battle took place around what is now called Lake Trasimeno. Tens of thousands of Roman Legionaires died there. Exactly why a cookie should commemorate them is something that will probably never be known.

After eating four of them, I hadn’t even made a dent in the bag. I put it on the seat next to me and in early afternoon I headed out of L’Aquila almost due east toward Pescara. The ground rose steadily as I headed into the part of the Abruzzo that contains Italy’s largest national park, and a huge dome of rock called the Gran Sasso d’Italia, the huge rock of Italy. The Abruzzo is perhaps the wildest part of Italy and the Gran Sasso is the wildest part of the Abruzzo. The area teams with wild game such as boar and various members of the deer family. It’s a favorite hunting spot for Italians from all over the country. One result of this inheritance is that the Abruzzo’s cuisine teems with game dishes.

The day was calm, almost totally without wind and the Adriatic was flat, glassy and the most incredible blue. I had to stop and admire the view so I left the highway and drove to the top of one of these nameless hills, parked the car and got out to look at the view.

Far below me, a tiny ship beat its way slowly across the face of the sea, leaving behind a tiny barely discernible wake. Across the water lay Eastern Europe. That was for another trip.

Pizza and palm trees make an odd combination but palm trees lined the streets of Pescara and pizzerias were certainly in no short supply. This city is one of the places Italians themselves go to when they want a cheap seaside getaway. Make that relatively cheap. The scenery leading into the city was spectacular. The highway descended steeply toward the Adriatic. Fingers of mountain marched directly toward the sea and ended in spectacular cliffs. Here and there cities perched atop the hills, sometimes spreading partway down their sides.

Pescara is another of those long, skinny cities that lay along the Adriatic. It reminded me of Virginia Beach, down to the two main drags that ran arrow straight from one end of the town to the other, lined on the seaward side with tall palm trees. Like many a seaside resort, the beach was lined with shops and the Italian equivalents of fast food restaurants, mostly pizzerias and places that advertised fried fish and similar attractions. On this first day of November most of these places were closed. The summer season was over but it was too early for winter visitors to have arrived in force.

Pescara was one of the few places in Italy that I visited where Italians from elsewhere in Italy seemed to out number tourists. My hotel was filled with Italians and their children, obviously taking advantage of Pescara’s attractions to have a cheap vacation. After dropping off my stuff at the hotel, I went out to explore the town in the warm early afternoon sun.

Within four or five blocks of the downtown, which was dominated by high-rise hotels, the surroundings became more residential, with small homes and apartment buildings, groceries and green grocers. Back to the tourist area, I cruised the main shopping area and admired the high-end shops the fashionable Italians strolling in and out of them. I was hungry, so I popped into a small restaurant and had a snack, a type of lettuce called radicchio stuffed with a bread crumb and mushroom combination, then brushed on the outside with olive oil and grilled over a wood fire. It was just enough for a snack and unbelievably delicious, given the small number of ingredients.

Back at the oceanfront, I sat on a bench and watched a group of Italian college kids toss a frisbee around. There was a large central square one block away from the oceanfront. I wandered around it looking at the magazines and newspapers on display at the newsvendors. Italians, like most Europeans, read newspapers in far greater numbers that do most Americans. The newspapers from the country’s major cities, Rome, Milan, Venice, etc. circulate nationally and are widely read. This day, the newspapers were full of America’s presidential election. Even with my limited Italian it was pretty clear that most of the stories seemed to be pretty uncomplimentary to Mr. Bush. Our European “allies” seemed not to appreciate our president’s muscular approach to foreign policy.

I was also startled by the sexual frankness of so many of the magazines I saw for sale at the kiosks. I’m not sure why I was so surprised, since watching Italian satellite TV at hotels where I stayed around the country should have clued me in to the fact that Italians are less, well, inhibited, about matters sexual.

One of the first things I noticed was that Pescara’s many attractions didn’t include distinguished architecture. In a land where duomos and magnificent basilicas dot the landscape with astonishing frequency, Pescara lacked them entirely or anything else that would cause a visitor to stand transfixed with awe. The most remarkable thing about the city was its natural surroundings, the blue Adriatic on one side and Appenine bluffs on the other side.

The other thing remarkable about Pescara was the food. Italians are generally seafood mad and in this city, perched alongside the Adriatic, seafood was raised to an art form. Nevertheless the rather large number of semi-clad babes on the covers of magazines displayed prominently came as something of a shock.

Late in the afternoon, I wanted something more substantial to eat, so I set out to find an outdoor restaurant. I stopped at one, really it was just a small pizzeria, or so it seemed. Picture my surprise when I had one my most memorable meals at this little, unimpressive looking place.

A waiter spotted me reading the menu posted outside the restaurant and came over to try to wheedle me into sitting down. He addressed me in Italian, something of a relief even if I didn’t understand all he said. At least he wasn’t speaking to me in German. I was too embarrassed to walk away while he was wheedling me into buying a meal there, so I allowed myself to be led to a table. He handed me a menu, placed a basket of fresh bread on the table and retreated to a discreet distance.

The menu wasn’t very extensive but one item caught my eye, a fish soup, called zuppa di pesche in Italian. Fish soup on Adriatic coast seemed like it might make for an interesting meal, so that’s what I ordered. The waiter complimented me on my choice, this time in English, so I guess I was giving off subtle clues as to my country of origin.

It took about 20 minutes for the dish to arrive. When it finally did, it was worth every minute of the wait. The soup came in a two-handled tureen that had obviously come straight out of the oven. It radiated heat. It was a peculiar thing, but few dishes I ate in Italy were served piping hot. Lukewarm was the rule except for soups, which by contrast often came boiling hot. The zuppa di pesche was no exception. It was far too hot to eat right away, so I took a slice of bread, dipped a corner in the broth and took a bite. The result was ecstasy.

The soup came with four squares of toast standing upright in the soup. They’d been brushed with olive oil, grilled and then stuck in the soup. I ate them first and practically fainted they were so delicious. By then the soup had cooled enough to start eating it.

Sticking a spoon in the soup was like starting an archeological dig – uncovering layers. The chef had started off with fish broth, then layered in small shrimp, crayfish, something called a frog fish, the exact nature of which I thought was better left unexplored, sea bas, sardines, and prawns. The last items to be added to the soup were mussels and clams, which cooked the fastest.

In typical Italian style, the fish were whole, heads and all, in the soup. Since the chef had prepared the soup in layers, I ate it that way. I finished off the clams and muscles, and then started in on the crayfish and shrimp. After them, I ate the finfish. The sardines had an entirely different taste and feel than do the ones that come packed in oil in cans. These were full-sized fish, and cooked perfectly. Even the bones were soft enough to eat. Italians believe that cooking a fish whole, bones and all, adds an element of flavor to the soup. Who was I to argue?

When I got to the bottom of the soup, I had another of those face-in-the-bowl moments. I contented myself with sopping up the dregs with some bread. Broth, finfish, shellfish, a few herbs and spices; that was the whole show. It was almost like witchcraft, the way Italians could take a few simple ingredients and churn out something so heavenly.

And zuppa di pesche isn’t exactly Italian haute cuisine. A few days later I read in one of my guidebooks a discussion of living in Italy and learning to cook Italian style. The author commented snidely on zuppa di pesche as something that every Italian cook had in his or her bag of tricks. Well if that was true, I decided Italy might just have a houseguest for life.

I left Pescara early in the morning on Tuesday and headed south. Driving through the Apennines, the spectacle was amazing. It's easy to forget just how mountainous a country Italy is. This was so-called “peninsular Italy, perhaps the most mountainous section of the country, except for the far north.

The highway, very sensibly, followed the contours of valleys between the mountains, and as I looked from side to side I saw towns on the crowns of hills and flowing down their flanks. A hell of a lot of this part of Italy is simply empty, consisting of mountains and smaller hills covered with what looks like scrub pine. As I approached a town, I would find tilled fields carved out of the hillsides, some still growing winter vegetables and row after row of vines. Abruzzo isn’t much known for wine, so these may have been table grapes.

The weather had finally turned decent, and I drove through mountains that were for the first time unobscured by mist and clouds. On the road around me, the produce of this region was streaming towards the cities of the south on articulated trucks packed with artichokes and one truck towing two trailers packed with fennel.
 
As I got further south I noticed an ominous change. The highway began to be littered with trash, the first time I had seen this in Italy. Ahead of me the tops of the mountains were again obscured, but this time by a muddy brown haze that could only have been pollution.
 
When I got past Rome, I headed onto a feeder road into Casserta, the regional capital of this part of Campagnia. My father's parents came to America from this region in the late 1890s, from a little town called Afragola. I passed the exit for it on the A1 but didn't turn off. I had planned to explore that a little later, although a friend from Italy had told me before I left on the trip that the area had been largely destroyed during fighting between the Allies and German forces during WWII. Nothing was now left of the old farming town, he had told me.

As I drove into Casserta looking for a hotel, my heart sank. The city was dirty, littered with trash. And the drivers were living up to the reputation of drivers in the south of the country, that is, crazy. People passed on the right and changed lanes without signaling, went through red lights and gave no quarter to pedestrians, all completely the opposite of how drivers behaved in northern Italy. I so disliked the look and feel of Casserta that I drove back out of town and back onto the Autostrada headed into Naples. For the first time in this country, my spirits were low.
 
I took one of the northern most exits for Naples and immediately regretted it. The streets were twisting, hilly and incredibly congested. People double and triple parked and their appeared nowhere to park or even pull over. Delivery trucks seemed simply to stop wherever they were and unloaded their wares, regardless of traffic, whose drivers leaned on their horns, shook their fists and shouted curses. I spent half an hour circling aimlessly, not seeing even one hotel much less a place to park, so I managed finally to find my way back to the Autostrada and went further south, to an area near the city center.
 
As I drove into Naples proper, I remembered my mother's complaints when she toured Italy in the early 1970s. She had commented bitterly about how dirty everything was. I recall being amused at the time, imagining her driving around the country saying "Why don't they clean this place up?" By the time I got to the area around the central train station, I was muttering the same thing.
 
Naples' streets are incredibly dirty, filled not only with litter but also with actual garbage. The streets of the other places I had been in the country were nearly immaculate by comparison. Garbage bins on the streets were filled to overflowing and then garbage was simply piled around them. Dogs roamed the streets freely and for the first time I saw piles of dog excrement on sidewalks.

 I found a relatively nice hotel for a good price and checked in. It was right around the corner from the train station. The people who worked there didn't seem to have any sense of service. There was no place in front of the hotel to park and I didn't want to horse my luggage from the garage, about 300 meters away. Oh, no, they told me, you can't park outside. Just long enough to unload my luggage? I asked. They shrugged. Their attitude seemed to be “on your head be it.” No one offered to help me carry my bags. All four of them just stayed behind the desk arguing about something on the computer.
 
After unloading my bags, I drove around and around trying to find the garage where the hotel had reserved spaces. I went back to the hotel twice to get directions again but to no avail. Finally, one clerk said drive around the back of the building and it is right there. And so it was. What the little jerk didn't tell me was that it was back off the street down an alley and it wasn't marked by a sign. I parked the car, paid the fee and walked back to the hotel in a real pissy mood.
 
The hotel itself was really nice, the nicest expect for the one I had stayed at in Udine. After dropping off my luggage, I set out to the train station and took a local train to another town up the line called Benevento. To my disappointment, it was every bit as dirty and chaotic as Naples. I wandered around the old section of the city. I passed an archaeological dig beside a medieval church. The area was fenced off but it was still covered in garbage. At another dig site, this one fenced and roofed, all kinds of garbage had been thrown onto the roof surface, including I saw an entire chicken. I was totally at a loss to explain this level of slovenliness.

The odd thing is that this mess extended only to public spaces as far as I could see. Strolling past restaurants, bars, cafes and shops, I could see that their interiors were immaculate. So why were public areas so neglected?
 
The Benevento drivers were every bit as crazy as their counterparts were in Naples. Crossing the street was akin to forcing the landings at Normandy and the motorcycle drivers were kamikaze-like in their weaving in and out of traffic. I was really surprised at this because in the rest of Italy, pedestrians rule. I recall almost having to get of the car and bribe pedestrians to get out of my way. Here, it was totally different. Disgusted, I caught the train back to Naples and stopped at a restaurant for dinner. This at least was up to expectations.
 
My first course was mozzarella bufala, a variety of the cheese made with milk from water buffalo, the Campagna's gift to the rest of Italy. It came, two perfect round balls of cheese, on a bed of lettuce of some kind I didn't recognize. The cheese has a sort of gummy outer shell, with soft cheese underneath. When I cut into it, fresh milk oozed out. Supposedly, connoisseurs can detect the scent and taste of the special grasses on which the water buffalo feed. Okay. Bufala, as the Italians call it, is not exported from Italy. Supposedly it is best eaten with eight hours or so of production, so it doesn't travel well.
 
My second course was a fettuccine made with a sauce of olive oil, crabmeat and whole tomatoes. The pasta was cooked just right and the sauce was delicious, with just a hint of pepperoncini, the red-hot chilis that Italians in the south love to put in their food. I don’t especially like food spiced that much but this was delicious nonetheless.

On my way back to the hotel, wading through the litter, I passed a bunch of people selling clothing, watches, shoes and everything else. Trashcans around the area were filled to overflowing. On the sidewalk, beside a trash can, sat a Burger King sandwich, half-eaten. I could understand the impulse but why the hell couldn’t the person have put it into the garbage can? I spotted a large flashing sign that said Benvenuto a Napoli. I thought it should be changed to "Welcome to Third World Italy."
 
Satisfied with the culinary part of the tour of Naples, I went back to the hotel, watched some BBC blather about the American elections and then went to bed. The next morning, I caught a train to Florence. The city lies on the Arno river, which bisects the city almost perfectly in half. There are multiple bridges over the river including one, The Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge, that is really quite stunning. Emerging from the train station, I was relieved to see that Florence was clean and orderly. People observed traffic lights and yielded to pedestrians, just like normal humans.
 
I walked around the entire walled part of the city, going in and out through the streets to get to things I wanted to see. I went to the Duomo and then to the Ufficio, really a huge museum dedicated to the greats of Florence's past. I tried to get into the main church here, the church of Santa Maria de Novella but they charge nine Euros per hour and a sign forbade picture taking. So I contented myself with walking around the city.

After about three hours of this my knee was aching so I stopped in a bar and had a coffee and read a little, and wrote notes on the photos I had taken. A local man came in, obviously a few sheets to the wind already, ordered a glass of wine and began lecturing the proprietors about the American elections. Even without much Italian, it was clear this guy didn't admire President Bush. Apparently he spotted me reading a book with an English title, so he came over, sat down, and started lecturing me. I did understand some of what he was saying, about Bush and war and bombing but I didn't want to let on because I figured I never get rid of this clown. He asked me, where you from. America, I said, my heart sinking. So he started in on me about Bush. There was nothing hostile or threatening about him, just annoying. I have a hard enough time communicating with sober Italians, how am I supposed to talk to one who's drunk? Finally, I told the guy, I'm just a tourist; I don't know the president. This started people in the bar laughing. Then he told me, Bush, Kerry, no difference, right? Clinton, now, he was a good guy. Then he made a pumping motion with his arms and "trombone, trombone," this apparently b being an Italian slang for sex. Everyone in the bar was really laughing now and one guy behind the counter made a crack about Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi, who is apparently no slouch in the tromboning department. At that point, I decided to leave them laughing and headed out to find dinner. I had read so much about steak Florentine that I had to try it, even though the cost of the meal broke the 25-Euro rule I had made at the start of my trip that no single meal should cost more than that amount.

Steak Florentine starts out as what we would call a T-bone steak, dressed in olive oil, salt and pepper, and then grilled over a charcoal fire. It is really a large piece of meat, probably a pound or even a little more, far larger than anything I would buy and prepare for myself. It came with flakes of Parmesan cheese sprinkled over it. Traditionally, it is served blood rare but I asked for it ben cotte. Supposedly that means well done, although the Italians idea of well done and mine don’t jibe. The steak actually came medium rare, which is how I would have cooked it for myself, so there was no harm done, although the waiter rolled his eyes at my American stupidity for not wanting it rare. As seemed to be traditional with Italian restaurant meals, the steak came to the table lukewarm. Despite that, it was utterly delicious, so tender that I literally cut it with my fork. The steaks come from a breed of cattle called Chianina, which are raised along a Tuscan river of the same name.