This Is How I Eat

It was a little something like this, but with a more hungry hue to it.

Let me set a scene for you: Summer, Siena – right around 7ish. It’s not quite dusk, but definitely the end of the day. My friends and I are tired, dirty from hiking, and inching towards the kind of snarling hunger that makes it feel like your stomach will take matters into its own hands and begin consuming neighboring organs if you don’t find food, fast.

But come on, this is Italy! We can’t just settle into any old restaurant – that’s what gets you ordering off a tourist menu and settling for pasta only a step above easy mac (ie: completely unacceptable). So, we hunt around until we find a tiny little restaurant nestled just below the Duomo, with an equally tiny, non-English speaking, white-haired Italian man. It being 7, it’s a little early for dinner by Italian standards, so we’re his first customers and MAN, is he excited that some foreigners (one on of whom – me – can actually speak Italian) have not only stumbled into his restaurant but want to know his opinions on what to try.

Over the course of a 2-hour, 3-course dinner, we sampled local cheese and deli meats, amazing pasta, and a veal steak that looked like a porterhouse. Everything was perfectly prepared, and as our tiny Italian messenger from the food-gods presented each plate, he ecstatically told us about the recipe, the traditions and the flavors we were about to experience. But what really got me was when he brought out our dessert: 3 glasses of traditional vin santo and cantucci for dipping.

Humble, yet delicious!

Cantucci, which is basically a kind of stone cookie, is basically almond flavored, so again, light and aromatic. Yet somehow these two come together in an irresistible combo that you can still enjoy after a huge meal, but isn’t so light that it lacks the satisfaction of eating. So of course, we demolished it. I think we plowed through our glasses and the entire plate of cantucci before the nice old man even made it back into the kitchen.

So he brought another round.

Bless that little Italian man. We obviously weren’t about to look a gift horse (or Italian) in the mouth, so we thanked him profusely and demolished the second round with equal vigor. Again, delicious – the perfect balance that left you craving more without feeling overly full or sweeted-out.

Then he bought another round.

This time I protested more vigorously, telling him it was too much, and asking him why he was being so nice. And he said, with a wink and tapping his nose knowingly, one of the most profoundly simple yet true things I’ve heard in a while:

“Because the night is beautiful, and dinner should be fun”

I love that. I love that food can be whimsical, and fun, and that something special should be whipped out just because. To me, it’s the very essence of the Italian idea of food, which goes beyond the simple consumption of calories and drives into what a meal should be: a chance to connect and experience together, and to hell with the consequences. I think that’s why when you think of Italian dinner parties you’re more likely to think the dining equivalent of a three-ringed circus that a perfectly orchestrated ballet.

Oh, tasty tasty Tuscan salami. How I do love thee!

And that joie de vivre (yes, I’m mixing my languages. Deal with it.), is something that could stand to make its way back over here. So the next time I’m hosting a dinner party, I’m going to break out the really good wine, or bake an extra-outrageous dessert, so that when my guest protest I can steal a bit of Italian swagger, throw caution to the wind, and remind them that the night is beautiful and dinner should be fun.

…granted, for the night part to hold true in Chicago, I may just have to wait for spring first!

Want more jessha? Who wouldn’t?! Here’s what she has to say about spam…