SGI: Culture and cuisine

The Italian people have a long and noble past. First there was that whole empire thing.* Then, after a thousand years or so, there was the Renaissance.**** As previously suggested, most of the Renaissance took place in Florence (at least if you believe the Florentines), and they're so damn proud of it, it's sometimes hard to tell if anything's happened since then. But of course, plenty has; opera, for instance. Also, the Mafia. And Fascism.***** And fashion; in design of all kinds, as in murder, Italy is absolutely on the cutting edge.***** *

Still, in some ways Italy remains quite old-fashioned. The country remains firmly Catholic, and by and large retains a firmly Catholic attitude to womanhood (if not necessarily individual women). In dating, the men are expected to do the chasing, and the paying. (Woe betide the man who lets his date pay in an Italian restaurant. Mockery will ensue. You can try to explain that it's his birthday, but it just won't do.) The women are expected to give the men something to look at. (Watch a group of Italian men as an attractive woman walks past. The ass-checking head turns appears to be completely obligatory and unquestioned.) Well, you can see why; Italian women are gorgeous, and so well turned out. Think Monica Bellucci. Think Sofia Loren.

Sofia, of course, once said: 'Everything you see I owe to pasta.' Which is not only a great reason to show two fingers to the Atkins diet, but also leads us very neatly to the second part of this chapter.

Italian food.

Now, Italian menus are generally divided into:
Antipasti ('before the pasta')
Primi (first course, comprising pasta)
Secondi (second course)
Dolci (desserts).
And the guidebooks would have you believe that a full Italian meal actually comprises all four of these courses, plus vegetables, which are not normally included in the Secondi, and salads, to 'cleanse the palate' (ha! Not if it's a gorgonzola salad) before dessert. However, after careful observation and experimentation, I have concluded that this is an elaborate hoax perpetuated on tourists. Its purpose is clear: (1) get the forruners to spend more money, and (2) keep them out of the restaurants where they're not wanted, by claiming 'we only serve full meals'.
Because it is physically impossible to actually eat all four courses, and I have never seen an Italian do it, either. Sure, the quantity of spaghetti on your plate may (or may not) be a bit less than you'd normally expect from a non-nouvelle restaurant portion, but it's probably as much as you'd eat at home, in a full meal, without starters or sweets. So, they're having you on. Don't fall for it. Pick your course - primi or secondi - and don't let them flummox you. After all, you want to leave room for tiramisu.

Now that you know how to plan your meal, it's time to consider what you'll actually order. Italian food, like the language, has strong regional inflections. When in Naples, eat pizza;***** ** when in Sicily, eat gelato.***** *** Florence is the place for Tuscan specialities, which frequently involve beans. (But don't let that put you off.) Venice is all about the seafood: in snack form, it might come as frittura mista (mixed fried things - you won't be able to identify all of it, but it'll taste pretty damn good); in primi, a classic Venetian speciality is spaghetti or risotto nero - in squid ink sauce. It's actually worth a try. Black, fishy tasting. And you'll go home able to brag about your squid ink dining experience, which sounds satisfyingly gross, without actually being so. (Unlike, say, mopani worms, which really are gross.)

Something you'll hear a lot is how crap Venetian restaurants are - because there are so many tourists, well, they just don't need to be any good to survive. Having read too many guidebooks, I was suffused with fear and trembling at the very thought of stepping into any establishment not given the Rough Guide (or similar) stamp of approval. This was, of course, entirely unnecessary; in fact we enjoyed our impulse choices more than the sought-out, recommended eateries. But I formed a new rule of thumb, which is, interestingly, the exact reverse of my London rule of thumb,***** **** viz: if it looks really attractive and stylish, give it a bash. In Venice, that is. In London, the more stylish, the less likely to be any good. The (possibly not wholly reliable) logic is that, while in London there is an obsession with Style that leads people to (a) make their venues really ugly and uncomfortable and (b) neglect the food, in Venice, the bad food seems to come in places that are geared to simply snaring hungry tourists in the most convenient locations. So if they've gone to the effort to make it look great, they probably care about actually having good food, also. (Okay. I should point out that the entire proposition is based on the assumption that you're not going to eat in the main tourist trap locales. You're not, are you? Because that would be just horrible.)

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* Wolves, Trojan runaways,** gods and art "borrowed" from the Greeks, conquests, roads, aqueducts, orgies, corruption, murders, lead in the water (those damn aqueducts), madness, decline and fall. It's all terribly exciting.***
** Actually, those two might be the other way around. I'm a bit vague.
*** You can tell my classical education is being put to good use.
**** Art and knowledge "borrowed" from the ancient Greeks and Romans, Medicis, the sudden and dramatic realisation that pictures can be about something other than religion, which opens up new and intriguing possibilities for depicting naked breasts. Enter the modern age.
***** It occurs to me that one might imagine I don't actually like Italy and its past very much. Au contraire, I love it. Like all the best places, it's completely insane.
***** * Insert 'dress to kill' joke here.
***** ** But not only pizza, and not only in Naples, obv.
***** *** As above, with rather less emphasis on the first part and rather more on the second.
***** **** People like to claim that London restaurants are the best in the world. This is a dirty stinking lie. In London, you generally have to pay an awful lot of money to eat well, and even then it's a crapshoot. It seems that in London, you can get at best two out of the three criteria: ambience, food and service. And frequently not even that. Even for quite a lot of Poondz. Anybody who disagrees with me is invited to spend a few nights eating out in randomly selected venues in Cape Town or Johannesburg, and then claim with a straight face that London restos are, in fact, not that bad.