A quiet morning on the computer while the rain again drips on the tiles outside the bachelor’s attic.
I spent the morning working on the computer, writing from memory what little genealogy I recall for my grand-daughter’s project on migration and sending off email to folks who care (much as I suspect my Mother on her grand tour wrote letters home.) As we left his place on the street of guilds (he lives in the old guild house of the masons) we passed the one I had an interest in, that of the sausage makers.
The plaque outside specifically uses the term I’ve always heard used to describe Bologna – La Grassa - the Fat One. For lunch my host-colleague-friend and I ate alone, all the other research team having gone to their respective homes, in preparation for next week’s gigantic meeting outside Rome. He chose a nearby place, the Ristorante Cesarina, “in business since 1908,” it said on the aprons.
He was keen on my having tortellini, a Bologna specialty, until we looked at the menu, and I fixed on the culatello, a ham cured in sweet wine that’s soaked in a cloth that’s wrapped around the ham. It’s served with Bologna’s version of New Orleans’ Café du Monde’s beignets, without the sugar dusting. We also split the green asparagus topped with melted pecorino; quite good too. We both discussed the merits of the (sweet and sour) guinea hen and rabbit and again did a bit of splitting – I think my guinea hen won out. No dessert but the requisite after dinner liquids and we were off (bill again paid by my host’s “administration,” sez he.)
On the way home we stopped off at a brand new book store cum wine shop/wine bar cum restaurant cum café called Eataly that one of my Facebook or blog correspondents suggested I go to (turns out his building abuts it.) It was a cinema before, a market before that, a church (St Michels)
before that, and originally a market street (or did I reverse the last two?) I thought it was great; it had everything from Simenon to St Emilion, ravioli to ristretto, etc. A short time for decompression and it was off to the TGV-to-be to Florence.
Aside from the fact that everyone honors the etiquette of cell phone politesse in the breach, it was OK. My hotel, the cheapest on Expedia the day I searched, is elegant (for 58 E a day mind you) and has free wifi if you can get it to work, which I cannot (and I was just fine using it in Geneva, could it be Berlusconi’s curse?) After two days in Fat City approaching Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras, my buddy reminded me, was upon us,) I decided to do dinner at a non-descript pizzeria near the hotel, because I was deep into US Grant’s Memoirs and not in the mood for a big time.
But like poking through trunks in the attic, I was idly reading my pile of NYT articles, webstuff and my own report from August and was seized by a desire for the spaghetti con vongole that I’d had at the Trattoria Antellesi in August a few days after I’d had the best tripe dish of the centuries (20th and 21st). So out to mein host; “are they open,” “I’ll enquire,” no answer, plunge into depression, answer, “ah, Sr. Talboat, solo” (sad, eh, but Colette refused to come, pleading gastro-intestinal nursing duties to the extended family).
In any case, I went past the hoards of (no longer Anglese Tourists) but South American, African and Asian folk, who here, like in Aspen or Paris, do the work, to the resto. Warm welcome. One look at the menu; order spaghetti con vongole; no sorry (it’s Sunday night Schmuck [they didn’t say it but I felt it]); so the tripes, not bad (which for non-Franco-fanatics = pretty damn good.). Bill with wine and green salad (quite fine), no dessert, water or coffee = 17.50 E – take that, fancy Eastside Eateries! A domani!
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