Seeing Red

In a former iteration of life, before I chose what I thought was love over money, I went through a bout with success.  Spoiler alert, both were a mistake.  Jimmy Buffett put it best in _A Pirate Looks At 40_, “I made enough money to buy Miami but I pissed it away so fast.” During that time I was a Porsche man.  Sure, the Italians made sports cars, but in my mind at the time it took proper german engineering to made a sports car dependable, not a hostage to a repair shop.

Now both are out of my league, but I have become a little more open minded.  Movies in the past couple of years have brought new interest. Really the reason why I am in this particular city comes down to one scene in the movie _Ford vs Ferrari_.  You have to throw a southern accent on it to really get the spirit of Matt Damon playing Texan, Carroll Shelby, “that's what he's thinking about while he's sitting in Moe-deena, Italy, right now. That man is scared to death... that this year, you actually might be smart enough to start trusting me. So, yeah. I say you got Ferrari exactly where you want him. You're welcome”

It was a little over two hours train ride from Milano into this area I had been close to before.  Two years ago, up at Parma home of the famous cheese, and Verona home to …well, love I guess.  It provided the backdrop for Romeo and Guliette.   I guess I was expecting something similar to those towns, older and much smaller.  But Modena has a significant industrial base and though it had some old buildings and town square, seemed post war modern and well maintained.   Maybe it was the car builder who had something to do with it.

Touring Ferrari was interesting.  They actually have two museums, I only went to the one in Modena.  The second, a few miles south in Maranello is more technical about the cars and the racing program.  Whereas the one I went to was about Enzo himself and the consumer cars.  …If you can call a $230,000+ car a consumer that is.  They did have a Formula One car there and a very interesting display of the different engines they have used throughout the years.  It was fun seeing the different models.  They have a 250 GTO sitting on the museum floor.  The last one of those that changed hands, just back in November, made it the most expensive car in the world at fifty-one point seven million dollars.

Picture if you will this liquor store window
in America and the resulting "What about the 
children" protests. 

Of course just seeing all these cars in one spot, seeing the beautiful design of the museum itself, seeing the gift shop with $1700 sweatpants, $1200 jackets and $200 ink pens, all of this stuff was some combination of interesting and shocking.  They had several employees on staff and one of them would show up at your shoulder instantly if you handled a product.  Their job is to make sure disreputables like me didn’t try anything on unless I looked like a potential buyer.  

I didn’t realize Ferrari makes an SUV now and they actually had a couple of cars there not in red.  A beautiful yellow, of course, was my favorite.  There were quite a few people touring and they had one of their pre-production models where for an extra fee you could have your picture taken beside it.  I am not sure if the beautiful woman standing there was available as an additional prop.  I didn’t see any photos taken.

The museum wasn’t the only place around town I saw the Ferrari name.  I saw it on wine bottles and construction company barricades as well.  Evidently the family has diversified.  I didn’t see it on a single car outside of the museum grounds.  But, I guess it is winter here.  Plus, I wouldn’t have recognized the SUV had I walked right past it.

The best meal, and in the top five for the entire trip thus far, was a bit of a fluke.  I had researched a restaurant on google.  It was rated quite high and there were a couple of wild boar pasta dishes I just knew would be fantastic.  When we arrived I overshot the front door ending up in front of a different restaurant where the host rushed out to sweep us in.  About that moment we discovered my error and I told him no.  But then when we went into the original spot we were told, lacking a reservation, we are out of luck.  Fate had taken control I told the host next door we would love to dine with them.  When we walked in we were the only table so I was a bit nervous about that.  But, it filled some by the time we were finished.  It still surprises me how late Italians eat.  The restaurant was called In Vino Veritas, and was at Piazza Roma 4.  I had their lasagna and it was outstanding!  The wine, also one of the best of the trip was very reasonable in price.  

If you are looking for a lovely coffee shop/bar with a wonderful warm setting, friendly people and outstanding selection I would recommend Benny’s Bar, Corso Canalchiaro 88.  I am saying this not just because they served me the largest, best tasting olives I have ever eaten in my life.  I spent a couple hours sitting in one of their little tables.  They kept my snack tray full and arrived immediately when I needed a second vino rosso.  People watching was great there was well.  The happy hour crowd was fun to watch and though I only catch about one word in ten it was easy to see everyone was having a good time.

A disappointment was the first restaurant we went to when we got to town. Fra Diavolo, right on the main strip in town, on via Del Taglio.   From the outside they looked a little “American shopping mall.”  But, it was rolling up toward 2pm and food gets really hard to come by in Italy about that time.  You can’t be too picky.  If you are you might end up having to wait until seven thirty when the restaurants re-open for dinner.  So I was hoping for the best.  I thought their logo was great, I thought their tagline cute, “eat pizza, make love”, but their crust was bready and tasteless.  Not at all chewy.  It did tide me over until dinner time though.  That’s what was important.

The BnB we were in had only one read downside.  Running across the middle of the bathroom ceiling was a heavy wooden beam just above eye brow level.  I proved this height twice during the stay there.  I realize there are sometimes not good options when remodeling these old buildings but I can’t imagine something like this in America. 

...And yes, I made you wait.

Finally a Least Favorite

I have been talking about my thoughts of where I would like to live someday.  I honestly spent brain cycles worrying about, “what if I like Milan so much I want to make it my new home?”  Over the course of two hours after arrival, I breathed a sigh of relief.  No, this was not going to be a problem.

Never before had I been this far north on my previous trips because I had heard it was expensive.  I had heard right.  Most restaurants and places are about twice or more the price of the south.  Finding someplace cheaper requires subway rides out from the city center.  On my own I would have never gone, but The Seamstress had basically one item on her *must do* list for Italy and that was to visit the painting of The Last Supper, which is located in Milan.  

I always assumed it was a traditional painting hanging in the Louvre, or some other museum but not so.  The Last Supper is just painted on a wall of one end of a fellowship hall in a mid-sized church!  At some point in history they even decided to put in a doorway and just cut off Jesus feet to install the arch!   Can you imagine the public outcry if something like that were to be proposed now?

If someone dropped me into the city, not telling me a thing, I would think I was in New York.  I feel like the two cities have the same general vibe. I even joked there are about the same number of Italians.  Everyone is in a rush and the traffic is bad.  There are some astoundingly attractive women walking around.  But Milan has a much different feel than the rest of Italy.  It is much more modern.  What it lacks is the old world charm found further south.  Yeah, there are some old buildings around.   It is architecturally interesting seeing the base of what became the Italianate style.  

Just like New York the subways were packed with people. Lots of people on the streets made walking a matter of dodging oncoming pedestrians.  It was crowded, not even so much in a leisurely tourist way, but that of a focused business person rushing to work.

I have many times mentioned how safe I feel in Italy.  The skinniest streets, the darkest corners, I feel like I am not in any danger.  But crossing a large park in Milano I got the good old fashioned American feeling of, “this area is totally sketch.”  There were lots of dodgy types hanging around giving us a look over and it wasn’t even after dark yet.  We had crossed the park to save us a couple of blocks on the walk to a restaurant.  There was no way we could follow the same route on the way back.

The restaurant, La Ricetta on Via Giulio, as it turned out wasn’t really even worth the walk.  The prices were what drew us there.  Only a little more than we had been paying.  It was a pasta place run by Koreans.  When we first arrived, right after they opened for dinner they didn’t seem happy to even seat us in their almost empty restaurant.  But there was a table next to the door, right beside a loud, rather largish woman talking on her speaker phone.  I was nearly shoulder to shoulder with her.  It was early in the trip and I was not yet practiced enough to lean and loud enough for her phone to hear say “Metti giù il telefono e torna a letto!” so I went for the long stare instead.  Eventually she took it private and at least cut down the irritating noise by half.  The meal was alright but little better.  My Maccheroncini Alla Puttanesca was 7€, large tubes of pasta that were quite al dente, not crunchy but tough and gummy.  The sauce, had I been eating it in Minneapolis, I might have considered better than average but I don’t deny being spoiled by the fantastic food of the last two weeks.  In the context of Italy and the sauce I had myself made the night before it was nothing special.

The following night we were up for something different.  We found a Thai place, Ristorante Mo, a few subway stops away and had a great meal there.  We asked for extra spicy and they delivered. The red curry chicken was perfect.  I do have to admit it is nice, in a city as diverse as Milano, to have great ethnic restaurant choices.  Cost was around 15€.  So over double the night before but enough flavor to keep me happy.

By far, the best meal, plus experience, in Milano was pizza at Piz on via Torino 34.  A short little dead end alley. They open right at noon and immediately served us a glass of champaign and sample slice of their pizza.  The place is colorful and high energy.  They served a great pizza in a short amount of time.  

The gustatory low point was the final night.  Rain induced desperation took us into a very close-by burger place.  I knew how bad a hamburger at a place like this was likely to be, so stuck with a pasta.  It was tomato sauce the consistency of ketchup in a kitschy serving dish that had a cheese grater built into the lid.  It is bad when the serving dish is the highpoint of the meal.  Even given my description I still think I had the best meal at the table.  It is very, very rare you can get a burger to make an American happy.  In three years I have found exactly one place and this year when I passed by it I discovered it had been turned into a McDonalds.

A close second to St Peter’s in Roma, the Duomo Milano should not be missed.  The marble work and sheer scale of the building is amazing.  It was the first of its type to hide the flying buttresses in the design.  It is only when you look at the model of the church residing in the museum across the street you can see how they are built in.  Then, you can spot them from the ground outside once you know where they are.  The museum is just as interesting as the cathedral itself.  They have lots of the leftover architectural parts and bits removed during previous remodels.   I thought the generations of rain spouts particularly interesting.

One weird coincidence of the visit, I had heard from my ex earlier in the day.  She was letting me know a hundred year old lodge we were familiar with with had burned to the ground the night before.  Later, walking around on the off and on rainy day, I ducked into a smaller duomo, Cripta di San Sepolcro, to escape a shower.  Nothing compared to Duomo Milano, it was still big, interesting, and just a couple of blocks from the AirBnb I was in.  I am not religious in the least but they are often free and it is interesting to see the design and marble work.  They offered not just the church, which was interesting, but for a few euro, a tour of the crypts in the basement.  There I discovered it was the frequent hangout of St. Charles Borromeo, namesake of the church we had been married in!  My moment of “all the gin joints in all the world.”  Interesting when stuff like that happens isn’t it?

St Charles Borromeo kneeling at a crypt

The last day I bought some souvenir refrigerator magnets because I plan to never go back.  Then over the final cup of coffee, a first in all my travels of Italy, I was short-changed ten euro at a coffee shop on the duomo plaza.  A fitting end to my stay in the city. 

Yes, Chef

I don’t know if America has a stereotypical “shit-box” car the way southern Italy does.  Maybe the Ford Escort or I suppose a better example, the F-150 pickup truck.  In Italy there is the Fiat Panda.  In smaller towns, particularly in the south, you see them literally everywhere.   It is hard to even stand somewhere you can’t see at least one. There are new ones, but they are invisible, looking like all the other plastic bumpered late models.  Their time will come. The older ones here in Italy don’t have body rust like we have in the north of America but they are often dirty, dented and tired.  Their wheels seeming undersized for the body, their colors many times lean toward the strange.  I have seen them modified to have pickup toppers cobbled on, or hood scoops to make them “faster.”  They are iconic in their trashiness.

Last year I learned about an AirBnb bait and switch the hard way.   When you book accommodations AirBnb will try to up-sell you “Experiences”.   These are local things to do.  Tours, guides, events and classes.  I had never paid much attention before, but my first trip to Italy I signed up for a pizza making class and had a really great time.

A close second in my list of favorite things to do in life, right behind eating, is cooking.  I love to cook.  The pizza class the first year was so great, on my second trip I wanted to expand on this.  I found several classes and spread them out over my 45 day visit.  Three of them in big cities, the fourth in a smaller town.  My attention to detail, not always the best, I hadn’t noticed one aspect of the small town class.  It was only five days prior, when I got the reminder email, I realized it was located an hour away from my AirBnb.  

The public transport system in Italy, compared to America, is fantastic.  From big city to big city, with the train system, there is no reason to get a car.  It gets a little trickier in smaller towns, but if you aren’t in a big hurry, bus service works pretty well.  Not so well you can travel at any time of the day however.  I could have gotten to the class a few hours early, but there was no way to get back home.  I had to instead rent a car and make the drive.  Of course they rented me a Panda.  I think it was my punishment.

This year I wanted to take the same class again.  We had made some ravioli containing Italian dandelion (we call it chicory in the states) and one other ingredient, I thought to be spinach.  When I made it this summer it was not nearly as good as I remembered so I wanted to figure out where I went wrong.  I built my plans around staying in the villa located where the class was held and found trains and a bus route to get to the nearby town, San Casciano dei Bagni. It was going to go perfect. But of course nothing goes as planned.  

We had traveled from Napoli to Spello, a beautiful hilltop town where I feel some of the best olive oil is produced.  From there we did a day trip to Assisi, once home to St Francis.  They were perfect vacation days.  The weight of my bag increased by a gallon of oil and it was very relaxing.  But then  the day we were to go to the villa a car crashed into the rail line damaging it.  All trains to and from Spello were cancelled.  Unable to take a train we could not make the bus connection and we had to walk six kilometers to the next town to rent a car.  Oh well.  That is what traveling is all about.

Villa Vetrichina was beautiful!  About two miles out of San Casciano dei Bagni, up a steep climbing gravel road.  During the season I am sure it is luxurious.  A great place to relax from the stress of getting there.  The second day I walked into town and visited a coffee shop.  It was in a vaulted room of what might have been the base of the original castle.  When I got back I put in a partial workday, then took a nap in preparation for our cooking class that evening.

Italians do have what Americans consider some odd beliefs and I got a front seat to an exhibition of this.   I was ready early for the cooking class as is my custom.  Not particularly paying attention to what else was going on around me.  It wasn’t until departure time that The Seamstress appeared in the room and I realized she had been showering.  She has very thick, very curly hair and mechanical drying has a set of problems only the curly of the population can understand.  Now, with only towel dried hair, she was ready to leave.  I warned her of what was likely to come but I don’t think she believed me.  I just smiled. 

We walked the short distance to the classroom kitchen, and as we walked in the door there was a collective gasp and horrified looks on their faces. I said to myself, “this is gonna be great!” Italians will never be seen out of their own home with wet hair.  The reasons are twofold.  An Italian never leaves the house unless they are looking their absolute best.  No disheveled looks.  No frumpy clothing.  Second, they think wet hair outside causes sickness.  So immediately they were concerned the hair drier in the bathroom might have been broken, or unable to be found.  It was a funny exchange as she attempted to explain her actions to an audience that wasn’t buying it.  I just stood there with my dry hair and a grin on my face.  It ended with the hosts saying “Americans are strange” a sentiment I don’t disagree with, but having nothing to do with wet hair. 

The class was great.  We made flatbread appetizers, a first course of guitar cut spaghetti with an amazing simple red sauce of plum tomatoes and fresh olive oil.  —The high point of the meal in my opinion.  For the main course we baked ribs and of course the vino rossa flowed.  A tiramisu for desert.  A great meal then followed up by lemoncello and Liquore al Basilico.  Sadly, no grappa but we had only ourselves to blame having consumed his entire stock the night before.

I figured out where I went wrong on the ravioli.  It wasn’t spinach but broccolini and they were blanched together to remove the bitterness.  A step from last year’s class that I missed completely.  They were again fantastic.  I can’t wait to make them again this summer.

Chef Francesco is larger than life.  Spending time in America when he was young, he loves to feel this bond with Americans.  Finding out we were from Minnesota (sort of, in my case) he excitedly showed off his Minnesota Vikings mug but also his Dallas football coffeecup, sadly having lost its handle but still in use.  His standard check-in when we were doing something right, “You expert!” made me smile every time he said it.

Finding out we were heading north after Villa Vetrichina he loudly exclaimed, “In Milano, they drive’a Ferrari, drive’a Porsche.  No!  We are Tuscany!  Cigaretta an’a Panda” 

Just like Italy, a little food and Pandas everywhere.

A Game of Favorites

From Rome we had some time to kill before the next set of plans so decided to dash down to Naples for a long day.  America corners the market on crime, but in all other respects Napoli has every bad attribute a city can have.  It is rundown, crowded, noisy, dirty, covered in graffiti, and from the very moment I stepped foot in it, I have been absolutely in love. It captivated me with its excitement and vibrancy in a way I have never experienced before.  It seems young and alive, fast paced with everyone zooming around.  Every green light is a Formula One of scooters taking off.  Bars are filled with happy fun loving people at night.  Its thin streets, banners stretching across to simulate laundry hung from lines.  I enjoy all of it. 

The reason for all this exploration over these past three years is I have been looking for somewhere to live out my retirement.  I have had it with America.  Instead of investing in education, since the 80s, America has chosen the more expensive route of ignorance.  I watched in disbelief as it culminated in the election of the most ignorant we had.  I don’t see any hope for turning that around in my lifetime.  Getting out while the getting is good has served many people well in the past.

Part of this thinking about my future involves thinking about my current living situation.  (As crazy as that situation is!) I have a stealth camper van and I can drive and park it wherever I want.  My Starlink dish works anywhere I have a clear view of the sky.  Do you know how many national parks I have visited in the last two years?  Zero.  It never even occurs to me to pull off into the wilderness.  Not when there is a margarita with my name on it in New Orleans, or a coffee in Pasadena, or a deep dish pizza in Chicago.  I seem drawn to city life.  Walking around seeing not the stars but streetlights and neon.

I love all of Italy, I really do.  Every city and every region has beauty and cool stuff.  I have put three years worth of thought into it.  My life savings, and everything else I worked so hard for, took a powder a couple years back.  So living along water, or really owning anyplace of my own, in America now would be prohibitively expensive.  But in Italy, in one of the smaller towns, I could probably afford somewhere within sight if not walking distance of the Tyrrhenian or Adriatic seas.  Those coastal cities are so peaceful and so beautiful.  I could see myself putting out deck chairs and never leaving.  Going totally hermit.   But is that really a good thing?

I had a friend a few years back who described living in Miami as “Island fever in one less direction”  I think I would feel the same living too far down on the boot in Italy.  So no further south than Salerno.  On my budget, in one of the internal southern towns I could really get quite a place indeed.  Lots of homes have some ground attached and often an olive grove.  I could make my own olive oil and eat my own olives.  In these small towns the locals are desperate for new blood, and another thing on the plus side, I would be forced to become fluent in Italian.  Again, this would bump into the hermit problem.  Or, the opposite end of the spectrum, a boredom problem.  I lived my childhood in the outback and never had any desire to return to it in the US, why would I think I would enjoy it more just because the people talk different?

That is why I am currently leaning toward city life.  Firenze is too touristy. Rome is too big. I have heard Milano is too expensive.  I’ll check it out later in the trip.  These are all additional reasons why Napoli is winning the race. 

Since photography here is strictly forbidden, this 
must be someone else's photo!

If you visit, there is an attraction I cannot suggest enough.  The Veiled Christ located at Sansevero Chapel Museum, via Francesco De Sanctis, 19.  It is an amazing work.  Carved from an single slab of marble, it appears to have a liquid transparency.  The artist was initially jailed for performing some type of witchcraft, then later it was thought he cheated, using some chemical treatment to “marbleize” silk.  But it is neither of these.  Just a breathtaking work of art.

Napoli’s real claim to fame is invention of the pizza. It is still evident in the number of pizza restaurants in the city.  An astonishing 8200, a pizza restaurant for every 115 people.  I read that the day the Covid lockdown was lifted the city restaurants served 60,000 pizzas in one day.   One pizza for every fifteen residents.  I am a pizza lover so I totally understand this.  It is very good pizza indeed.  The city even has a pizza certification board where the best of the best get to have a sign on the front of their restaurant.

Pizza aside, in my opinion, the best meal in all of Napoli is served at the Lombardi restaurant just around the corner on via Foria at via Duomo, the edge of the historic district.  It is a certified Vera Pizza location so they will serve you an outstanding pizza.  My favorite however is Spaghetti Bella Donna, pasta in a very light tomato sauce with olives and olive oil.  For three years I have been served by the same gruff waiter who takes his job very seriously.  It is a big place, extending over at least two floors, maybe even three, so they can get quite busy.  Avoid them on Sundays because the church->lunch crowd cause them to switch into “pizza only” mode. 

And Now For Something Completely Different

I am a technical writer who tends to only write about stuff I personally do.  Installing a furnace, building a van, or going to see live music.   Even a brief stint of being a food critic.  This blog so far has been all the about the van, and is leaning toward vanlife, but every February and March I leave the van behind and visit the real world.  I escape north American winters in the best possible way.  With a little vino rosso and pizza.

It’s funny how it all started.  I have spent years talking about moving to, or maybe just part-time-living, in Italy.   Then at one point someone brought up the fact that I had never even been to the country.  Killjoy.  But, it was the truth.  How did I really know if I would even like it?  Maybe my romanticized ideas (which I now realize have led me astray before) were only that.  A few months later I was climbing on an airplane.  I made my first trip and discovered my fears unfounded.  I loved it so much I have been doing it now every year since.

My whole life I had been a family man.  I worked hard but loved traveling with my wife.  We always got along so great, particularly so while on adventures.  But suddenly I was unexpectedly single.  Going to another country all alone.  Where I had never been before and didn’t speak the language, I thought, “this is how missing person reports start.”  Initially I thought I had a daughter joining me, but then that plan fell apart.  On a lark I asked a new friend to join me and she said yes.  …An amusing story for another time.  The trip was fantastic, but that trip was strictly exploration.

I became a remote worker long before Covid when a bunch of you joined me.  I spent twenty-five years telling people my job was great, and I could work from anywhere.  But then where did I work from?  The desk in my family room.  Last year I conducted some tests and worked some days to see if technically I could connect to the things I needed to at my job.  Those tests went great!  Much of the intranet infrastructure in Italy is government owned.  In a city of 1500 year old buildings, every one of them is connected with fiber internet.  My connection speeds to work were better than I had at home!  This year’s trip is my first where I will be working full time.  And, we’ll see how this goes, but maybe I will do some travel blogging as well.

My first destination was Rome.  In the past Rome has not been my favorite city.  It’s so big, and so spread out.  It had been tough for me to walk the places I wanted to go.  Cabs are super expensive and include a version of the Italian driving experience, intensified compared to other cities.  The public transportation system was far too confusing for an amateur on year one.  But over the span of three years I have learned much.  Things like, bus tickets are purchased from tobacco shops and other odd quirks.  I have learned a smattering of Italian.  Enough to ask a question and sometimes even understand the answer. So my confidence has risen and this year I have found Rome to be much more accessible for me.

And honestly, giving credit where credit is due, this trip I am traveling with my friend The Seamstress, who has made a few appearances in this blog over the years.  Her planning and organizational skills are far above and beyond anything I have previously had access to before.  My thoughts out loud have turned into plans, timetables, events and tickets.  It’s been great!  It was one of those thoughts, mentioning I had never been inside the Roman Colosseum, and a day later we were walking there tickets in hand.

I was maybe a little less impressed with the inside once I saw it.  The outside is so iconic, the inside a ruin.  The crowds, I thought were massive, though at one point I heard a tour guide explain to her group “This is nothing compared to summer”  February is the off season and tourism is lite.  I can’t even imagine 

What I feel differentiates Rome from other Italian cities is the architectural grandness and sheer bulk of some of the structures.  How I can be walking down a skinny little street, round a corner and suddenly there is a massive two thousand year old Roman building.  Similar things happen in Napoli but more often and on a grander scale in Rome.  Plus the buildings are cleaner.  Not likely to be so dirty and graffiti’d the way they are in Napoli.

I have come to the realization over the years I travel to eat.  In Italy eating is a different experience.  Take for instance the humble tomato.  In America this equates to a tasteless, artificially ripened, sometimes even bordering on crunchy, fruit who’s function seems to be adding red color and moisture to whatever you are consuming.   Not the same in Italy.  They have flavor!  Lots of flavor!  The only way to get this flavor in America is to raise what we call heirloom tomatoes in your own garden.  

The same can be said of olive oil.  A few years back, pre-travel, I read an article in the media about how most oil in American grocery stores is on the verge of rancidity and bitterness the day you buy it.  At the time I didn’t know what they were talking about.  The oil was fine.  I had no context.  Coming here, visiting a public market where you are talking to the person who owns the olive trees the oil comes from, it all became crystal clear.  I gained that context in my first bite of bruschetta.  The tomatoes, the fresh mozzarella, the oil tasting so fresh and wonderful.  I never went back.  I took a years worth of oil home from that first trip and have done the same ever since.  I will never buy another bottle of imported oil in America.

My first night in Rome was spent at a favorite spot.  Pizzeria alle Carette on Via della Madonna dei Monte.  This by coincidence was one of the first pizzas I ate in Rome.  Great pizza and totally unbelievable price.  I paid six euro for a pizza, three euro for a vino rosa making it what I believe is one of the best values in the city.  (~$9.75 USD) I didn’t understand how they could make a living, but talked to a friend of mine.  At a restaurant like this they are buying wine by the 55 gallon (metric equivalent) drum.  He was guessing they had half a euro of wine in a glass.  The pizza profits, given economies of scale could be even better.  A family run place like this might have been paid off for two generations.  He said there is really good money in pizza, even when there is a pizza oven every two blocks.  

It isn’t all good news though.  My next night I visited what I had discovered three years ago to be my all time best Indian food.  Maharajah on Via dei Serpenti.  I had walked by it for several days, reading the sign and saying “no way!  An Indian place in Italy?” Then on one of my last nights I decided to go for it.  The flavor exploded, the spice level was perfect.  I couldn’t believe how good it was.  I couldn’t wait to get back to it last year.  …And last year I was confused.  Lots of new faces and the food was just ok.  I didn’t want to prematurely judge though so gave them another try this year.  

Hard to believe but this was the
high point of the meal!

Wow, what a difference two years can make.  The service seemed a little angry, the food quality reduced.  I asked for it spicy, molto speziato, several times with no indication the waitress had even heard me.  I received two dishes which were positively boring.  There was some condition around ordering garlic naan so instead I had to get plain.  But it was thick, bready and tasteless.  Only useable as la scarpetta and marginal even in that capacity.  I wonder, in times like this what happened?  Did they lose their chef?  Did ingredient budgets get cut?  I wonder if it even changed hands.  It wasn’t just the food either.  After I finished my first plate I was nibbling and finishing my beer, a large Kingfisher, and three times had to chase away wait staff trying to take away my plate and remaining food.  On their fourth visit I let them go ahead.  Frankly the food wasn’t worth protecting.  The meal was so bad I wrote a two star review on google maps while I was sitting there.  Next trip to Rome I will be searching for a new favorite.