Food - My Three Vices

I have been in Italy for almost a month and that's time enough for me to develop a love affair with three foods and a secret crush on a fourth. Pasta doesn't count. I loved pasta so much I married it already. These are my mistresses.

My secret crush is the macchiato. Before coming to Europe I never drank coffee. Occasionally tea, perhaps due to my mother being British, but never coffee. I didn't like the taste. Silly me. In the spring I spent two months in Europe snowboarding and traveling and ten of those days were in Paris. One night after dinner I ordered an espresso with my dessert. I admit that at the time I did it because it seemed very 'French' and right. But it wasn't that bad. So I ordered a couple more over the next few days. In Chamonix, I started ordering them more frequently and when Eric, Inga and Matt were visiting they became a regular ritual after being on the hill for the day and before going to the bar.

There is a pretty strong coffee culture here in Italy. (Stay tuned for more shocking revelations of this sort.) An espresso or macchiato caldo (with warm milk) is about .90 cents if you drink it at the counter or 1.20 if you take it to a table. In the morning, the cafes are two and three deep at the counter as people have a quick espresso and brioche before going to the office. After lunch and dinner it's also common to have another. As Lothar said, 5 or 7 espresso a day is fine. More than ten and you have a problem. I'm fine. This brings us to the first of my new loves.

The pasta sfoglia ricoperta al cioccolato. This beauty also costs only .90 cents. It is multiple layers of flaky, buttery pastry separated by a delicious custard that makes the very existence of pudding irrelevant. All this is topped by a chocolate glaze. I meant to take a picture but had finished the pastry long before I could get out the camera for a photo. The only good news for both my health and weight is that I have found only one cafe that sells these so will hopefully be able to limit my intake.

What I won't be limiting the intake of are doner kebab sandwiches. These are a variant of the shawarma that I idolize from eating as a kid in the Ivory Coast (yes, Kelly I really did live in Africa). There was a large Lebonese population in Bouke, the city where I lived and I have many fond memories of shawarma meals in their restaurants. So years later, much to my happy surprise, I discovered the doner kebab is quite popular in Europe as a snack food and it is possible to get a reasonable reproduction of my memories from some of them. There are three kebab restaurants in Ancona, all within a few minute's walk of my apartment. I met the owners of Un Turco Napoletano through my friend Sarcan, who is a co-worker of my roommate Raimundo. Sarcan is Turkish as are the owners of the restaurant and he quickly befriended them when he moved to Ancona to study engineering at the university. As soon as he found out about my addiction he introduced me to the owners and now I have an inside connection. That's what friends are for - enabling. They do punch cards (that's what you're looking at on the left) and I am halfway to a free kebab piadina. My free sandwich will only cost me 35.00 euros and change.

When I'm not eating kebabs I'm eating pizza. Not a lot has to be said about this I don't think. Italy invented pizza. I think. I eat them I don't study them. You tell me. Raimundo has the same addiction as I do and since he has been living here for a couple years has an inside track on the best places. The tender shoots of a tradition are blossoming between us. Awww. Sunday nights we go for pizza and beer at one or another of his favorite places. They all have a common theme. Ordinary decor, jammed packed at 9pm, overheated from the oven in the back and a steaming, chewy, fresh, scorching hot pizza brought quickly to your table. They come with either tomato sauce and cheese or plain with a little oil as the base. Each pizza is personal and there is nothing so silly as thick crust. Each restaurant develops a reputation for either a place with crunchy, crisp crust or a chewy one. Right now I'm addicted to red pizza with prosciutto, speck and rocket. Finished with a gelato and espresso and the week is off to a decent start. Soon I will make the trip south to Naples, as it is common knowledge to the people that keep telling me, that true pizza comes from Naples.

This insider knowledge is invaluable. It has put me months ahead of schedule if I had had to find these places myself and due to their local status and often subtle appearance and out of the way locations I would likely have never discovered them. Or wasted a lot of euros on sub-par versions.

Today was the first day it has rained since I moved here. Until now it has been mostly 20-25 degrees and sunny every day. Not at all typical for this time of year I've been told. Since this my first time here at this time of year everything is typical. Today it was in the low teens and rained off and on most of the day. It was gray and cloudy too. Except for the humidity it felt just like Portland. I loved it.

I wonder what Eric is doing right now.