At the Table, Italian Style

While eating lunch today in Madurai, India, at my host, Pradeep’s home, I was reminded of an experience in Italy that I treasure with fondness. While living in the small hilltop Tuscan town of Castiglione Fiorentino, we befriended Marco, who owned La Bottega del Vino, a truly first-rate restaurant with Marco’s unsurpassable personal attention to hospitality and friendly evening banter, though often to the chagrin of his friend and partner who was stuck in the kitchen sweating over the hot stove the entire time and their wives who were busy serving people.

Marco was gregarious nearly to a fault, but genuinely loved to see people enjoy the food he offered at his trattoria. He was a craftsman of the old school and adherent to the slow-food movement in Italy, which involves sitting down and enjoying your food over time, quite in opposition to the rise of the American import of fast food into Europe.

When Marco found out that we would be in the town alone for Easter, which happened also to be on my birthday that year, he was sad and invited us to his home for an Easter dinner. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree always, but I’m no fool if the owner of my favorite small-town Tuscan restaurant invites me over for a home-cooked meal, I am not going to turn him down.

It was quite the event. I counted at least four generations there, though there was one older woman who might have been the fifth, but I am not certain. There were kids running around and several other of Marco’s family members, who were also no fools to turn down one of Marco’s banquets.

The thing that I remember most, more because it was an interesting custom more than anything else, was that we started with an enormous bowl of hard-boiled eggs. I mean several dozen at least. That was traditional for Easter and I am sure that we all had about four or five of them to inaugurate the meal.

After that, it was just one dish after another coming from Marco’s rather modest kitchen, but you would have never known it. Marco’s mother owned a grocery store on the edge of the town, just outside the city walls, and she always had good cheeses, wines, and produce, all of which was used in abundance to throw together this unforgettable meal.

So, after about five hours of eating and conviviality, Marco even brought out a birthday desert for me that he had made and I celebrated it with all of his family. It was a very special birthday event and a true testament to the hospitality that one can find in Italy.

My advice, if an Italian offers to bring you home for dinner with the family, it is most likely an offer that one should not refuse...and speaking of that, time to go down to dinner for one of Jacinthe’s home-cooked meals, Indian style.