"Quality Street Food"

The day after we flew in, still woozy from time-change-induced sleep disturbance, we had cappuccini and panini at our favorite bar across the street, loaded up on basics at the local Conad supermarket, and undertook various household chores, including taking a long nap.

I ventured out in the evening to join Pam and Romano for "What Big Eyes You have," billed as an evening of stories about wolves. We were expecting a diverting exploration of the wolf's role in myth and fable,. Instead we found ourselves trapped in a small but crowded auditorium listening to environmentalists describe, in mind-numbing detail, the habits and habitats of wolves in our area. (Yes, it turns out there are quite a few in the Po Valley.) I'm emphatically pro-wolf, but after being subjected to what felt like hours of night-vision film of wolves wandering through the woods and acres of projected maps showing the whereabouts of every wolf that's ever lived in this part of Italy, all three of us were entirely out of sympathy with both the wolves and their long-winded human admirers.

The program started at 8:30 and as my watch edged toward 11:30 it showed no sign of ending. The hall was still packed, which baffled me. In the U.S. at least half the audience would have gotten up and left by the nth time the speakers explained all the marvelous things they've learned from studying wolf shit. (I didn't understand a lot of the presentation, which was of course in Italian, but "escrementi di lupo" came through crystal clear.) The three of us finally bulldozed our way past a dozen sets of knees and fled into the cool night air.

"Are Italians always that polite?" I asked them. "In America most people wouldn't sit still for that after the first hour."

"I think the World Wildlife Fund is a cult," Pam said darkly. Perhaps she's right, and they're all still sitting there, watching endless video loops of wolves with Children of the Damned eyes pissing on trees.

When I got back home the street party around the food show was going strong, a dj at the Strega coffee bar competing with a dj 50 feet away in the piazza. Our bedroom is in the back of our apartment, well protected from street noise, so normally I wouldn't have noticed the ongoing merriment. But thanks to my disrupted biorhythms I was sleeplessly reading Elena Ferrante (in English, I confess) while dulcet strains of the Ramones and Limbo Rock wafted through our closed windows, until the celebrants finally called it a night a few minutes before two in the morning.

Tonight, Saturday, we decided to venture out and examine the "Quality Street Food" on offer. Once again the piazza was full of tents and tables and people and blaring music.

That's our historic city hall in the background.

The food on offer was surprisingly eclectic--Indian curries, Thai noodles, caciocavallo cheese melted onto french fries, Cuban cocktails, pasta amitriciana made by "a real chef from Amitrice," giant hamburgers, giant slabs of beef ribs.  

American cuisine was proudly represented.

Of course there was lots and lots of fried stuff, which I guess is a universal fair attraction. But the Italians don't seem to have caught up with the American penchant for deep-frying candy bars and cookies. Just meat, seafood, and vegetables.

Saint Potato, patron of arterial blockage.

We already had dinner waiting for us at home, but we couldn't resist trying one booth's Florentine-style tripe. 

It was delicious, proving once again that Italians (unlike, say, the French) know how to cook tripe so that it tastes rich and meaty, with just a hint of innards, instead of like a cow's backside. 

As we headed back home, the bar across the street was just getting rolling. 

It's almost midnight now and they sound like they're good for at least another few hours. This time I hope to be unconscious for most of it.

Postscript: They actually shut down not long after I wrote the above, but the festivities continued the next day. Pam alerted me to the fact that the weekend's events also included a market south of the city center selling sequined backpacks, furry sweaters, roasted chestnuts, and all kinds of other desirables...

...plus a streetful of games of so-called chance and amusement-park rides, many of them gut-wrenching.

Then on my way back to our place I encountered a crowd of people dancing the cha-cha in the piazza. These people seem to have a bottomless appetite for fun.

As Danny and I sat down to our ravioli at home the loud music started up, but when I went out for gelato at about ten (chestnut and sour-cherry--so, so good) they were getting ready to close up. (I've noticed that Proud Mary often signals that the party's running out of gas.) By eleven all was quiet, and I suppose the town will now settle down to regular non-fair life for a while.