The Food Maven Diary
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Back from Italy
I'm back from Italy and what a gratifying welcome I got at the airport. First, a stern-faced female customs officer questioned me about the purpose of my trip – it was all a pleasure for me -- then asked me what I did for a living. It was the first time someone had asked me that question since I resigned from WOR on August 24th.
"Until a few weeks ago I had a radio program, but I suppose I am out of work now," I told her. Her face softened. She actually smiled. "Oh, you're the food guy. I know all about you," she said. I passed right through, not that I had any soppressata to hide.
Then, in the terminal, I asked an information guy to point me in the direction of the taxi stand. A moment after he did, he ran after me. "Do you mind my asking, are you Arthur Schwartz?" he said. Then he told me how much he missed me and he wished me luck.
Finally, in front of this computer, I came home to hundreds of well-wishing emails. It
doesn't get any better, folks – not the recognition, but the well wishing and outpouring of appreciation.
This was one of the most enjoyable and productive trips to Italy I've made in a while. I started with a day and night in Rome visiting Iris Carulli (imcarulli@hotmail.com), my former personal assistant and forever friend who now works as a guide to the city's art, history, gastronomy, and, well, whatever else you need to see or know about Rome.
Iris and I and Bob Harned had one awful meal together, at Convivium Troiani, which is exactly the kind of high-priced fancy and pretentious joint that I try to avoid while traveling in Italy. We do them so much better in New York. But we were curious. One of Iris' Roman friends, a woman who should know better, swears by the place. Friends in New York told me that while Convivium wasn't their kind of restaurant either, it was very good, and good for me to experience.
Am I allowed to complain that on a nearly 90-degree day the restaurant had no perceptible air-conditioning, while these days in Italy even restaurants at lower levels are well-cooled? I became very Karl Lagerfeld and fanned myself all night with Iris' Japanese fan. I don't even want to go into the details of the meal. It defined unremarkable, and some of it was even poorly cooked, like the rubbery lamb sweetbreads. And when I rejected the wine I ordered because it was more than slightly oxidized, the waiter told me "It's supposed to be that way." And it took forever to be served the bad food! For too long a while, all our sustenance came from the fey "bread bearer"– there is no other way to call him who marched ceremoniously around the room, tongs and armor-sized bread basket in hand.
The next morning, we went to Naples for several days. We visited our friends, Albert Coward and Giovanna Raffone, and their adult son, Nicholas. Although the Cowards would gladly have put us up in their apartment in Posillipo – where they take in guests for bed and breakfast … Posillipo Dream is what Giovanna calls it … I didn't want to impose for so many nights and stayed at the Grand Hotel Parker's. It's a gorgeously maintained 130-year-old hotel that I love for its position on the first terraced level of the city, a little out of the fray in this crazy, vibrant city, but not really out of the way. All is tranquil at the hotel, old world, elegant but friendly, and all you have to do is walk down some outdoor stairs (Naples, a terraced city, has many) near the hotel and you're in the heart of Chiaia, an exclusive residential and shopping section of the city. (Think the Upper East Side.) Or you can take the funiculare, the vertical commuter train, which is down the street, and be in Vomero in five minutes, (Think the Upper West Side.), or downtown in 15 minutes.
Parker's seaside rooms have a famous view of the city, with Vesuvius , Sorrento, and Capri across the Bay of Naples at your feet. I woke up each morning to what Goethe described as the earth's most perfect melding of land, sea, and sky – all a mist of pale blue as the sun rises. The hotel's manager, Alessandra Bragoli, kindly upgraded us to a duplex suite, so we were ensconced in ultimate luxury, with a blue marble bathroom and a white marble staircase leading up to the bedroom. I will probably be changing the itinerary of my culinary vacation program (which I now am thinking is more "gastronomy and culture") to include a short overnight stay in Naples, of course sleeping at Parker's, where even the normal rooms are wonderfully atmospheric and comfortable.
Giovanna, who works for the Campania regional tourist board, and Albert, who is an English teacher and city guide, took me to see a few sites I had never seen before. Virgil's Tomb (the Roman poet died in 19 B.C.) is mostly about a cave that's hard to know exists, and so it's neat to know it does. It's as if Peter Stuyvesant was buried behind a billboard on a heavily trafficked corner in Queens. You have to climb an ancient vine-covered stairway to get to the place Virgil supposedly took his last breath. You may understand why it was his last when you get there.
We didn't get to the main cave of the Sibyl of Cuma, one of the nine famous Sibyls, women of ancient Greece and Rome who lived in caves and were known for their gift of prophecy. We wisely chose instead to eat pizza at the picturesque marina in Baia. But we did get to a second supposed cave of a Sibyl, one that the Romans built for military purposes, actually a tunnel connecting two neighboring lakes, Averno and Lucrino. Dante called Lake Averno the entrance to hell in The Inferno. In his day, the fumes were so toxic that birds could not fly over it. It is part of what is called the Campi Flegrei, fields that still have volcanic activity. In the Solfatara, sulpherous fumes still continually spout from the barren earth. Unbelievably, some new apartments have been built on the ridge around it. But these fumes are supposedly curative, so we breathed deeply.
We also went to a park named for Virgil, in Posillipo, the affluent area at the top of the peninsula that encloses the north side of the bay. I had asked Giovanna what site she would like tourists to see that they usually don't see, and it was this park, which has incredible views of the islands of Ischia and Procida, of Marechiaro, which is not the name of a seafood dish but the area where the sea is the most clear and beautiful for swimming, the neighboring municipality of Pozzuoli;, and the Fuorigrotta section of the city, whose shoreline was until very recently dominated by hideous steel factories. They've now been torn down to make way for a new park, hotels, shops, If the politicians don't screw it up, it should be a wonderful new seaside pleasure center.
Of course, we ate a lot. One night, Giovanna fixed what she considered a quick supper – pasta (a type of artisinal, dried fusilli) with wild mushrooms and a bit of tomato, and aqua pazza with a grand specimen of merluzza, which is a kind of cod. Aqua pazza, which means "crazy water," is nothing more than whole small fish simmered in a flavored water, but Giovanna made it slightly differently than usual. She gently sweated the whole 15-inch long fish in olive oil with lots of chopped garlic until it gave off some of its juices. Then she poured in an already separately cooked aqua pazza broth – that would be salt water boiled with parsley, a little hot red pepper, a few cut up cherry tomatoes, and more garlic and olive oil. For dessert, she served a tiny glass of shakerado, sweetened coffee foamed up with ice and, in this case, topped with cream, and then a plate of Neapolitan pastries from Scaturcchio, the city's famous bakery.
Giovanna's sister and nephew, Gabriella and Mimmo Mazzella, also entertained us. They also rent rooms in their art-filled apartment, which is just feet from the Duomo where the miracle of San Gennaro takes place – the liquefaction of the saint's blood. (You can contact Mimmo at Discover Naples. Mimmo's pasta with eggplant and capers was superb, but a big platter of ripe green figs, each wrapped in prosciutto di Parma, was, for me, the real treat. How often do you get to wallow in figs? We did all week. At Seliano, my cooking school partner Cecilia Baratta has fig trees growing in her gardens. We just pulled them off the tree to get our fill, and Cecilia supplied bowlsful every day. Soon she'll be exporting the figs she puts up in a red wine and spice syrup – fabulous with a piece of pecorino or very old cacciocavallo, among other ways.
I ate only a few restaurant meals in Naples this trip. The highlight was certainly Gorizia, in the Vomero section of the city. On a late summer Sunday afternoon, when many Neapolitans are still escaping to the beach or summer colonies, and most good restaurants are closed, Gorizia was full of a neighborhood mix of extended families, young women in small groups, young men in small groups, and older folk going out together. The restaurant is very local, and very, very good. The main event for Bob and me were small to tiny flour-dusted fried merluzza, each with his tail in his mouth and with moist white meat ready to fall of the easily pulled-out bone. And you can not know what calamari are supposed to taste like until you've eaten them in Naples, especially they tiny ones, calamaretti. At Gorizia, they starred with octopus, shrimp, clams and mussels in a lightly lemoned insalata di mare. After several fish and seafood "antipasti," all Bob and I could deal with was splitting a pizza, which tasted better than it probably was because it was the first one of the trip. Next time I would control the onslaught of antipasti we got by leaving our order to the waiter, and delve into the pastas and meats.
The next pizza of the trips was at Europeo Mattozzi, only a block from Naples commercial port (not the prettiest part of town). It is touted by some non Neapolitan Italians to have one of the best pizzas in Naples. I liked it very much, as well as the fritti – fried vegetables and potato croquettes– that are a typical offering of Naples' pizzerias. I didn't think it was the very best pizza in Naples, but it certainly is in the top rank. Then again, I didn't have a traditional pizza, but one topped with fresh cherry tomatoes. I just suppose I will be forced to go back and eat more.
I have a Neapolitan friend who swears, too, on Europeo's pasta and potatoes, a very homey Neapolitan specialty. So I've decided to invite him home for a bowl of mine, a recipe you can find in Naples at Table. What I did love at Europeo was the novel idea of dredging the calzone crust in grated cheese before it was baked. My traditionalist friend, Giovanna, wasn't as enthusiastic. Mr. Mattozi is your very amiable host, and if you mention my name I am sure he will give you an extra warm welcome.
To be continued
In Naples, New Restaurant Recommendations
Europeo Mattozzi
Via M. Campodisola, 4/10 (near Piazza Borsa)
Phone: 011-39-081-552-1323
Gorizia
Via Bernini, 29/31 (near Piazza Vanvitelli)
Phone: 011-39-081-578-2248
