Taste: My Life through Food(11)

When we arrived in Rome, we stayed in a pensione for a couple of nights in order to do some sightseeing before taking a train to Florence. We visited the usual places of significance, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, etc., which were overwhelming for eyes that had never seen anything older than Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, or a few relatives. At the end of each day we ate in a restaurant just a few doors down from where we were staying, and if truth be told, it was the first actual restaurant I had ever eaten in. Even though I was almost thirteen years of age, as far as I can recollect, basically the only eatery I had been to was a pizza joint a couple of miles from our house called the Muscoot Tavern.

The Muscoot was named after the reservoir it was adjacent to, one of many reservoirs in upstate New York that supply the drinking water for New York City. Built in the 1920s, it was a narrow, dilapidated shack of a building with a floor that sloped like a perpetually keeling ship. It was dark and dingy, with a battered wooden bar and about twenty checkered tablecloth–covered tables. Cold beer on tap, Miller High Life or the like, was served in scratched glass pitchers for about $2 each. Iceberg lettuce salads were served in those small flimsy “wooden” patchwork bowls that still grace tables in certain diners all over America. However, regardless of the crumbling surroundings and I believe a multitude of health violations, the place did a hearty business, because the thin-crust pizza was delicious. (Many other pizza places opened over the years as that area of upper Westchester became more and more populated, yet none of them ever made pizza that was nearly as good.) My family would go to the Muscoot maybe two or three times a year as a special treat, and besides a hamburger at the Mount Kisco Friendly’s after our annual doctor’s checkup, that was my experience of dining out. (I recently discovered that Massimo Bottura’s wife, Lara Gilmore, waited tables at this very same Friendly’s, as she comes from Bedford, New York, next to my hometown of Katonah. I just thought you’d want to know that information and it allowed me to drop Massimo’s name, which I will now continue to drop, among others.)

Anyway, fifty years ago there were very few restaurants in that part of Westchester, and those that existed were either diners or very high-end places serving duck à l’orange or other French classics that were all the rage in 1970s America. Public school teachers’ salaries being what they were, and frankly still are, dining out for a family of five was cost-prohibitive, so logically, we ate in. Also the fact that my mother was such a good cook made it certain that we never would have gotten anything nearly as delicious as what she was serving on any given night even in the upscale restaurants, and surely not at any of the diners.

So eating in a restaurant, but especially eating in a restaurant in Rome!!, was a whole new world for my sisters and me. Do I remember what we ate those two evenings? No, I do not. Most likely, it was just a simple pasta dish that would hopefully satisfy three children aged twelve, nine, and six enough to make them sleep through the night and not awaken their exhausted and anxious parents. However, what I do remember is the tidiness and cleanliness of the place and that, like most Italian restaurants to this day, it was very brightly lit. I remember how precisely the place settings were laid, that the glasses were turned upside down and then deftly set right by the waiter as we were seated. I remember the starched white tablecloths and how the waiters’ jackets were equally starched and white, and I remember how kind they were to us as my father explained with pride, in his then-slightly-broken Italian, that we were to be living here for a year. All that surrounded me was completely alien, and I loved it. I loved the taut readiness of the dining room, the preparedness of the staff, and the sense of expectation that sat invisibly at the empty tables. Who knew what might happen here on this or any given evening?

I don’t know why, but I have always been fascinated by and taken great comfort in watching a restaurant being prepped for opening by the staff, their vests or jackets still unbuttoned, bow ties dangling from pockets or draped around necks. I particularly like the moment when the dining room is finally ready and the ma?tre d’ unlocks the door, swings it open invitingly, then steps back inside and waits for the first customer to enter as the waiters do up the last buttons on clean and freshly pressed uniforms.

When we returned to Rome many months later, we visited the same restaurant, as my father must have felt a certain loyalty to the place because they had been so welcoming to us as new arrivals. As we sat down he reminded the waiter that we were the same family that had visited some time before. Without missing a beat, the waiter threw up his hands and with a huge smile welcomed us back and even called my sisters by name. How this man, who was no spring chicken, had that kind of memory given the number of people he had waited on since our first visit and over a lifetime, we may never know. All I can say is that he was a testament to the professionalism and innate graciousness of the precious figure that is the Italian waiter.

When we settled in Florence, I did not speak a single word of Italian, so I was enrolled in an Italian school but placed in the year behind where I would have normally been at my age in order to learn proper grammar along with the other students. This proved to be a very wise choice, because within two months I was speaking fluently, and by the end of our stay I was correcting any correspondence that my father had to write in Italian. (Unfortunately, today my Italian is hardly fluent, a result of not speaking it every day. But I have been taking lessons, and frequent trips to Italy have given me opportunities to practice, although I pity the very patient natives with whom I converse.)