I’ll never get over the popularity of American culinary businesses, like Starbucks or McDonald’s, in Italy. Maybe to some, the food tastes better or is no different than real Italian pizza from Pugi in Florence.
Kidding.
I just don’t identify with the people who view McDonald’s as an oasis when they’re away from home. In the middle of Paris?
“Italians just love all things American,” my Italian friend in Verona said. “People waited for an hour to get into Starbucks the day it opened here in Verona.”
“Sorry,” I said, “didn’t Starbucks steal the idea from Italy?”
And still Starbucks is nothing like an Italian café. Or even a German one. I’m not a coffee drinker, but a friend in Munich manages to convince me to take a cappuccino with her when I’m there. It’s not hard. She takes me to her favorite café, Marks on Kufsteiner Platz, which is packed with tables like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. And you feel like the day is going your way when you score one of those tables. I couldn’t believe the cappuccino I had ordered at home was the same aromatic afternoon drink I had at Marks on Kufsteiner Platz served in a proper coffee cup on a wooden table barely big enough for two.
So the US entrepreneur who went to all the trouble of bringing European coffee culture to the USA forgot to import the ambience. And when I think about it, no matter how hard we try, American businesses just never recreate that European atmosphere. Stemning in Norwegian. Mood. Vibes.
I don’t know why.
Is it because of the amount of space?
Tables in European restaurants are close enough to each other – the kind of distance where there’s a 90% chance of knocking the wine glass off the next table with a not-so-graceful exit – to encourage conversation with people at the neighboring table. You can’t help but see what the next person over is eating and then second guess your own choice.
One of our dinners in Nice was at the restaurant Le Sejour, located just a couple blocks from the sea. It was the kind of restaurant that has its entire menu written on a chalkboard outside (four starters – four mains – desserts maison). My mother had chosen Le Sejour based on her internet survey of restaurants in Nice. Although I have to wonder what the concept of a bad restaurant in Nice would be. Like the time I asked if there were any good restaurants near my hotel in Paris. I walked by the restaurant in the afternoon to see how far it was from our hotel and if we still wanted to go there. When I returned to the hotel, I told my mother the restaurant looked good and then showed her a photo of the menu as proof. I don’t know how she does it, or maybe when you’re in Nice, you can’t miss.
The restaurant was empty when we arrived. Basically, we announced we were Americans, arriving before anyone else, entering what felt like a living room. We squeezed into a two-person table along the wall set with a white tablecloth, sparkle-orange water glasses, salt and pepper shakers, utensils and napkins folded like a fleur-de-lis. My mother took the booth, facing outward into the restaurant, and ordered glasses of champagne to begin our dinner, a custom we adopted after our second night in Europe.
Small menu (heavy on seafood dishes – tartare de gamberoni, homard Breton frais (fresh lobster from Breton), in house made pasta with seafood) – and I still couldn’t decide.
“Where are the scallops from?” I asked.
“Brittany,” the woman said.
Still France. Although I expected a spot closer to the restaurant located just a few steps from the Mediterranean. She assured me they were excellent.
I took the scallops (coquilles) from Brittany with risotto, and my mother ordered the duck liver pâté to start (and to share) and duck breast for her main dish. I think she had duck every night since we arrived.
The tables began to fill and soon we had a neighbor, a young woman alone. She spoke in English, and with an accent, a traveler. That was an opening for me.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
People have told me asking a stranger this question is lame. So I always have to laugh at myself when I ask it.
“Russia,” she said.
She had moved from the north to the southern part of Russia, “Because it’s warm there,” she said. She had two children, one with a Tunisian French citizen she had married and then divorced.
“Where did you meet?” I asked.
“Egypt,” she said.
A meet cute made for the movies.
“But a marriage between such diverse cultures sounded more romantic than it turned out,” she said.
The scallops seared in butter, displayed in seashells encircling the risotto, arrived. My mother’s duck breast a little rare, sliced and splayed out on a squarish, black plate. A glass of Sancerre for me and Beaujolais for my mother.
After a sip of the wine, I told the woman I was a writer and an editor.
“I would have guessed you are a writer,” the woman said.
“I don’t write anything serious though,” I said.
“Sometimes you need to read something that makes you feel like you’re eating apple pie,” she said. “I mean, who else is going to write about food and wine?”
And then that’s what I had for dessert, the French version of apple pie, tart tartin aux pommes (made in house) and a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Just how I like it, not too sweet, a little tart.
Maybe it’s the food and wine that loosens you up to opening dialog with strangers in Europe.
In Florence, at the restaurant Buca Lapi, we sat next to a man who was struggling to finish his Florentine steak on his own. If you’ve ever been to Florence, whole halves of cows hang in the windows of restaurants, advertisements of their specialties.
“Are you going to be able to finish that?” I asked. Sarcasm coming from someone who just stuffed herself with a plate of ossobuco, roasted potatoes and a ricotta cheese dessert (fresh ricotta with strawberries).
“I’m trying,” he said. “But the potatoes, the potatoes I think are just for decoration at this point.”
He was in Florence on business from Australia.
When I told him I was from Los Angeles, he said, “I’ve been there! I visited once with my young children. I had to explain to them that the fragrance they didn’t recognize, but smelled everywhere, was pot. Now when they do smell pot in Australia, which happens rarely, they say it reminds them of Los Angeles.”
A sobering bit of insight into what’s memorable about my hometown. And from children.
Maybe you realize you’re never going to see that stranger at dinner again. A few lines of dialogue can go a long way. I once had a story about a five-minute conversation with a stranger in a flower shop published in a major media outlet.
In Rome, we went to our favorite restaurant, Hostaria Romana, where I always order carciofi alla giudia (fried artichokes) – our waiter talked us into getting two –, tonnarelli cacio e pepe, and maialino (roast pig). They always put us in a small room on the lower level with two rows of tables, the formerly white walls filled with the artwork of previous diners. I looked for mine from years past (the dates on the walls remained from before my previous visit), but I couldn’t find it.
The room was already full, with the row of tables connected in the back up against the wall for a large group. During our dinner, I heard the people behind me speaking a Scandinavian language. At first, I thought they might be from eastern Norway. Then I heard the Swedish word for also, också, which is distinct from Norwegian, også with the “g” silent.
“Are you from Sweden?” I asked as we were leaving.
“Yes,” the man said, “some of us are from Sweden.”
“I thought at first you might be from the eastern part of Norway because of the rhythm (sing-songy) of your language, but then I heard också.”
“Thanks for putting up with us,” he said.
I missed my chance to dazzle them with my Norwegian. I could have made an appropriate response, “vær så god,” which means “you’re welcome.” I thought of it two steps outside the restaurant.
At the table next to us, maybe a centimeter between us, was a group of four Germans crying with laughter. They were from Munich and on their way back to the city the next day.
“I’m taking the train from Verona to Munich!” I said.
“I might be taking the train too,” one of the men said. “I’m on standby for our flight.”
The weather in Italy had been beautiful, even for mid-November.
“You know it’s raining and cold in Munich,” he said.
I still had several days in Italy, although on my own, so I wasn’t worried about the weather. Yet.
Maybe it could also be that I speak some Italian. Or other languages I’m not afraid to try, like French because it’s fun. Speaking with strangers is against my nature as an introvert. But in another language, I can ask questions right out of a dialog in a basic language book and smile about it without feeling like I have to say anything profound or funny because I’m speaking another language.
Maybe because you’re taking more public transportation. On the train to Roma, the couple sitting across from me didn’t say a word, barely made eye contact. But when they got up, they said, “Arrivederci.” My Italian friend in Verona told me that in Italy it was considered polite to say good-bye on the train. Then she told me about having a complete conversation with a deaf woman on a train who read lips. On a bus from Napoli, an Italian man told me where to get off for the far entrance to Pompeii where fewer people entered the park (at the time anyway). I worried when I was the last person on the bus, and then when I realized where he sent me, I couldn’t go back to thank him.
Or maybe that some restaurants in Europe more directly foster conversation between strangers. Like when you’re sitting on a furry seat cover in a piazza in November with an aperitif in your hand. Or like the time I was seated at a table for single diners in Milano years ago. I didn’t look my age at the time which prompted the woman next to me, an anchor in the Italian news media, to say, “This is your secret.”
I don’t know if it’s really a European thing or a just-being-a-traveler thing that makes me more open to conversation on trips. But now I know what to call my style of writing…apple pie.
Books…
Norwegian Lessons in Indonesia (2023)
An Accidental Artist: Discovering Creativity through Scuba Diving (2018)
Art for sale at AnemoneWatch on Square
Janice Nigro 
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