Pino’s first trip to the tiny island (3 km x 700 m) of Ventotene this August and my fifth but we’re in synch on island eating: Ristorante da Verde on Piazza Castello is this island’s best eating spot, for “rapporto qualita’/prezzo”, as Pino puts it. Not easy to translate but here’s the idea: fair relationship…
After you get off the hydrofoil at the Ventotene port, you’ll head up the switchback of inclined ramps, flanked by the typical flat-roofed Mediterraean stuccoed houses of pastel colors. Anchored fishing boats, visiting sailboats rock on the ruffled waters of the Roman port below. The ramps end in Piazza Castello dominated by the imposing four-story…
As you get off the boat after your trip out to the island of Santo Stefano – or around the perimeter of Ventotene – you don’t have to go far to satisfy that hunger gnaw. Right across from the boats rocking at the Ventotene dock, head down a few steps into the grotto (once carved…
“They were born here – all my three children were,” Antonio (“Tonino”) Aniello replied with an impish grin when I asked him how long daughters Francesca and Teresa – serving customers at the counter – had worked with him here in his Ventotene bakery. Opened in 1953 by his father Gioacchino, Antonio started flanking his…
“I always liked the idea of having a restaurant. It’s hard work, takes personal sacrifice but you’re always fully living human relationships. What satisfaction!” brown-eyed Laura told me with a wide grin as she made our after-lunch espressi. The idea of opening this L’Aquila area restaurant four years ago originated with Laura (at the cash…
I remember scrambling up the mountains of Corfu to pick that pungent wild oregano when I spent an August there in the mid ’70’s. I took the ferry back to Brindisi (to catch the train to Rome, where I was teaching in those days..) with bunches of oregano tied to my backpack. And in our…
Push back the plastic strips hanging like colorful spaghetti (or fettuccine!) on the doorway entrance – but they do the trick, keeping out flies – and enter a cheese-lover’s heaven, the Caseificio Amici. Not far from Gorga, tiny Latium region mountain hill town, the Amici family – Giulio and wife Anna – raise three hundred…
“Five-star” denotes a luxury hotel here in Italy but I’ve now baptized Gorga, southern Latium village perched on a rocky outcrop, as a “five-star” town. While Roman friend Iva and I wandered the labyrinthine backstreets of this town of her ancestors, I found five (or more?) keystones of 16th-century arched entryways bearing the star. One…
Pino’s wonderful mother, Signora Vincenza taught me how to cook various Sicilian dishes – and not only: she was a wise woman and a font of knowledge about every subject from Greek mythology to the origins of Sicilian dialects to… the American Revolution! Signora Vincenza taught me to make summer eggplant Parmesan the Sicilian way:…