See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy

Copyright © 2019 by Frances Mayes

Book Club Guide copyright © 2020 by Penguin Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

BROADWAY BOOKS and its colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

RANDOM HOUSE BOOK CLUB and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States in slightly different form by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2019.

ISBN 9780451497703

Ebook ISBN 9780451497710

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Map and this illustration by Meredith Hamilton

Book design by Elina Nudelman, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Alane Gianetti

Cover photograph: Paolo Tralli/Shutterstock

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Note from the Author

Piemonte

Torino

Orta San Giulio

Le Langhe: La Morra, Barolo, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga d’Alba, and Novello

Le Langhe: Alba, Cherasco, Santo Stefano Belbo, and Neive

Trentino–Alto Adige

Trento

Rovereto

Merano

Monte San Vigilio/Lana

Vipiteno

Campo Tures

Veneto

La Laguna Di Venezia

Asolo

Valdobbiadene

Arquà Petrarca and Colli Euganei (The Euganean Hills)

Montagnana

Este

Monselice

Mira and Dolo

Friuli Venezia Giulia

Cormòns, Cividale del Friuli, and Palmanova

Aquileia

Emilia-Romagna

Parma

Liguria

Camogli

Varese Ligure

Genova

Toscana

Scarperia

Buriano, Castiglione della Pescaia, Vetulonia, Montepescali, Campiglia Marittima, Populonia, and San Vincenzo

Massa Marittima

Sansepolcro

Umbria

Montefalco

Bevagna

Le Marche

Sant’Angelo in Vado

Mercatello sul Metauro

Sirolo

Recanati and Fermo

Lazio

Sabaudia

Sperlonga

Gaeta

Puglia

Trani

Ruvo di Puglia

Ostuni

Lecce, Corigliano d’Otranto, Specchia, and Otranto

Lucera, Troia, and Pietramontecorvino

Orsara

Monopoli, Bitonto, Lecce, Altamura, Matera, and Alberobello

Sardegna

Pula and Teulada

Santadi

Isola di San Pietro and Carloforte

Iglesias and Piscinas

Cagliari

Sicilia

Marzamemi

Scicli

Vittoria

Caltagirone

Chiaramonte Gulfi

Catania

Epilogue: Cortona

Dedication

Acknowledgments

A Book Club Guide

Also by Frances Mayes

About the Author

PREFACE

Italy, the endless surprise. The places I’ve chosen for this book are for example, because if you travel adventurously, you will find many others that draw you close and let you see why you ventured so far, and what you will take with you when you leave. Will it be a swim in the October-cold sea at Carloforte on Isola di San Pietro in Sardegna, a dip that jolted you out of summer doldrums and propelled you with great energy into the fall? Or a plate of arugula dressed with lemon juice and fresh olive oil in Sorrento, when the taste wedded to the heady scents of citrus blossoms from trees layered in ascending terraces all around you? That became the way you wanted to eat for the rest of your life. The regal cardinal striding into the Vatican. So pompous, you’re thinking, but then you catch a glimpse of his robe caught in his rear end, proving that the divine is human. The mad woman performing Aïda arias in the fountain of Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori; lanterns’ shadows flickering on stone when you looked out over the deserted Piazza Navona at three in the morning, hearing only the splash of the outlandish fountains below. And then a man starts playing Vivaldi on his flute. Your Rome, all in a day. The private moments, the little bursts of secret meaning that travel can give, the ancient light through the Greek columns at Selinunte, grazing the face of your child, casting her into the long historical span of time. Places give us such gifts, if we are ready to receive them.

—

I DIVIDE MY time between Italy and the United States. My home in Tuscany, Bramasole, became second nature to me and now is the place I’ve lived the longest of anywhere in my life. Do I know Italy well? No. Not because I haven’t traveled, cooked, observed, gazed at a million paintings, and read the convoluted history. To know Italy takes ten lifetimes. Each time I return, I feel the same excitement I knew in the first years of living here. So much to learn, and what luck, I’ll have five weeks or six days or three months—surely I will begin to feel I’ve a grasp on the place. But Italy remains elusive. Just beyond that hilltop castle, there’s a valley of olive trees, then another town where the stony streets are pale gold instead of gray. The pasta is different there—made with half bread crumbs—the dialect is unintelligible, the local duomo’s frescoes are painted in apricots and chalky blues with sublime faces you later see in the local bar while you sip your Negroni. You were in Bevagna; now you’re a few kilometers away in Montefalco, a new world. Infinite differences—all packed into a country about the size of Arizona.

—

HUNGERING FOR MORE—MORE understanding, more exposure, more pasta—my husband, Ed, and I suddenly pack our little white Alfa Romeo and hit the road. Sometimes we are joined by William, our grandson; sometimes we are joined by friends, for an hour or for a week. Our wanderlust awakened: For a year and a half, we seek unique places hidden in plain sight, and also cities such as Genova and Parma—the names known, but who has lingered there? Italy. Infinite.

—

BECAUSE PASTA IS the national anthem, I’m searching for quintessential tastes of each place, though instead of pasta I might fall for sbrisolona, the crumbly, nutty dessert that turns divine when dipped in zabaglione. That swim in Carloforte? Followed by robust paccheri, a large hollow pasta with a talent for soaking up tomato and eggplant sauce. A fritto misto followed, fish just pulled from the water, crisply fried and succulent. That lusty dinner became Carloforte! And impossible to forget the pitcher of fruity red wine and the salad of wild greens picked that morning from the earth. The score of our adventure is the music of many corks popping.

Travel is a journey into one’s own ignorance. Nothing proves this more quickly than dipping into Italian wine varieties. In every region, there are grapes—nisiola, teroldego, nerello mascalese—I’ve never known existed, as well as particular winemaking methods, such as the revival of aging in clay amphoras lined with beeswax. The Greeks and Romans, who seem to have known everything, also buried their giare. In effect, they’re planting the wine into the earth.

—

SUCH PASSION EVERYWHERE for food. Even a two-year-old has an adventurous palate! More snails! He bangs with his spoon. More! We share the zeal. On arrival in every town, Ed begins plotting. How many lunches? How many dinners can we enjoy in this exceptional place? And markets! Each town retains the tradition of weekly go-to-market day. What’s freshest, what’s ready to plant, who has the truffles, who has the best porchetta, are the little violet artichokes in yet? I try to plan to be in a town on market day. There, you pick up a recipe for topinambur, Jerusalem artichokes, or you’re offered a taste of the annurca apple (annurche, plural), an ancient variety that is picked green and ripened to winey sweetness on straw beds. (The grower will brag that Italy has a thousand five hundred varieties of apple, while the French have only fifteen. A suspect figure, but I admire his passion, molto italiano.) Vendors sometimes still hawk their wares, their high croaking voices hearkening back to the Middle Ages, when in these same streets men sold their honey and chickpeas.

—

THE MOST VIVID pleasures of Italy are the simple ones. You’re installed at a table on a sun-drenched piazza. You have your notebook and the whole day. There’s nothing you must do except let that sundial cast its shadow on the next hour, let the apricot façade of a renaissance palazzo reflect on the faces of those around you, let the memories of what brought you here rise and facet in your mind, let the waiter bring that second cappuccino before you set forth into the day.

—

FRESH MEMORIES: GREEK-WHITE villages of Puglia clinging to cliffs above the sea, the siren call of the Lazio coast, knotty medieval streets of Genova, vast underground Roman cisterns in Fermo, green hikes and hot chocolate in the Dolomiti, the trail of Frederick II’s Puglian Romanesque churches, afternoons on the golden Tuscan beaches, the atmospheric Torino coffee bars where Cesare Pavese would write…Endless, yes.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

See You in the Piazza is arranged geographically, north to south, instead of in the chronological trajectory of my travels. Since there’s no thread of continuity, you may choose to read the sections randomly, though I suggest reading about whole regions together, as travels within them are usually contiguous.

Finding unexpected places to travel in Italy couldn’t be easier. Just veer off any road. Several websites often lead me in surprising directions: The Touring Club Italiano produces good guides, extensive travel services, trips, and maps to all of Italy—and has for over 120 years. Their Bandiere Arancioni (orange banner) site, http://www.bandierearancioni.it, identifies more than two hundred small towns of particular beauty and cultural significance. I visited many for this book: In Piemonte: Neive, Cherasco, La Morra, Barolo, Orta San Giulio. In Trentino–Alto Adige: Campo Tures, Vipiteno. In Veneto: Asolo, Montagnana, Arquà Petrarca. In Friuli Venezia Giulia: Cividale del Friuli. In Liguria: Varese Ligure. In Toscana: Massa Marittima. In Umbria: Montefalco, Bevagna. In Le Marche: Mercatello sul Metauro. In Puglia: Troia, Orsara, Alberobello.

I Borghi più belli d’Italia, http://borghipiubelliditalia.it/​borghi/, lists the most beautiful small towns of Italy. Not an exhaustive list but still useful.

Also helpful: various sites list Blue Flag beaches, those determined by the Foundation for Environmental Education to have the cleanest water and environmentally sound coasts.

I’m enthusiastic about the government-sponsored program of agriturismi, farm stays. These vary from boutique hotel standard to the simplest room. The advantage of either is that you meet local people who are usually hospitable and helpful. You may make a friend, or at least get to pet a goat. Often the agriturismo family will offer cheese-making or cooking classes. Check out the farms at https://www.agriturismo.it/​en/.

If you like staying in historic inns, and sometimes castles, Dimore d’Epoca, http://www.dimoredepoca.it/​en/, provides many romantic and characteristic listings.

For wine and restaurants, I rely on finding a local enoteca to learn about the area’s vineyards. There are numerous useful apps and, prior to travel, I recommend downloading several. We especially like Gambero Rosso’s yearly wine and restaurant guides. Even though they’re in Italian, the guides are symbol-oriented and easy to understand. While you’re in an enoteca, a bar, bookstore, or produce stand, it’s a good moment to ask, Where do you eat for a special occasion? You’re likely to be told of a good local place with atmosphere.

—

I’M THRILLED TO include recipes from some of our favorite restaurants. Chefs have been enthusiastic, generous, and happy to share their talents. In translating their sometimes elusive notes, I’ve tried to keep the chef’s tone—and to preserve the Italian way of presenting a recipe, which often leaves room for your own creativity. I’ve left the notation QB, quanto basta, meaning how much is enough, or to taste. Seasonings are almost always QB in an Italian recipe. No ½ teaspoon of salt or 6 leaves of basil! Usually, too, the chef has left quantities of broth or wine open to common sense; I have sometimes inserted quantities when the amount didn’t seem obvious, as when a glass of white wine is called for. What size glass might that be? When ingredients may be hard to obtain, such as a particular cheese, or wild game such as hare, I’ve suggested substitutes, although almost everything is available via Internet sources. Some recipes are challenging! I think they represent the new directions I’m finding in restaurants all over Italy, where chefs are suddenly improvising, taking traditions and running with them. Not to worry—there will always be tagliatelle al ragù. While testing, I learned new techniques and usages that I now carry over into other recipes. I hope you have fun trying these recipes that chefs have chosen as representative of their kitchens.

When looking for apartments and villas: Buyer beware. I’ve rented probably a hundred and still can make a mistake, although most have been pleasant and well located. Ask yourself what they’re not showing in the photographs, then ask to see that omitted bathroom or kitchen. Tiny box showers, furniture covered with throws, bad art, dark rooms—all send up warning flags. While bad reviews can’t always be trusted—some people are cranks—lots of iffy reviews certainly cause me to return to search. Look up the address on Google Earth to ascertain that the location is not beside a major road or in an inconvenient neighborhood.

Trains are a fantastic option. Italy has many fast trains, some with business class ambiance and friendly service of drinks, sandwiches, and snacks. The train trip often seems too short! Consult http://www.trenitalia.com and look for the Freccia (arrow) line: Frecciargento, Frecciarossa, and Frecciabianca. Italo, a private high-speed line, is another fabulous option: https://www.italotreno.it/​en. The normal intercity trains are great, too.

Luggage is a burden. Best advice: Travel light.

Piemonte

Torino

The waiter slides toward me a clear little glass layered with cream, chocolate, and coffee. Sip the layers and you taste Torino. The bicerin—dialect for small glass—has come to be synonymous with the many atmospheric cafés that are the city’s life blood. Torino is flush with regal boulevards and piazzas ringed with these delicious haunts. I’m at the wood-paneled Caffè Al Bicerin, intimate, with candles on tiny marble tables. In this very place, someone in 1763 first concocted the bicerin, a wickedly sumptuous drink. I like a place that remembers a coffee drink invented 256 years ago.

I’ve slipped into other historic cafés to sample their bicerin or lemonade or cappuccino. Bliss. There’s Caffè Torino under the grand arcades, where the great Cesare Pavese, who lived nearby, used to meet other writers; Caffè Mulassano, with a marble bar and bentwood chairs, said to have the best espresso in town; Baratti e Milano, more chocolate- and confection-oriented than the others but with an old-world air; and Caffè San Carlo, all gilt and columns and statues.

In late afternoon, the cafés serve aperitivi. No surprise: Campari and vermouths such as Punt e Mes were all invented in Torino. Order a drink and you’re welcome to a lavish buffet of stuzzichini—crostini, olives, chips, focaccia, prosciutto, slices of omelet, and grissini, bread sticks (also invented in Torino). This interlude previews dinner. Which is glorious to anticipate. Torino restaurants are up there with the best in Italy.

—

LATE MORNING, ED and William, who’ve been out walking, meet me under the arcades at Caffè Torino. They are impressed by its bodacious chandeliers, smooth waitstaff, and medallion of a rampant bull inlaid in the flagstones outside the door. This is a perfect perch for watching the human parade. We order cappuccino, then tramezzini, the triangular half sandwiches made of trimmed, soft white bread—the kind of air bread we usually scorn. These were invented in Torino, I tell them. At Caffè Mulassano. The weird poet D’Annunzio made up the name… Mine is ham and cheese.

"Tramezzo, a divider. Across the middle, Ed says. The -ino or -ini is the diminutive."

Across the middle of the morning or across the corners of the bread? William asks.

Who knows? It was easier to say than the popular ‘English tea sandwich.’

Everything was invented in Torino? William concludes.

Unlike panini, the tramezzini usually have mayonnaise. Almost all bars, train stations, and cafés serve a variety. Ed took to them right away, especially the tuna and olive for a mid-morning snack.

Spread out on the table, our books on Piemonte and the poems of Pavese. Never much of a café sitter, I could while away the morning like this. A well-dressed businessman grinds his foot over the balls of the gold bull. Not sure how that brings the good luck it’s reputed to.

We stroll along Via Garibaldi and Via Roma, checking out the designer shops (oh, no! William is attracted to Louis Vuitton belts). Torino has eighteen kilometers of covered walkways, a reminder that inclement weather can pour in from the Alps. The chic shops are punctuated by more appealing cafés in glass-roofed Galleria San Federico, where we happen upon Cinema Lux, an Art Nouveau theater. In smaller streets we find Libreria Internazionale Luxemburg, a vintage British bookstore and a cool contemporary café and art space.

Where are the tourists? we wonder. They’re all in Florence. We came to Torino last summer with William and loved every minute of the four days we spent blessedly free from mobs. We all agreed—we needed more time here. As we begin a trip into Piemonte, we decided to light here again.

What a fantastic place to bring a child or young adult! Highlights from our first visit:

WE TOOK A TAXI OUT TO THE MUSEO NAZIONALE DELL’AUTOMOBILE. Even if you’re not a car fan, you have to swoon at the design genius on display. The emphasis is on vintage Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo, though there are Bugattis, Ferraris, and others. A long-time Alfista (one who adores Alfas), Ed examined each.

EATALY: the Italian food emporium near the car museum. We walked there from the car museum to have lunch and to look at the amazing range of olive oil, pasta, honey, jam, wine, and other products, all from this country.

MUSEO EGIZIO: after Cairo, the largest Egyptian museum in the world. Torino began collecting in 1630, and now displays 6,500 items (with another 26,000 in storage). The museum is located right in the centro.

MUSEO NAZIONALE DEL CINEMA IN THE MOLE ANTONELLIANA, where on the ground floor you can watch movie clips in lounge chairs with headphones. You spiral up to three floors of changing displays; many are interactive, demonstrating the history of photography and film. It’s a lively tour. The glass-walled elevator takes you to the tower for a view over Torino and the Alps in the distance. I didn’t go; it looked claustrophobic and harrowing. Ed and William did, and they reported it was claustrophobic and harrowing.

VIA PO: Stroll along this grand boulevard lined with palazzi and arrive at the Po River. The rarefied French influence of the House of Savoy, which ruled Italy from 1861 to 1946, is everywhere in Torino. A gaily lit string of cafés beckons as evening falls. A moment to time-travel to nineteenth-century Paris.

—

WE ARE STAYING at the home of Pavese! By chance, I came across a listing for a B & B called La Luna e i Falò (The Moon and the Bonfires is the title of one of Pavese’s novels). I was shocked to see that the B & B had been his home. With awe, I reserved two of its three rooms. His own copies of his paperbacks lie on the hall table. His small writing room (or was it his dining room?) is now the guests’ sitting room. Our bedroom, furnished with antiques, blue toile fabrics, a table in front of a window, looks out at the graceful balconies that festoon the elegant houses across the street.

I open the window and look at what Pavese looked at. Where he smoked and smoked, and wrote and wrote. Where he sipped Campari and left his slippers by the chair. The current dining room, where we’re served afternoon tea and breakfast at round tables with flowers and silver, must have been his living room. There would have been books and paintings. If he appeared today, what would he think? Yes, the young woman who checked us in says, yes, he lived here in 1950 when he committed suicide. Not at home, she adds quickly. He locked this door for the last time and checked into Hotel Roma near the train station. Overdose of sleeping pills. He was two weeks shy of forty-two.

All that passion and romance and darkness and profundity and work silenced by a handful of pills. There’s an undercurrent of loss running through his poems but a swifter stream of longing and acute love for people. I tried this translation of his poem La Casa:

THE HOUSE

The man alone listens to the calm voice

with eyes half-closed, almost a breath

blowing on the face, a friendly breath

that rises, incredibly, from a time gone.

The man alone listens to the ancient voice

that his fathers, in their time, have heard, clear

and absorbed, a voice that like the green

of the ponds and the hills darkens at evening.

The man alone knows a shadow voice,

caressing, that rises in the calm tones

of a secret spring: he drinks it attentively,

eyes closed, and it doesn’t seem past.

And the voice that one day stopped the father

of his father, and everyone of dead blood.

A woman’s voice that sings secretly

At the threshold of the house, to the falling dark.

I like his poem. He is trying to express something that cannot really be said. Translating feels like pouring water through a sieve. Two lines don’t go happily into English. Perhaps aren’t that happy in Italian, either. That’s okay. Pavese has pulled me into an intensely private moment. A woman sings. The song has been heard by his father and his father’s father before. The threshold—now and then, life and death, love and loss. The song spirals in his DNA. A lullaby, a love song, a dirge.

—

I LIKE HIS house, too. There’s a squeak to a floorboard, a panel of sunlight falling in at an angle, a gray quietness where something might happen. And it did. Beginning with Walt Whitman, Pavese worked vigorously on translations, in addition to his own novels and poetry. Moby-Dick! From this small room, he brought contemporary American fiction to Italy: Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein. Nights of work. Then he would take long walks in the rain.

—

AT LUNCH WE stop at Pepino on Piazza Carignano and sit outside for quick vegetable salads. William notices an old, wheeled ice cream cart parked near the door and people at the next table ordering what we called nuggets when I was growing up. We find out that the Pinguino, penguin, the original chocolate-dipped ice cream on a stick, was invented here in 1939. Pepino has been making gelato since 1884. That list of Torino inventions is getting longer, William remarks. I think for years invented in Torino will be a family saying.

—

ALL OF PIEMONTE is known for the pleasures of the table but Torino particularly so. Those Savoy royals brought from France the tradition of fabulous desserts, not always, or even usually, a given in Italy (except for gelato). The wine region just to the north, the irresistible cheeses, the ever-present taste of hazelnut, the coveted beef of Piemontese Fassone cows, and sopratutto, above all—chocolate. Not only plain chocolate but gianduia, chocolate with roasted hazelnuts, one of those genius mother-of-necessity inventions at a time when chocolate was scarce and roasted hazelnuts were incorporated to stretch the quantity. Gianduia probably was named after a commedia dell’arte character. A foil-wrapped gianduia in the shape of Gianduia’s hat is called giannuiotto. The plump triangles melt in your mouth and on your fingers.

Several superb chocolate makers reign in Torino. Our good friends in Tuscany, Aurora and Fulvio, grew up here. With the gift of a lavish box that could have held a limited-edition art book, they introduced us to Guido Gobino chocolates. Last year, we visited the jewel-box shop at via Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange, 1. Now, we retrace those steps. Gianduia, check, fruit gelatine (jellies), check. Also the jellies of pear, lemon, myrtle covered with milk chocolate. But this time we go for the ganache, flavored with Barolo, candied lemon, orange and almond, lemon and cloves, vermouth. William selects our box for the road. After being offered several delectable tastes, we can’t even try a chocolate granita or a cold summer bicerin.

I so want to write about food! Where to begin? I could write an entire book about Torino. We were wild about every restaurant we tried on our trip last year, beginning with the classic Tre Galline and the inventive bio-aware Consorzio. Before the Savoys entered with their fancy ways, Torinese were feasting on goose, rabbit, venison, boar, snails, goat, and—oh, yes—donkey. Never scorned: il quanto quarto, the fifth part, meaning offal. Modern chefs are still inventing around these ingredients, which endure in temples of gastronomy dusted with Michelin stars.

We each had our favorite restaurants. Mine was:

Del Cambio. The long mirrors sending back the sparkle of chandeliers; the tables, drawn up to claret velvet banquettes and laden with polished cutlery and hothouse flowers; the atmosphere of friendly hauteur. I wished I’d worn a black dress and very high heels, but the printed silk shirt and linen pants had to do. I imagined all the occasions that Torinesi families have celebrated here.

Since 1757, Del Cambio has served the locally beloved finanziera, a stew our friend Fulvio always raves about anytime he returns to Torino for a visit. The hallowed dish earned its name from what was on the backs of bankers who dined at this very restaurant; they wore coats called finanziere, financiers. The recipe is sometimes called finanziera Cavour, for the prime minister–statesman who frequented the restaurant. The ingredients include brains and veins, veal, bone marrow, calf and/or rooster testicles, cockscomb, wattle, mushrooms, Marsala or Barolo, parsley, garlic, and bay leaves. Finanziera’s popularity in Torino reveals something essential about the local palate: Anything that moves or grows is fair game. Were we brave enough to try this signature dish?

I’m afraid, in summer, we tended toward lighter fare. Pretty shapes of melon on ice; gossamer fried slices of vegetables; plin (pinched ravioli) with lardo; lemon, and mackerel; vitello tonnato (a Piemontese favorite, veal with a creamy tuna sauce); sea bass in sea lettuce. William is served a small amount of wine. He wore a fitted gray sport coat and white shirt. He was wide-eyed with pleasure. I had a glimpse of the man he will be, someday sitting with someone he loves.

Service is cordial. If you get up from the table, the waiter doesn’t just refold your napkin. He brings a fresh one. This lighting makes everyone look glamorous. I’m intrigued by a bejeweled older woman next to us (an aged-out high-class prostitute?), sitting beside her ancient, coiffed, and silent mother. There’s a story there, as there’s a story everywhere.

Dessert arrived. A gianduia expanse topped with blackberries and, on top of William’s, a chocolate model of the Mole Antonelliana, the tower he ascended. The tower is toppled and we all had a bite.

—

ED’S FAVORITE: CIRCOLO DEI LETTORI, formerly a private literary club that now hosts publishing events and book clubs in its reading room, but also serves lunch and dinner in hushed, clubby rooms lined with paintings of artists. What a special lunch, watched by the faces of Torino’s artists.

William’s favorite, and a topic of conversation all year: Combal.Zero, a long taxi ride outside town to Rivoli, one of the royal palaces, and now Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. By the time we arrived, the museum was long closed. We had to ring at a gate, where a hip-looking guy escorted us to the long, glass-walled restaurant of Chef Davide Scabin. Only two other tables were occupied. (This really is too far from town for a spontaneous visit.) William was immediately stunned when they presented a water menu, listing an array from all over Europe with their mineral contents. He and Ed proceeded with the extravagant tasting menu, far too experimental for my tame palate. Ed selected the wine pairings and William was offered pairings as well, various fruit, water, and tea preparations. The courses began to roll out. This, clearly, is play. The chef is having fun. We had fun, too. The waiters hovered, enjoying William’s awe and delight. It’s a party.

—

TORINO: FORTY MUSEUMS. Sixty markets. Churches, more cafés, contemporary galleries—we must come back. Again, and again. We cannot, we agree, leave without visiting the Musei Reali complex, the residences and collections of the Savoy rulers, and the gardens designed by André Le Nôtre. The scale of the city complex is daunting. We tour the royals’ personal quarters, which are so gilded and frescoed and sumptuous that we emerge feeling that we must be gold-leafed ourselves. I like the neoclassical ballroom best—the gold rosettes on the coffered ceiling with allegorical dancers representing Time frolicking around Apollo and the Muses. The Armeria, a grand room of armorial dress, is surprisingly interesting because the heavy plates often are decorated or personalized. Fashion was as important as protection.

The painting and sculpture of the Galleria Sabauda occupies a light-filled wing with rooms off a long statue-lined hall. There are works to love—Fra Angelico’s Madonna and Child, Veronese’s Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee, a fascinating painting of a sixteenth-century outdoor market by Jacopo Bassano, an evocative Annunciation by an unknown painter—but overall, the collection weighs numbingly, toward dark religious scenes.

What we three love is the Biblioteca Reale, an expansive library and archive with arched ceilings and parquet floors worn to a honeyed patina by the steps of decades of readers. The shelves hold leather and vellum texts with antique ladders strategically placed for reaching high volumes. A metal balustrade runs around the catwalk for the second level; on the first are inviting tables. The self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci lives here but isn’t on view right now. We only glimpse the garden, as rain has begun to come down at a hard slant. We’re thankful for the shield provided by all the arcaded streets.

—

BY LUCK, FULVIO and Aurora are in town visiting Gaetano, Fulvio’s father. We confer about where to meet and they suggest Camilla’s Kitchen off via Po. Although the world is in jeans and T-shirts, Torino diners still dress. Aurora always looks as if she stepped off a runway. It’s fun to see friends in new contexts; memories are made this way. In the intimate restaurant, we’re seated at a round table with velvet chairs and an attentive waitstaff, who appear immediately with prosecco.

I’m proud when the waiter assumes William will be ordering in English, then breaks into a smile when he flawlessly chooses capesante arrosto in Italian. The roasted scallops are served with topinambur, Jerusalem artichokes, and a cream of anchovies with smoked salt. (I have to remember to tell William later about the word topinambur.) Ed seconds that motion and the rest of us order the risotto Acquerello with shrimp and saffron. How did arborio rice ever get to be the recommended one for risotto? Carnaroli is much less viscous and, as I see with the first taste, Acquerello sends that prized variety up a few notches. Acquerello, from Vercelli in Piemonte, is carnaroli aged for eighteen months or longer. This hardens the kernels, rendering proteins and starch less water soluble. Hence, less sticky. I remind myself to take some cans home for winter risottos.

I’m curious to see if Fulvio will order the finanziera, soul food to him, but—like groups of Italians often do—we all order the same secondo: brasato di Piemontese alla sabauda con patate ratte. Delicious. Beef in the style of the Savoys: braised with Barolo (formerly Marsala was used), garlic, black truffles, and butter. Patate ratte, similar to fingerlings, are slender yellow potatoes, originally from France, with the thin skin left unpeeled. Aurora selects the wine: Pelissero 2014, a nebbiolo from just north in Langhe. The ruby-red brings together all the flavors of the brasato. We order a second bottle, which smells of rose petals. An evening of warmth and rich tastes with old friends in an old city.

—

BACK AT PAVESE’S house, I can’t stop thinking of him. I’m reading Family Lexicon, a memoir by the novelist Natalia Ginzburg, his intimate friend in Torino during the difficult fascist years. They both were sent into exile to the south for their antifascist activities. They worked for Einaudi, the great publisher in Torino. Ginzburg’s memoir, impossible to put down, is structured around family sayings. We all have them. Her family’s are absurd and funny and crop up in different contexts, all of which illuminate vibrant, tangled relationships. Though she writes obliquely about herself, she approaches Pavese dead-on, capturing his wicked smile, and the loss she felt when her friend took his life one summer in Torino when none of us were there. Her own sorrows are so strangely withheld (her husband was tortured and killed by Nazis) that the ellipses are even more poignant than if she had written them out. She does as Emily Dickinson advises: tell the truth but tell it slant.

—

EARLY, I WALK around the neighborhood, which probably has changed little from when Pavese lived here. Tranquillo. A nearby park. Torino! City of writers, fighters of tyranny, vintage tram cars, elegant pastry shops, city of a million trees.

—

BEFORE DRIVING NORTH to explore Piemonte, we stop at Porta Palazzo, Europe’s largest open-air market. It fills a covered iron-and-glass arena and spills into surrounding lots and streets. Tented like a souk, rowdy and colorful! Every vegetable, herb, flower possible. What asparagus! I wish I could buy the trombette, the long zucchini of Albenga, the cicoriette, baby chicory, and a sack of multicolored peppers. Costine? A mix of ribbed vegetables. Catalogna? A chicory originating in Catalan. Sliced watermelons shine under a red awning, casting color on everyone’s faces as they pass by. We do buy luscious cherries. Ed is stopped by the egg seller’s red-checked table, covered with tiny blue eggs, quail eggs, eggs da bere, for drinking. Duck eggs. Eggs in colors I’d like to paint on walls—teal, malt, sand, and cream. Buonissime, the sign says. Really good!

William takes many photos of faces and fruit. Ed is looking for an espresso for the road. Time to leave. The car is baking. "Topinambur, I explain, got its name from a Brazilian tribe visiting the Vatican at the same moment this New World tuber, Jerusalem artichoke, was on display. Through some mix-up, the sunchoke plant got the tribe’s name."

Franny, are you making this up? And could you crank up the air?

"No! And the Jerusalem part came from Italian immigrants in America, who called it girasole, sunflower, and girasole sounded to Americans like Jerusalem."

We take several wrong turns exiting the city.

We don’t want to go. Oops! We forgot to see the Shroud of Turin.

NOTES:

A food historian writes about finanziera. http://www.francinesegan.com/​art_finanziera.php

Links to some of Cesare Pavese’s poems, translated by Geoffrey Brock and published by Copper Canyon. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/​poems/​49939/​passion-for-solitude

Family Lexicon, Natalia Ginzburg, brilliantly translated by Jenny McPhee and published by the New York Review of Books.

Riso Cavour

RICE CAVOUR, SERVES 4

I’m fascinated by Chef Matteo Baronetto’s elegant and highly unusual recipe featuring two kinds of rice. Venere, a black rice raised in the Po Valley, is whole-grain, fragrant, and healthy. In this recipe, since the venere dries for a long time in the oven, it’s best to complete that step the day before. Carnaroli, a long-grain, high-starch rice, is my favorite for risotto. The tomatoes, also, can be prepared ahead. I suggest roasting a whole pan of tomatoes; extras will be easy to use in other dishes. This recipe assumes that you have some beef ragù on hand—always a good plan.

FOR THE TOMATO CONFIT

16 cherry tomatoes

Salt and pepper, QB

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Thyme sprigs

1 clove garlic, minced

Prepare the tomato confit. Cut a small cross on the lower part of each tomato, blanch them in boiling water for about 20 seconds, cool in ice water, and then peel them. Season with salt and pepper, 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, sprigs of thyme, and the garlic; arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast in the oven at 175˚F for about 4 hours. Moisten with the rest of the olive oil and refrigerate.

FOR THE FIRST RICE

¾ cup venere rice

3 tablespoons sunflower oil

Boil the venere rice in plenty of salted water (as you would cook