As those who know me will confirm, I have moments of social brilliance and ease and then there are those other moments, when Mr Bean looks like the twin I was seperated from at birth. And he's just an actor …
So last night I decided I would brave the pizzeria across the alleyway, without Paola's mum there with her Italiano. I started confidently, having woken from a nap imagining I could do anything, even without language …
Well, ordering the Napoli pizza went just fine but the red wine was where I went so wrong. There is a pizza called rosso-something and so began the undoing of Di as a relatively intelligent adult.
The motherly pizza-chef I like came over and we pointed at the menu, as per Simon's book of how to point in any language. Then the lovely old man, another customer, opened the fridge for me … the wine, beer and etc are stored in it and most adult customers are deemed intelligent enough to get their own drink … dear God!
I knew their music had woken me from my nap, their opening music, and I know this pizzaria rocks through the night with its own in-crowd. I knew I had to hurry, feeling as linguistically deficient as I do in these days..
I chose a table where I could look out into the alleyway, a mistake because it also put me in prime position in the dining room … I didn't realise until the place started filling and then … they gave me a plastic knife and fork, which makes sense because of the thin pizza crust but did real Genovese use them?
Pizza etiquette...
I smsed Gert holding in that nervous, oh-my-god-I-don't-have-any-idea laughter. I opted to switch between the plastic utensils and my hands, being the first one served as luck would have it I couldn't check out what anyone else was doing. There was me, the lone foreigner quite possibly breaking 50 of the 99 how-to-eat-pizza-with-dignity rules.
The pizza … oh the Napoli pizza is so good here. Not too many anchovies, just right amount of cheese and tomato. The red wine is fine chilled, the music is good and loud and the surroundings are purely delicious.
It's just me, feeling very much like a child of the South Pacific in this ancient city.
The good news … well, when I bit into that terrifyingly hard piece of pizza topping, I was A. able to remove it from my mouth relatively discretely and B. later identify the crunch on discovering that, just like last time, the end of that plastic fork prong had snapped off.
Oh, and my leftovers fitted into the rubbish bag without incident. If you knew the amount of worry I had invested in whether or not I could smoothly drop my leftovers and their cardboard base into that bag, I do believe you would applaud about now.
And the clown bows …
5 comments:
Ha ha! You are hilarious. Yes, I can imagine G's face too. But sounds like you're eating very well. I couldn't handle the chilled red wine though. xoxox
OMG, you should write novels or travel books. I never would do all that funnny stuff in one trip :D
You're making me hungry again.
The couple who run the place are lovely and always recognise me even though I only get over there a couple of times a year.
I never had the cutlery problem beacuse I just asked them to slice it for me and then ate it with my hands. Sorry, but I don't think my "point it" book has a mime for "can you slice my pizza for me?", but you could try saying "Puo tagliarla per me?"
Well, that was one of my best alone meals yet ... other than those cooked at home. I'm off to buy some ravioli tonight, Tara. As for Gert's face, when I talked to him later on the phone, he was laughing ... poor me.
OMG, you are good for this old lady's ego, Manictastic ... or not. But okay, stuff does happen to me.
I'm sorry, Simon but it is superb here, isn't it. I really like the older woman (perhaps she's my age - gah!) and well they do cut it but the knives and forks are there anyway. I didn't know what level of sophistication use of them indicates ;)
It could have been worse, you could have had your loud American friend with you, giggling quite indiscretely....
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