Month: October 2014

Mandolins, an Ancient Theater, and more Cannoli – Now We’re Talking!

/ Eric Brown / 5 Comments

We found all the people in Sicily. They were rounded up by the authorities and forced to march up and down the main drag of Taormina, a popular tourist town about a half hour from here. There they are, with their fanny packs and square eyeglasses, their very European loafers (without socks – natch!), and funky headwear. They begin at one end of Corso Umberto I and methodically work their way to the other, a scrum of opportunistic shoppers and 5-minute portrait models.

Tourists! Oodles of them! Apparently green pants are in this year.

Tourists! Oodles of them!

There are two guys entertaining the masses in the Piazza IX Aprile. One is strumming on his guitar and yes, the other one is picking away on his mandolin! What’s that song? I know I’ve heard it somewhere…of course! The theme from The Godfather! Get it? We’re in Sicily! I hope Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola are getting a cut.

As it turns out, every day the cruise ships hork up a couple of thousand seasick passengers and loose them on the shopkeepers and musicians of Taormina, who have adapted to the invasion by giving the people what they seem to want – designer jeans and pizzicato mandolin-ery.

On the other hand, there’s a perfectly good reason that the tourists have been flocking to Taormina since Roman senators started hanging out here a couple thousand years ago. It’s a lovely little medieval village with a cliché epic view of the sea. It also has a very old theatre. I thought the (late lamented) Morosco was old, but Taormina’s Greek theatre dates back to the 3rd century BCE.

A theater older than the Morosco.

A theater older than the Morosco.

The highlight of our visit to Taormina, by far, was the crazy good lunch we had. Whereas our dinner in Forza felt like it was conceived by the bastard child of Fred Flintstone and Mamma Leone (the Buca di Beppo of my youth) our meal at Al Duomo in Taormina was sublime. We started with anchovies that had been marinated in orange juice, white vinegar, and a little sugar. This is the essence of some of the best Sicilian dishes we’ve had – a little sweet, a little sour, and a little fish. We had what they called “meatballs” but which were really seared patties of raw meat served on fried lemon leaves. They were delicious, but you had to be in the mood. Luckily, we were. We had cavatelli with sardines, grapes, fennel, and bread crumbs, and perfect cannoli. When we were in southern Italy five years ago, we had grilled anchovies at every restaurant as part of a comparison study. Here, we always have cannoli, the Sicilian dessert of a tube of fried pastry stuffed with a sweet ricotta filling, for those of you who have never seen The Sopranos or Jersey Shore. Al Duomo’s were dusted with pistachio powder on one side and powdered chocolate on the other. They were great, although they are still a strong second to the ridiculously good ones we had on the plaza on our first night in Forza. Oh, and we had a white wine made from Grillo, a local white grape that I’d never heard of. It was everything I love in a white – flinty and fruity, but it slapped you in the face with acid like an old Skin Bracer commercial (good heavens, nobody born out of the U.S. or after 1964 will understand anything from this post). Sorry.

The energy was contagious. On Sunday, our catatonic little village came roaring to life. It was like Brigadoon. Restaurants were packed with actual Sicilians, sitting at long tables with huge families and having a dandy old time. On Saturday night, half the places were shuttered, but by Sunday at noon they were rocking. Apparently, Sunday is the day to eat, and it was nice to see. There’s nothing sadder than an empty restaurant, and we should know, having worked at a few. There’s one place, ‘O Dammuseddu Ristorante, which sits just outside the main part of town. On most nights the proprietor stands in the doorway, forlorn, waiting for someone, anyone, to feed. We’d go in, but I worry that it would be just too weird. On Sunday, I scampered over there to see if he was joining in the good fortune. Alas, the place was a morgue.

In addition to some great food we’ve had out, (including a crazy good deep fried rice ball with eggplant we had the other day) I have to say that I’ve really been enjoying our meals at home. For one thing, if we eat out at every meal we’ll run out of money by November. But the other fun thing is poking through the markets and finding great ingredients and figuring out what to do with them. We also like the routine of cooking. We start each day on the terrace with coffee, which we make in that iconic Italian coffee pot you all know. There may be better ways to make coffee, but here in Sicily, on this terrace, you’d get a knock on the door from the carabinieri if you tried.

For breakfast yesterday, we ambled down to the bakery off the main square and scored a very lovely sweet brioche, which I took home and topped with some prosciutto and a poached egg and I moaned and groaned at the perfect marriage of sweet roll and salty ham and I wanted to eat this for the rest of my life. Is it ridiculous that food can make me this happy?

A simple breakfast for a simple man.

A simple breakfast for a simple man.

Next time – believe it or not, we have MORE WEIRDNESS UNDER THE STAIRS!

Ooh, one more thing. If any of you have been to Mt. Etna, should we go through the north entrance or the south? Thanks!

Stuffed, pickled tourists and other tidbits from life in our little village.

/ Eric Brown / 4 Comments

Life in this little tourist village is a lot like it is everywhere else, as far as I can tell, just slower. On our first night we sat in the main square with a drink, a pizza, and a salad. While I can name a dozen better pizza places in New York between 7th and 8th streets, that was certainly not the point. We were sitting in a Sicilian piazza, drinking beer, watching the sunset, and all was very right with the world.

Our first night in Forza d'Agro.

Our first night in Forza d’Agro.

We watched two little boys who came with the restaurant get jiggy with an electronic dance mat until their mother pried it from one of the wailing little boy’s sorrowful arms. Kids are kids, no? And there are most certainly great charms to living the lifestyle of the Forza d’Agrans. On our two minute commute to the main square through what qualifies as Main Street – a winding alleyway that runs the length of the village – I’ve noticed a very, very old woman who lies in bed looking out at the sea through her door, which has been ajar every time I’ve walked past it. Her skin is color of ash, and my guess is that she won’t be with us for long. All day long someone sits at the foot of her bed – I’m guessing mostly family members, but probably friends as well. I’d bet my last money that she was born in this village. As I said, the door is always ajar and she can look out at the hills and the sea, which I’m sure makes her happy. It would make me happy, that’s for sure. Beats the crap out of an old folks’ home if you ask me.

The grandma who runs one of the two little markets here is unfailingly nice. I think she finds it cute that the man is doing the food shopping. The woman who runs the other market (unlike the guy with the synagogues, I go to both) is even nicer. Today, she packed up an armful of leafy greens and stuck it in my bag. It’s organic, she told me, and she grew it herself in her backyard. I am to boil it in salty water for ten minutes and serve it with lemon and olive oil, and I will.

My second market.

My second market.

Our first proper dinner in town was an entertaining affair. We picked the only restaurant that had any diners in it, more for the ambiance than any effort at crowdsourcing. There’s nothing stranger than being the only diners in a restaurant in a tourist town in low season, so we decided on a place called Osteria Agostiniana, which was a relative hotbed of activity, with four or five tables filled. At this place, you can pick three courses for 35 euros or two courses for 30. Something deep inside us told us to start slow and go for the two courses. Well, two courses my patootey. The first “course” was actually an array of about seven or eight dishes. There were some beautiful oysters and a tuna caponata with an agridolce (or sweet and sour) sauce that was very good. We had marinated shrimp, a salad of arugula with some kind of fish, octopus salad, at least one version of baccala, or dried salted cod, and a bunch of other stuff. It got so bad that the waiter started stacking dishes on top of other dishes like a house of cards. Who eats like this?

The first part of the first course.

The first part of the first course.

We did as well as we could with that course and after the briefest of intervals, part two came barreling in. There was a different kind of baccala, a really goofy “cocktail” of sweet little bay shrimp that had been drowned under about a quart of thousand island dressing. There was calamari, more tuna, fried anchovies, and some very strange croquettes of some kind, among other things. The stars of the course were four gigantic head-on prawns that had been simply grilled.

Then came the entrée, if you can believe it. It was a really nice whole grilled fish served with a lovely peppery olive oil. The astonishing thing is that the couple across from us got the three course menu, which also included a pasta course with enough linguini a la vongole to choke a horse as well as some kind of ravioli and god knows what else. These people are surely dead by now.

For 30 euros, we also got a bottle of wine, dessert (a frozen limoncello slurpee, a basket of cookies and biscotti, some ice creamy tiramisu-ish thingy, and a couple of cannoli, and, inexplicably, peanuts in the shell), and all the after dinner drinks you could guzzle. For that, they just drop a half dozen or so bottles on the table and let you have at it.

Five bottles of hooch, a basket of stuff, a slurpee, cannoli, and other desert. Crazy!

Five bottles of hooch, a basket of stuff, a slurpee, cannoli, and some other dessert. Crazy!

I was quite taken with the amaro, and I now know why the hipsters seem to put it into half the fancy cocktails they whip up in Brooklyn – it’s herbaceous, a little sweet, and goes great with whiskey. When I get home, I’m adding a bottle of this stuff to my collection.

The whole thing was more than insane, and not how we usually eat – it kind of felt like the Sicilian buffet on Circus Circus Cruise Lines, if such a thing existed and let’s hope they don’t get any ideas. I’m surprised more people aren’t medivac’d out of here. The thing is, the place is pretty much always busy. I’d chalk it up to insane gluttonous tourists, but there were a bunch of Italian people in there as well. If you cut through the sheer volume there were enough winners to make you happy. If they’d let us, I’d go back and have the grilled shrimp, the grilled fish, and a plate of linguini with clams. But I can see the headwaiter’s shocked expression now, “You don’t want the Trough of Sicily? Impossible!”

And then we staggered out of the joint into our little ghost town, which was shuttered up tight by the time we escaped our Sicilian Fiesta. Even the old lady in the bed had called it a night.

We managed to stumble home and flop onto the bed, where as luck would have it that cinematic masterpiece Gigli was on. Imagine our delight! Fortunately it was dubbed into Italian, and thus it made much more sense.

And now, for no particular reason, a few more photos:

You haven't lived until you've taken a Sicilian spinning class.

You haven’t lived until you’ve taken a Sicilian spinning class.

The happy couple.

The happy couple.

Our little piazza in Forza.

Our little piazza in Forza.

A dude fishing.

A dude fishing.

Arriving in Sicily and entering the fish out of water stage of our story

/ Eric Brown / 11 Comments

We made it. It took us 22 hours from door to door, which included one Metro ride, an Amtrak trip up to Newark, two planes, and an exciting rental car journey, but we are now in our little apartment in the tiny hamlet of Forza d’Agro in Sicily.

Forza d'Agro, wonderfully cliche in every way.

Forza d’Agro, wonderfully cliche in every way.

The hour ride from the airport to this village reminded me that this journal now officially moves from its breezy, familiar boy-returns-home phase to the more standard fish-out-of-water mode. Case in point – I was unable to get cash from the ATM at the airport in Sicily because there seem to be too many numbers in my passcode. Cashless, we embarked upon our drive to Forza, but once I accepted an on-ramp ticket on the highway, I knew I’d be on the hook to pay once we got off. I took the next exit, reasoning that attempting to beat the Sicilian highway system for one exit’s worth of toll would be better than sticking them with an hour’s worth. My Italian is slightly worse than the average housecat’s but I was able to explain to the toll attendant that I didn’t have any Euros. As it turns out they take credit cards, so I sheepishly handed the nice lady my card to pay my 50 cent fare, having envisioned doing hard time for toll theft. For the next seven months, we’ll be negotiating systems that we don’t understand in languages that we don’t speak. Yay!

Our goal from the start was to find a place that was still reasonably warm and near the ocean. We were hoping for a terrace, a view, some semblance of a town, and good food. We got pretty close.

The view from our terrace. Fifty eight bucks!

The view from our terrace. Fifty eight bucks!

Of all the towns on the planet, we landed on Forza d’Agro, a 15th century village of about nine hundred souls perched on the top of a hill overlooking the Ionian Sea.

This place looks like it was designed by a crack-addled Hollywood set decorator with an unlimited budget and too much time on his hands. Every third building has some of its stucco missing to reveal the brickwork beneath, like the ham-handed décor at the Two Guys from Italy pizzeria in Ypsilanti, Michigan (yes, that joke’s for you, Joanne).

I mean seriously...

I mean seriously…

The streets, if you can call them that, are arranged in elegant little curves like the back lot at Universal. There’s the ruin of a Norman castle and another of a Moorish palazzo. There are little bitty piazzas (piazzi?) wherever you turn, like at the Venetian Casino in Vegas, baby. It’s ridiculous, and perfect.

(I interrupt this fascinating missive to report that Janine, with whom I am not really bickering, has just emerged onto our little terrace with a glorious little plate of prosciutto, olives, cherry tomatoes, and breadsticks, which had been procured at our neighborhood markets. I started cackling with delight, which put Janine off slightly, although she understood my point, I think.)

There are at least three working churches here in Forza, which puts me to mind of an old joke. A Jewish guy washes up on a desert island. Years later he is rescued, and he insists on giving his rescuer a tour. First stop is a synagogue he built. “This is Temple Beth-El,” he says. The second stop is another synagogue. Before he can say what it’s called, the rescuer asks why the guy built two synagogues. “THAT ONE,” he exclaims with contempt, “I don’t go to.”

I’m thinking that since everyone is Catholic on this here rock they went to a lot of effort to build so many churches, but what do I know?

Forza d'Agro has a high church-to-human ratio.

Forza d’Agro has a high church-to-human ratio.

The people are unfailingly nice, though, as is everything else in this sleepy little burg, which is made even more somnambulant by the fact that it’s off season. Every so often a Dutch or German couple wanders through, bedecked in many colors, wearing spiffy modernistic eyewear, and issuing guttural consonants, but otherwise we more or less have the joint to ourselves.

There’s something a little Shining-y about traveling in the off season. On the one hand, the weather is shmabulous, and anyone who has been to Italy in July or August knows that you either learn to love chafing, crowds, and body odor or you suffer. On the other hand, in the off season you have to get used to the sound of your own heartbeat, and you have to not mind being the only people in the restaurant, if it’s open. I’m not sure there’s much of an in-between in many of these places. One day someone throws a switch and it’s like a neutron bomb has gone off, leaving the buildings but vaporizing the people.

Note the incredible lack of people

Generally speaking, we’re fine on all these measures. Janine and I are already having a smashing good time (although Eat, Not Bicker, Love doesn’t quite sing). This town is crazy cute and the people are cliché friendly Italians, or Sicilians, which I suspect they prefer to be called. My guess is that like Scotland and Texas, they’d probably break from the mother ship if it didn’t mean having to coin their own money and conduct foreign policy.

In any event, these Sicilians are a friendly lot. For starters, our hosts are the bomb. We’re staying at an apartment that we found through that famous social media site with which you may be familiar, and this time it’s perfect. For fifty eight bucks a night, it’s neat as a pin, it has everything we need (including wifi that’s at least as good as our apartment in San Francisco), and it has a lovely terrace with an epic view of the sea. Our hosts answer our emails with lightning speed, and yesterday came a’knocking on our door with a chef’s knife and a cutting board after we sent a very gentle request. They are cheerful and generous, and I would put them up in our spare room if they ever come to San Francisco. Hell, we’d give them our room.

I now find myself in a bit of a bind, dear reader, as I knew I would. While in New York, I spent too much time eating and doing, and not enough time writing. I promised thrilling reports about museums and restaurants and other cultural tidbits, but I failed to deliver. Now that I have some time to reflect, I could probably go back and recreate these moments, unless it seems odd. What are your thoughts?