Duck feet, say, or duck tongues. “Very, very small, with a tiny bone in the back which was almost impossible to get out.” Or jellyfish, which, in the tradition of preparing local ingredients in an Italian way, were cut up into strips, marinated with olive oil, lemon, and basil, and served raw as a salad. “It was disgusting,” Elisa said. It was equally unnerving when Mario returned with nothing, because then, with no distractions, he started rooting around in the trash. The first time I witnessed the moment—a peculiar sight, this large man, bent over and up to his elbows in a black plastic sack of discarded foodstuffs—I was the unwitting object of his investigation. I had been cutting celery into a fine dice and was tossing away the leafy floret heads (after all, how do you cube the leaves?). The florets have the most concentrated flavor, and I knew it couldn’t be right to be throwing them away, but that’s what I was doing: I had a lot of celery to dice.
“What the hell is this?” Mario asked, when he appeared, holding up a handful of my celery leaves, before plunging back into the plastic bag to see what else was there to discover—which was, of course, more celery florets, hundreds of them. He pulled them out, shaking off whatever greasy thing was adhering to their leaves (they’d be served that night with steak). “What have you done?” he asked me in astonishment. “You’re throwing away the best part of the celery! Writer guy—busted! Remember our rule: we make money by buying food, fixing it up, and getting other people to pay for it. We do not make money by buying food and throwing it away.” I witnessed the garbage routine several more times, involving kidneys (“Elisa, we don’t throw away lamb kidneys”), the green stems of fresh garlic (“Frankie, what are you doing? These are perfect in soup”), and the rough dirty tops from wild leeks (“Somebody talk to the vegetable guy—he’s killing me”). Anything vaguely edible was thrown out only if it was confirmed that Mario wasn’t in….
I N THE EVENINGS, I started plating pasta.
“Like this,” Mario said. He took my tongs before I could plate a spaghetti and dropped it slowly from up high. “You want to make a mound of pasta and give it as much air as possible.” And, later, with the tortelloni: “You want only a splash of sauce. It’s about the pasta, not the sauce”—a maxim I would hear over and over again, distinguishing the restaurant’s preparation from an Italian-American one. (In red sauce joints, the dish is less about the pasta and more about the sauce, as well as the ground beef in the sauce, plus the meatballs or the sausages or both the meatballs and the sausages as well as the peppers, the pickled onions, and the chili flakes.) Mario took my spoon—the tortelloni break up if you use tongs—and told me how to hold it. “You’re not a housewife. Don’t use the handle. Seize the spoon, here, at the base of the stem. You’ll have more control. It’s only heat.” (Foolish me, I thought, and had a sudden fantasy, occasioned by my embarrassment, of a futurist cutlery, including a post-modern spoon, all spoon and no handle, except, possibly, a half-inch spur on the side for the wusses who needed one.) Later, Mario explained the components of the tortelloni. The tortelloni was a soft, pillowy pasta, stuffed with goat cheese and served with dried orange zest and a dusting of fennel pollen, which was like an exaggerated version of fennel. Fennel pollen was a discovery of food writer Faith Willinger, an American living in Florence who had some secret source there: on trips to the States, she stashed the fennel pollen in her suitcase, shrink-wrapped in a smuggler’s hundred-gram plastic bag. And the orange peel? Because orange and fennel are a classic combination. They also give some bite to a soft, unacidic dish.
I stepped back to take in the kitchen and how different it was at night. White tablecloths had
“What the hell is this?” Mario asked, when he appeared, holding up a handful of my celery leaves, before plunging back into the plastic bag to see what else was there to discover—which was, of course, more celery florets, hundreds of them. He pulled them out, shaking off whatever greasy thing was adhering to their leaves (they’d be served that night with steak). “What have you done?” he asked me in astonishment. “You’re throwing away the best part of the celery! Writer guy—busted! Remember our rule: we make money by buying food, fixing it up, and getting other people to pay for it. We do not make money by buying food and throwing it away.” I witnessed the garbage routine several more times, involving kidneys (“Elisa, we don’t throw away lamb kidneys”), the green stems of fresh garlic (“Frankie, what are you doing? These are perfect in soup”), and the rough dirty tops from wild leeks (“Somebody talk to the vegetable guy—he’s killing me”). Anything vaguely edible was thrown out only if it was confirmed that Mario wasn’t in….
I N THE EVENINGS, I started plating pasta.
“Like this,” Mario said. He took my tongs before I could plate a spaghetti and dropped it slowly from up high. “You want to make a mound of pasta and give it as much air as possible.” And, later, with the tortelloni: “You want only a splash of sauce. It’s about the pasta, not the sauce”—a maxim I would hear over and over again, distinguishing the restaurant’s preparation from an Italian-American one. (In red sauce joints, the dish is less about the pasta and more about the sauce, as well as the ground beef in the sauce, plus the meatballs or the sausages or both the meatballs and the sausages as well as the peppers, the pickled onions, and the chili flakes.) Mario took my spoon—the tortelloni break up if you use tongs—and told me how to hold it. “You’re not a housewife. Don’t use the handle. Seize the spoon, here, at the base of the stem. You’ll have more control. It’s only heat.” (Foolish me, I thought, and had a sudden fantasy, occasioned by my embarrassment, of a futurist cutlery, including a post-modern spoon, all spoon and no handle, except, possibly, a half-inch spur on the side for the wusses who needed one.) Later, Mario explained the components of the tortelloni. The tortelloni was a soft, pillowy pasta, stuffed with goat cheese and served with dried orange zest and a dusting of fennel pollen, which was like an exaggerated version of fennel. Fennel pollen was a discovery of food writer Faith Willinger, an American living in Florence who had some secret source there: on trips to the States, she stashed the fennel pollen in her suitcase, shrink-wrapped in a smuggler’s hundred-gram plastic bag. And the orange peel? Because orange and fennel are a classic combination. They also give some bite to a soft, unacidic dish.
I stepped back to take in the kitchen and how different it was at night. White tablecloths had
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