The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Winter Planning Session: Montepulciano
"Blustery" is the only word that describes the weather today. We haven't had any steady rain up here on the hill, but the threat is there and the wind has been howling steadily. One thing about these stone houses ... they don't shake a bit when hit with a heavy wind gust!
Margene's stomach is still making up its mind as to whether it wants to behave nicely or not, so no restaurant adventures for lunch today. With weather like this, staying in makes the most sense anyway. Thanks be for cold pizza! But we will have to venture out sometime today, if only to replenish the larder. Stores here tend to close between noon and four so we had time to kill before we could make a supermarket run. What to do? How about the laundry?
The good news is that we have a washing machine in the apartment. Tiny as it is, we got a week's worth of traveling clothes in there. The bad news is that clothes dryers are a rarity in Europe. In good weather you dry clothes outside in the sun. When that is impractical ... well, that's why God invented drying racks. We also dry things on the radiators and the towel warmer in the bath. It makes the place look like a squatters' camp, but it works!
Late in the afternoon I finally got Margene out of the house, if only for a trip to the supermarket. The local CONAD is rather small but carries most of the basics. For a larger selection we will have to travel farther afield. Perhaps we can do that on one of our day trips ... if we can ever manage to have them!
In reading up on what is commonly called stomach flu (gastroenteritis) we learned it can sometimes take up to two weeks for the body to recover to the point where it can process all food normally. Margene isn't real thrilled about the prospect of living on bananas, toast and yogurt until after she gets home ... although she did comment that her pants are starting to feel loose!
But I still plan to sample the local fare as much as possible. For we dedicated food and beverage professionals, the need for this sort of research never ends, even if this means dining without my beloved. Does this make me disloyal? Perhaps ... but I'm not thrilled by the prospect of living on bananas, toast and yogurt either ... particularly in Italy!
So it was back to Osteria Acquacheta for dinner. Normally you can't get near the place withoug a reservation, but I took a chance that in the off season they might be able to sneak me in if I got there early. They were already nearly filled when I arrived, but Giulio managed to find me a spot at the end of a larger table. (Communal seating, remember?) As it turned out, the party who was to take the rest of the table had not arrived by the time I left.
I've been doing REAL well on carbs, but was craving some greens and protein, so it was ensalata mista (mixed green salad) and osso buco. I had been thinking about their famous [T-Bone] Steak Fiorentina, but I watched Giulio chop them off the whole loin with a cleaver and discovered they averaged 1.6 kilos each. That's about 3.5 pounds of meat! Wisely he prices it by weight [3.10 euros/100g or something north of $65 for the average steak!] You'd certainly want to bring a large party and share.
I brought pici with olive oil and Parmesan home to Margene. It was the most gentle thing we could come up with. She didn't eat much of it, but at least she had some momentary variety in her diet ... and I can have what's left as lunch tomorrow!
© 2012 Restaurant Doctor
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