Bologna the Fat

They call this place "Bologna the Fat." And for good reason.

Every Italian region is justifiably proud of its own cuisine—considers it in fact to be the best in the whole world. But ask any Italian to name just one region, one region in all of Italy, that's known above all for its culinary prowess and he'll admit: it's Emilia-Romagna.

In Modena they make the world's best balsamic vinegar; in Parma the best aged sheep's cheese (parmigiano) and cured ham (prosciutto di Parma). And the regional capital? Ah, you must mean Bologna the Fat.

Bologna is the birthplace of tortellini—little rings of pasta stuffed with savory meats and gooey cheeses. This is the land that invented the ragu sauce atop tagliatelle alla Bolognese. The local cured meat named mortadella remains so wildly popular the world over (particularly in school lunches) that most culture call it simply "bologna"—or, if you prefer, "baloney."

Life in Bologna centers around the kitchen. These people just love to eat—and eat well. To get under the skin of this city, forget making the rounds of the churches, museums, and monuments. Instead take a morning to explore the gastronomic side of Bologna: its street markets, wine bars, fourth generation grocers, traditional pasta makers, and storied chocolatiers. Start early, around 8am, to mingle with the market workers, professional trattoria chefs, and home-kitchen master chefs out doing their morning shopping.

Begin three blocks east of Piazza Maggiore, just off Via Castiglione at Paolo Atti & Figli (Via Caprarie 7, 051-220-425, www.paoloatti.com), purveyors of Bologna's finest baked goods since 1880. Under high frescoed ceilings, crisply aproned saleswomen bustle about arranging fresh pillows of pasta into rows in the glass display cases. The signs at each tray of pasta translate as, "Classic ravioli—we put our art into it!" And, "We make our tortellini one at a time." Flower dusted women, their forearms burly from decades of kneading, come puffing out of the back room shouldering enormous trays stacked with steaming loaves of bread.

Down the block, the corner of Via Drapperie is marked by stacks of salami and pendulums of prosciutto in the old-school "supermarket" of A. F. Tamburini (Via Caprarie 1, 051-234-726, www.tamburini.com). Though it's too early to be thinking about lunch, keep this place in mind for another day, as it makes for a great cheap meal stop. In the back of the shop—past the glass displays of cured meats, aged cheeses, and fresh yellow pastas—there is an always crowded tavola calda section, an Italian cafeteria serving filling portions of prepared pasta dishes and roast meats for €3.50 to €5.50.

Turn left onto Via Drapperie to enter Bologna's main street market. On your left you'll see another Paolo Atti outlet, and across the street is the Drogheria Gilberto (Via Drapperie 5, 051-223-925), its entrance marked by a suit of armor grasping a bottle of the family's wine. Pietro opened the joint in 1905, followed by his son Oreste. Now it's in the hands of the third generation, Gilberto and Elisabetta, and their sons Danilo and Michele, the quartet selling chocolates, candies, liqueurs, marmalades, and preserves (both sweet and savory) from shelves stacked almost to the 15-foot ceilings. There's always a free sample of some lying around; last visit, I scored brownies.

From here, the market beings in earnest. Fruit and vegetable stalls groan under the weight of purple-fringed artichokes, crinkly bunches of arugola, sleek indigo eggplant, pink pomegranates, orange zucchini flowers, pungent mushrooms, tiny susine plums, pointy San Marzano tomatoes, mounds of grapes, trays of chestnuts, garlands of fiery red pepperoncini, and ropes of garlic.

Where Via Drapperie meets Via delle Pescherie Vecchie are a pair of fishmongers always mobbed by bolognesi waiting patiently on the water-slicked cobblestones, numbered tickets clutched in their hands, admiring the Styrofoam trays of squid, scampi, octopi, anchovies, every type of fish, and live—if terribly cold—lobster wiggling their feelers feebly and mazzancolle (a kind of giant Adriatic scrimp) scuttling their little yellow legs en masse whenever someone's knees bump their tray.

Turn right up Via delle Pescherie Vecchie. At no. 7B is a typical butcher ship, but look at the name above the door: Macelleria Equina. Yep. The bolognesi do love their horsemeat (though, unlike their brethren in the Veneto, they don't usually go in for the gammier, stringier donkey).

Just beyond the next fruit stand, turn left into the Mercato Clavature. This covered market is looking a bit down at the heels these days. Signs taped to the walls proclaim that renovations are underway. "Ha!" says Signora Mazzetti, who runs the drogerhia (dry goods stall) and is vice president of the market workers association. "They've been saying that since 1995!"

The stated plan has always been to take out some of the central stalls and install a café—but the building's owners have instead slowly let the place run down as, one by one, tenants move out. Of the 20 shops and stalls available, only seven are currently going concerns—and those seven must cover the same total rent that was once split 20 ways. "We 'insects'," says Signora Mazzetti. "We can't go to the comune [town hall] ourselves to get some action. We must wait for the owners to do something." She clearly deplores the condition of her market, but is desperate that it survive and return to its former glory.

More than half-empty, and dimly lit by an outdated electrical system, Clavature does look a bit dire at the moment. "We want a market with life," says Mazzetti. "But the owners..." she trails off with a defeated-but-defiant shrug of her lower lip. It's out of her hands and mired in the bureaucracy; there's nothing she can do but hang on. Just inside the market entrance, a gypsy woman in colorful rags with a babe in arms pulls faces of exaggerated suffering, begging from passersby.

Backtracking to continue down Via delle Pescherie Vecchie, you'll pass lots more fruit and veg stands, and, at no. 3C, an herbalist—Italians are mad for homeopathy and herbal remedies; but just peek in get an idea of what a commercialized one looks like, as we'll be visiting a real, artiginal herbalist in a bit.

At no. 3A hangs the sign for La Baita Formaggi, another traditional deli with an excellent selection of cheeses—eight types of mozzarella, six kinds of ricotta, and (count 'em) 21 different varieties of pecorino—in addition to the usual mortadella, salami, and both kinds of prosciutto (the world-famous prosciutto di Parma, selling at €26.90 per kilo, and the even pricier, gourmet-beloved prosciutto di San Daniele, from up in the Friuli mountains, going for €31 per kilo.)

When you hit the main square, turn left down Via dell'Archiginnasio, an arcaded shopping street stretching along the left flank of the cathedral. By now, you're probably ravenous. Wanna spoil that appetite? Pop into the grand doorway at Piazza Galvani 1 and head upstairs for a peek at the flayed statues and the marble dissecting slab for human corpses in the Teatro Anatomico (see box "Europe's Oldest University").

At the corner with Via Farini sits the chic Caffé Zanarini, a sleek, modern bar where besuited and bespoke shoppers from the high-end Cavour shopping gallery next door, and students from up the block, mingle over superior espresso, sublime pastries, and platters of free crostini and teensy sandwiches.

Turn right onto Via Farini, which becomes Via Carbonesi. At no. 5, step into the divinely scented shop of Majani, chocolatiers extraordinaire since 1796 (051-656-2209, www.majani.com). About €4.50 will buy you a sampler baggie filled with their greatest hits—one each of the chocolate "tortellini" (in milk, dark, and white, each filled with a chocolate cream), a selection of the famous cremini Fiat napoleons, and a few scroza (thin sheets of dark chocolate, roughly accordioned up into a bar).

Across the street sits the Bolognese outlet for Il Regno Vegetale (Via Carbonesi 10A, 051-263-792, www.regnovegetale.com), a minuscule "reign" for 51-year old Orazio Martini and his rigorously traditional practice of the ancient art of herbalism. "We only use natural plants and herbs in our medicines and cosmetics," he declares proudly. "No chemicals—as in 90% of the 'herbalist' medicines you see today. And we sell exclusively our own products," Martini continues. "Not some multinational pharmaceutical corporation's version of herbal medicines that's made mostly of chemicals."

You could say Maestro Martini has a chip on his shoulder, but he is an artisan living in a world of mass production, so it's hard to fault the guy. He eagerly shows the engraving of a medieval monastic herbalist printed on his shop's fliers. "You see? We make our products the same as they did in the Middle Ages." He frowns. "Well, almost the same. Now we use machines to press it into pills"—he levers his forearms until his cupped hands press together in demonstration—"We use technology to help. But the ingredients, they are all natural...so there are no side effects!"

Orazio says he has always been intrigued by plants. When he was about 20 years old, it hit him. "Like a bolt of lightning!" He says, wide-eyed. "I knew, all of a sudden: 'I have to be an herbalist'—but in the old style. So I studied for a few years, and I learned about it, and now I've been making my cures and cosmetics for 23 years." His diligence and devotion to tradition has paid off. In 1999, the University of Pavia declared his anti-wrinkle cream to be the best on the market. "And," Orazio Maritni finishes with a flourish. "It’s made with exclusively natural ingredients!" His eyes glow with triumph.

Turn right up Via de' Gombruti, then sidestep left on Via Porta Nova to visit the Stregate Tea Shop at no. 7A (051-222-564, www.stregate.it), its air scented with more than 160 varieties of tea piled into numbered crocks on the shelves. I know: you're thinking: Tea isn't Italian! Well, they got coffee—espresso and cappuccino alike—from the Turks, pasta from the Chinese, wine from the Greeks, and tomato sauce from the Native Americans, so what, really, is Italian cuisine if not borrowed? And besides: this shop smells incredible.

Continue north up Via A. Tostoni. At no. 9A, La Braseria Sfoglia, you can peek past the sales counter into the back room to see bologna's famed sfoglini rolling out fresh pasta in great sheets then cutting it into strips using rolling pins set with rows of plastic discs. Some strips are cut narrow, destined to be coiled into bird's nests of tagliatelle, tagliolini, fettucini, and other noodles. Other strips are kept broad then cross-cut into squares, each of which will receive a dollop of filling then be deftly folded into those little winged pasta-pocket rings we call tortellini.

Turn left onto Via Ugo Bassi, then left again onto Via G. Marconi to pop into the church of San Francesco—those impressive and intricate tombs-on-stilts by the roadside just south of the main entrance belong to several 13th century law professors from the university (boy, they treated profs right back in those days). Behind the church's high altar inside sits an incredible, massive marble altarpiece sculpted in 1388-92 and bristling with saints in niches, martyrs standing on balconies, all topped by a comb-tooth row of lithe pinnacles. OK, so it's not culinary, but few tourists bother coming into this church, so you can have it all to yourself.

On the north side of the piazza begins the narrow, arcaded Via Pratello. It doesn't look like much at this time of day—though you should definitely grab some lunch at Trattoria Fantoni while you're here (see Dining), or, if you want something lighter, at any of the numerous take-away pizza shops or kebab shacks. But after dark, this street transforms into one of the hoppingest scenes in Bologna. It comes alive with trattorie, pubs, osterie, and wine bars. To whit: a pleading homemade sign scrawled onto a sheet hangs from one window: "Your right to party ends where my right to sleep begins."

Return back east along Via Ugo Bassi. In the second block, on the left just after a little food shop, is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it entrance to the Mercato delle Erbe. This covered market houses 36 specialty food shops and 72 fruit and vegetable stands—much more of a going concern than the Mercato Clavature, though make sure you get here before they close up shop for the lunch break around 1pm. Exit the market on the back side, onto Via Belvedere. Free of those bland modern structures that have grown up around the Via Ugo Bassi entrance, this 1910 temple of gastronomy can only be appreciated in all its orange and yellow Neoclassical grandeur from the back side.

Just across the street from the market's back steps, at Via Belvedere 7B, is Le Sflogline, another traditional sfoglini shop run by a trio of smiling ladies who spend their days making fresh pasta, pastries, and simple lasagne in tiny take-away foil containers.

Ok. This is Italy. All the fine food in the world is worthless if there isn't a fine wine with which to wash it down. Continue wending your way east and north to Via Marsala and the Enoteca Italiana (Via Marsala 2B, 051-235-989, www.enotecaitaliana.it). If it weren't for the crowds, you'd never suspect that this blandly modern wine shop with its crooked, cheaply varnished bar and racks of bottles in the back has won Il Sommalier magazine's "Oscar dei Vini" as the best wine bar in all of Italy in 2000 and again in 2002.

Once more, pinstriped suits an silk dresses mix freely with the tatty sweaters, leather jackets, and untucked shirttails of students—but everyone here is a genuine wine aficionado, debating the merits of a Tuscan Sangiovese/Merlot/Cab mix as compared to a Bordeaux cru (though the vast majority of the 35 fine wines available by the glass are Italian, not French). Elbow yourself a spot at the chipped bar, place your in the capable hands of the barrista, and ask for a plate of bread, salami, and mortadella to fortify yourself for an evening sampling some of the greatest wines Italy has to offer.

Bologna the Fat, indeed.

Coming to Terms with the German Wine Thing (and the Viewless Rooms Thing)

I decided to skip the most famous town on the Romantic Road, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Last time I was there, dragging the boy scouts through Europe, I ended up in a shouting match with a giant tour bus. Well, the bus mostly just shouted, "BEEP!" It was one of those double-high jobbers where the passengers sit way up, leaning against tinted windows, their feet dangling well above the heads of people trying to walk around the thing on the ground. I wasn't trying to walk around it. I had planted myself firmly in front of it, and was yelling at it.

While it kept repeating "BEEP!" I gave a long and, I thought, very cogent series of arguments regarding the definition of "pedestrians only," what this particular brand of mass tourism has wrought upon the beautiful places in the world, and how driving such a monstrosity right into the postcard-quaint cobbled town square lined with its half-timbered buildings spoils the very postcard view the people on board came to see.

The bus just kept shouting, "BEEP!"

Its driver was adding something of his own, and though I couldn't hear him through the soundproofed glass, his vast vocabulary of hand gestures got the point across. Some of the tourists on board apparently decided I must be part of the "local color" and took pictures of me. A few of my boy scouts thoughtfully dragged me away before I could get arrested, and to this day, every once in a while, one of them will say "Hey, remember that time Reid got in a fight with a German bus?"

So I skipped Rothenburg.

Instead, I pushed on west and north toward the Neckar Valley and my final castle, the Hirschhorn. The swift Neckar River winds through the southern reaches of the Odenwald Forest. It is lined with half-timbered villages and castles like a mini-Rhine, but suffers a mere fraction of the tourists, and along much of the river the trees still march right down to the water's edge. However, the forests blanketing the hills did look a bit odd. Generations of systematic logging have left it to grow back in overlapping, mismatched, rectilinear patches, not always aligned, so the greensward is covered in a network of subtle seams and slight color variations like a much-patched road.

Still, only modest swatches of the Odenwald had been permanently shaved away to make room for villages and small farms along the riverside. As I approached the Neckar and began twisting along its length toward the castle, I even saw grape vines strung up on one hillside. "Oh, no!" I said to myself. "Not again!" Sure enough, my guidebook described this as a "…small, but high-quality, wine-producing area."

And on my last night in Germany, too.

The thirteenth-century Schloss Hirschhorn overlooks a bend in the Neckar where a little waterfall dam provides a pleasant white noise background of rushing water to the chirping of sparrow hawks wheeling below the high walls of the castle and the tolling of bells in the little steepled and red-roofed hamlet by the riverside. I spent the afternoon on the castle's popular terrace, set like the prow of a ship at a panoramic point with sweeping views down the valley, and whiled away the time contentedly arranging my notes and working on my hotel reviews while nursing a few chilled beers.

As the afternoon light turned pale orange, I realized dinnertime had arrived and that the folks sitting around me were clinking forks to plates. I raised the dregs of my last beer, silently toasted the view, and drained the glass. I called for a menu and ordered the set-price feast. It opened with melon and ham, followed by beef strips, then a platter crowded with a tiny steak, a pork chop, and a medallion of, well, a different cut of pork. All of it drenched in sauce. Oh, and potatoes. Mustn't forget the potatoes. Ah, well. It's not like I came here for pizza. Suggested to accompany the menu was (yep) a local dry white wine. Well, when in Germany…

I ordered the full bottle.

Just before 9pm, the hotel manager came out and sat at the table nearest the back of the terrace but still against the cliff wall so she could see the panorama. I nodded to her in greeting and went back to reading my book. The waitress brought out a tall mug beer for her boss, and the manager just sit there, along with the middle-aged American couple and the middle-aged German couple, and me, enjoying the sunset, which was reflecting rather spectacularly off the clouds on the other side of the river.

After a while, she was joined by her husband, the chef, who stripped off his apron and poured himself a glass of red wine. She clinked it with her beer stein, staring him in the eyes with a smile in silent toast. They sat for a while, talking in low voices, drinking their beer and their wine, until the sunset faded from the clouds and the sky darkened to navy, then indigo.

I decided to retire early—I had a flight out of Frankfurt in the morning, and still needed to finish packing. I worked a crick out of my neck, marked my spot in the book, and headed back to my room. Before I set about packing, I took a minute to gaze out the window, because, for the first time this trip, my room had a view.

I saw a grassy lawn spilling steeply below the stone of the high castle walls. Sparrow hawks wheeled on the thermals beneath my window and keened to one another as they hunted in the dusk. The grassy slope was bordered by crumbling castle walls that stretched right down to mingle with the red-roofed village below. Beyond, past the vineyards, the Neckar curved silver into the forests of the night-dark hills.

A Tall Frosty Mug of Real German…Wine?

The Rhine is one of Germany's wine-producing regions. So was the Mosel, two nights ago. So will be Franconia, two days hence. Sometimes it seems every Teutonic nook and cranny has been declared "one of Germany's best wine-producing regions." That is all fine and well as far as it goes, but it means waiters are always trying to foist off a Riesling or Gewürtztraminer on me.

Now, one nice thing about Rieslings in Germany is that, unlike the bulk of that gets imported in the States, many are actually troken (dry), not "sweet as syrup," which is unfortunately what "Riesling" usually means in the USA (the same way a decades of spurious 'oaking' tactics by second-rate California wineries have come to make "Chardonnay" translate as "tastes like hamster bedding").

That said, I did not come all the way to Germany to drink wine—and certainly not at eight bucks a glass. I came for beer, for crying out loud! I came for a country where every town has its own local brewery and its own proud tradition for mixing fermented hops and barley. I came for frosty mugs made of thick glass where ordering a "small" gets you half a liter, and "large" means ein Maß—a liter.

Every time I try to order ein bier in a restaurant, though, it gets me a condescending look—almost a sneer. Beer, it is implied, is for slobbering in a tavern with the working classes, not for accompanying such a fine dinner composed entirely of pork products. Everyone else in the restaurant is drinking wine, and having a beer is obviously trés declassé. I usually end up caving into peer pressure (and the waiter's impending disapproval), and whenever I open my mouth fully intending to order ein bier vom faß (whatever's on tap), I find myself instead asking for a wine recommendation. So I spend most dinners ruefully sipping at a half-filled, $8 glass of mediocre white wine, poking at my slab of pork in a pool of mustard sauce, and thinking wistfully of the lucky slobs in the taverns gulping down their $3 Maßes of beer.

That's why I've taken to grabbing my beer furtively, in places where it won't be frowned upon. I'll have lunch in a tavern—which I know means my choices will be wurstel and saurkraut, or this other kind of wurstel, also with sauerkraut (or perhaps with a virulently yellow, terribly sticky, grapefruit-sized ball of gelatinous starch). But at least I can hold my frosty mug up high and proud and say Prost! to the fellows at my table (when you toast in Germany, you have to hold eye contact all the way through to the sipping of the beer). And one day, as I sat at an Internet cafe in Coburg, I noticed that there was an incongruous bar wedged into the back room, so I ordered up a glass of the wonderfully named Frankenbrau, though it was only 12:30pm, and happily drained it whilst deleting spam from my Webmail inbox.

I can't, however, bring myself to break that old Puritan taboo of drinking alone in my room. That, as I know from after-school specials on alcoholism, is just one step away from sneaking in the kitchen at night and slurping vanilla extract to get a fix, like Tom Hanks did in that guest spot on Family Ties. (Of course, the first thing I did upon seeing that episode was go to my mom's spice cabinet and take a giant swig of the vanilla extract, because it had never occurred to me you could do anything with it other than put 1/4 teaspoon into recipes for baked goods. I don't know if you've ever tried to drink the stuff straight, but it tastes exactly the opposite of how good it smells. That one experience, more than any sit-com moralizing, has convinced me never to become an alcoholic. Yes, despite my parent's best efforts, 70s and 80s TV really did play an unhealthily large role in my upbringing.)

That is how I ended up with this can of miXergy, which I bought on a whim at a gas station, because I figure it doesn't count as "drinking" alone in my room, as it is merely a form of soda. In fact, the label heralds it as "bier + cola + X!" I popped it open as I sat down to write this part, took a sip and, once the involuntary gagging was over, glanced at the side of the can to see what, exactly, they meant by "X." The can was of little help, other than announcing the alcoholic content, so I can report only that it is composed of 3.1% alcohol and 96.9% oh-my-god-that's-nasty.

It’s enough to drive a man to Riesling.

As for me, it drove me down south, to Germany's bastion of beer: Bavaria.

Would You Like Some Pork with That?

Most menus in Germany are suspiciously similar: a half-dozen variations on the schnitzel theme swamped in a creamy mustard sauce, some veal (usually subjected to the same inundation of sauce), a steak or two, venison stew with wild mushrooms, and whatever the local wurstel is.

Each dish is accompanied by any of a number of preparations of potato or a dense dumpling made from a starch-based food so cooked-down it's impossible to tell what it started out as, plus some form of sauerkraut. It's hearty, it's filling, and it's fairly obvious, after a few days on this diet, why there are so many Italian restaurants in Germany. French, Chinese, and Greek ones, too. Yesterday I passed one called "Ristorantisches Zagreb," proudly offering Balkan cuisine. It was packed.

Don't get me wrong: a platter of wurstel, a side of roasted potatoes, a salty bretzlern, and a liter-sized stein of bier to wash it all down is great fun and terribly tasty. But a steady sausage diet can get real old real fast, and there are some varieties of wurstel...well, let's just say the sheath of pig intestines into which the filling is stuffed is by far the least offensive ingredient involved.

Plus, it's all meat-and-starch, all the time. As a general rule, I care very, very little for sauerkraut. But here I find myself attacking the piles of slimy, pickled cabbage with a relish, egged on by a primal need for something resembling a fruit, a vegetable, or, really, just anything containing vitamins.

Schnitzel, too, gets pretty boring pretty quickly, especially when it's invariably protected under an armor of fried bread crumbs and hidden beneath a creamy sea of mustard sauce. I know it's just me, but every once in a while, even when it's well-prepared, in the midst of forking my way through yet another platter of schnitzel, the whole thing suddenly looks and tastes exactly like a Hungry Man TV dinner. That's when I know it's time to order another liter of beer.

Still, I grimly plow on through the many and varied regional preparations of cholesterol and polyunsaturated fats, my perverse sense of travel correctness keeping me from even glancing askance at the menus posted outside the dozens of pizzerie, "trattorien," and restaurants named after famous Italian cities and islands. I have to stick to the local specialties, even if it kills me (here my arteries would like to voice their opposition to this rule).

My vague rule of thumb is that you have to spend at least two weeks in a country before you're allowed to cheat and get a pizza. There are exceptions, of course. London, like NYC, is home to a globe's worth of interesting exotic options. In Prague, French cuisine ranks a close second to Czech in local popularity. The nineteen-course Indonesian feasts in the Netherlands are incredibly tasty and perfectly legit, given the country's colonial history in Southeast Asia.

Even Germany has an exception to the rule: they have now reached the critical mass of immigrant Turks necessary to make Turkish food a legitimate local option. Therefore, for the occasional lunch you are allowed a dönnerkebab, a split piece of flatbread stuffed with carved slices of spicy roast lamb with lettuce, tomatoes, and three kinds of sauce, one of which burns off your taste buds. Otherwise, though, it's wurstel and schnitzel all the way, baby.

Still, there are plenty of opportunities for the weak-willed to cheat, to take the coward's way out of arterial sclerosis. On most German menus, even in the most heuiriger (cozy) lilttle gestätte (tavern), if you look closely enough you'll find an escape clause, a dish such as "currywurst mit pommes frites," or "hen-flesh strips" prepared Orientischer art (Oriental style) with a pepper/cashew sauce, pan-fried veggies, and rice. But frankly, I have yet to meet any chef but an Indian who can apply curry to a dish in an appetizing manner. As for Orientichers art, if God had intended the Germans to stir-fry, he would have had them invent the wok. Instead, He apparently blessed them with a surfeit of pigs.

I've only been in Germany a few days—well shy of the two-week mark—and I already used up my lunchtime get-out-of-schnitzel-free dönnerkebab, so I'm finding other little ways to rebel. For instance, I am writing this bit in the Rhine village of Bachrach at a table in the Weinhaus Altes Haus—a half-timbered structure of red beams and white plaster that was apparently saved right in the midst of falling in on itself, so all the walls are at odd angles and from the outside it looks like a spritely illustration from a book of Grimm's fairy tales. I am awaiting the delivery of my carefully crafted light meal, to consist of a large mixed salad, a cheese sampler platter, and Apfelstrudel with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. I plan thusly to run an endgame around the "main courses" part of the menu—which promised schnitzel in a cheese-potato sauce with French fries, boiled beef in a berry sauce with potatoes, and something unfortunately translated as "Beef broth with stripes of noodle bags."

I am making amends for having ordered a modest bill of fare by padding my meal with not merely a glass of wine (which is the most that the largely abstemious Germans will drink with their meals—and which insanely always costs at minimum €2.50, usually €5 to €9), but rather a full bottle of the 2000 Toni Jost Reisling, grown on the slopes just outside of town.

What? Wine? In Germany? What happened to the massive mugs of beer? Tune in next post…

Enzo and His Hot Love Liqueur

Seven years ago, I immensely enjoyed a dinner at U Bossu, and accordingly gave Enzo's seven-table restaurant on a forgotten Taormina side-street a star rating in the Frommer's guide I was researching at the time.

Enzo was gregarious, friendly, jocular, and overall a genuine impresario for his little trattoria—and the food was fantastic, especially for a moderately cheap joint. At the end of that meal, he had poured me (and everyone else in the place) a shot of a fiery pepperoncino liqueur of his own invention. I love spicy things, and I love sugar, and Enzo's homemade hooch was a perfect marriage of the two tastes. Also, it packed an alcoholic wallop.

Fast forward to last night. As I entered, I saw the little "Recommended by Frommer's" sticker proudly displayed in his window, and gave a little smile, wishing I could tell him who I was and why he had so deserved that stamp of approval. Instead, I just dug into my dinner with relish, delighted that the food was as excellent as always--tagliatelle alla mafiosa (egg noodles made fresh that morning topped with a ragù of pistachios, tomatoes, cream, pancetta bacon, and mushrooms) and cartoccio di spigola allo scoglio (buttery sea bass baked in tin foil along with a handful of mussels)--and that Enzo was still a great character, endlessly entertaining to his few guests.

The pair of English ladies talking in low voices by the wall looked a bit taken aback at and overwhelmed by Enzo's gregariousness, but the Irish couple sitting behind me, who had eaten here every night of their holiday so far, thought he was a hoot. They shared with me their belief that our host looked like an Italian version of George W. Bush. Enzo made a sour face when he overheard that, but I had to agree there was a resemblance, and had trouble from then on shaking the image of Bush, with a tan and a little paper hat, speaking English in an Italian accent so heavy it was almost comical. When two young Dutchmen strode in, Enzo grinned widely and held out both arms "Welcome back!" then made a show of looking anxiously behind them. "But where are your girlfriends tonight?" When the pair explained that the women were off "For a ladies' night, without us boys." Enzo winked and said, "That's OK. We can have fun on our own. Sit here, I bring you good wine." And he hustled back to the kitchen.

At the end of the meal, Enzo asked if I would like an almond-flavored digestivo. Now, when I had arrived at the restaurant, Enzo had asked how I found his phone number (as I had booked ahead). I told him that he had provided me with a memorable dinner in the summer of 1998, and I'd always planned on coming back. So when he asked me about a digestivo, I said I recalled he had served me a fantastic liqueur of pepperoncino before, and could I please have that?

Enzo stared at me for a moment, bemused, then sighed. "Ah! My great failure." He smiled wanly, said, "Just a moment," and went to the little desk to rummage around under stacks of paper. He returned with a coated, unfolded paper brochure for his Liquore di Venere, and explained how he had tried to make a go of it.

In 1993, when he was still working as a chef in someone else's restaurant, Enzo thought a digestivo as fiery hot as Etna looming in the distance might prove popular. He admitted to knowing nothing of liqueur-making, or even really of basic chemistry, and so went through a lot of failed batches of moonshine before finally hitting on a method for distilling an essence of pepperoncino, mixing that into a sugary syrup, then marrying it all to a liquor base.

At first he served the stuff to patrons at his employer's restaurant as a "digestivo artigianale." By 1995, he had opened up U Bossu--dialect for "The Boss," which he finally was (though he jokingly calls himself little more than a "plate-ferrier," carrying dishes from the kitchen to the tables and back)--and decided to try and make a success of his invention. He picked out bottles, had labels designed and printed, and sent a sample of his liqueur (along with reams of paperwork) to the official governmental body in Rome that regulates such things.

Then, since moonshine is illegal everywhere, he had to have an official distillery to produce it. Since starting one from scratch would take far more money, time, resources, and--most significantly--paperwork than he could handle, it was far easier simply to buy a distillery that already existed on paper but wasn't actually in business. (The sheer bureaucratic inertia of the Italian regulatory systems makes such seemingly oddball solutions far easier than just going about things in a straightforward way.)

So, Enzo ran his new restaurant, and he made his Liquore di Venere, named for the kind of burning desire the Goddess of Love could instill in mortal man. He served the digestivo to all his customers, who were generally delighted and would often buy a bottle to take home. Selling the odd bottle to a patron, however, wasn't going to pay the bills--especially since most of the time Enzo would refuse to accept payment, and usually ended up just giving the bottle as a gift, insisting that the customer had already paid him "With excellent conversation." I know, because that's how I ended up taking home a bottle seven years ago. But the testimony of a few satisfied restaurant customers (not even those who would go on to encourage their guidebook readers to sample the stuff) were not going to be enough to turn Enzo and his liqueur into the success he was sure was in the cards. "Cinzano. Martini & Rossi. They all started as just one man with a recipe. Now look at them! Why not me?"

Enzo started sending letters and making phone calls. He contacted every liquor label and company he could think of. No one was interested in distributing a single item from a lone producer in limited quantities. He told them, no problem: he could make more. They all said, essentially, no thanks. They didn't really want to work with an outside producer.

Eventually, about a decade after perfecting his formula, Enzo finally gave up. He started serving a mass-produced almond liqueur from Marsala to his restaurant patrons as the digestivo he always offers "on the house" along with the bill.

"I still have three or four crates of the Venere at home." He said, and for the first time all night he looked sad--not the sad-sack act he puts on when moaning that he's nothing more than a glorified "plate-ferrier," but genuinely defeated. "I give bottles away as gifts, sometimes. I open one or two for special occasions at home. But in the restaurant, it's just the almond liqueur now."

He walked over to fetch a bottle of that and poured me a small glassful. I weakly said something about how unfortunate it was about the Liquore di Venere, because it really was a fine digestivo. "Eh, si." He said, with downcast eyes. "I was going to have great success with that." He looked up at me and smiled bitterly. "It was good! It should have been a success. The liquore would become famous, and I would have been rich."

It was late. The restaurant was empty of other patrons by then, and I was feeling downright awful having inadvertently re-opened what was clearly a painful wound. I tossed back the bitter almond liqueur, and stood up to leave Enzo and his cook to clean up and head home for the night. "Beh,' buona sera and thanks for another excellent meal." I said, sticking out my hand to shake Enzo's. He shook the vague cast of sorrow off his face, and beamed at me. "Tell you what." He said, taking my hand firmly and not letting go after the standard pump-and-a-half. "I'm back here around eleven in the morning, to do the shopping and get ready for lunch. Stop by around 11am tomorrow, and I'll bring a bottle of the Venere for you." Then he let go of my hand.

So, the next morning, I went by U Bossu. Enzo was bustling about in his little paper hat; though the open window to the kitchen I could see the taciturn chef chopping things up. Enzo smiled when he saw me and shuffled into the dining rooms, pausing to take a bottle from the desk covered with stacks of paper. In the clear liquid floated a hot pepper bleached white by time and long exposure to alcohol. Enzo dusted the bottle off with his apron before handing it to me.

"Liquore di Venere," he said with a flourish. "I hope you enjoy it!" I could tell he meant it.

And, just like before, Enzo refused to let me pay.