[Culturechat] Food, etc

[denise]

Re: long dinners being TOO long

No, jane, you aren't the only one.  We just got back from Tuscany, and
while I loved the leisurely meals, my husband said, "Jeez, by the time
dinner's over it's time for bed.  I have no evening left at all!"  So we
found ourselves more often eating pizza and insalata, or just the pasta
course for dinner.  I have to say that I enjoyed our pizza or
crostini/bruschetta/salad dinners just as much as the expensive,
several-course dinners - so by the end of the trip, we were just doing
those.  I miss that wood-fired oven crust on the pizzas!  I'm getting
pretty good at doing my own bruschetta, though (apologies if "bruschetta"
is misspelled).

I sometimes go to long lunches with girlfriends here, at which we would
like to sit and talk for three hours, but it's hard to find a restaurant
that doesn't resent your doing that.  Even if they don't need the table,
and stay open straight through to dinner, I've found they don't like it.  I
hate to say it, but I think so very much of what we do is because money is,
by far, a more important factor to us than to the Italian people I met.
Would we spend 400 years to lay the floor of the Duomo?  Would we have a
coffee bar where the elderly gentlemen of the town were welcome to come and
argue politics every day for the price of an espresso?  I think we'd be
looking at overhead, etc and those approaches would go right out the
window.  But maybe I'm just missing Italy and seeing everything through
that lens!
Denise in San Antonio


At 12:28 PM 11/1/01 -0600, you wrote:
>I think I must be a prime example of what has been called the "American"
>attitude toward food and eating.  I don't enjoy a gourmet meal any more than
>a sandwich, and I could name probably a thousand things I would rather do
>(note I said "rather", not "have to") than spend three hours at a meal.  Of
>course, I *do* spend the time when social or cultural situations seem to
>require it, but I don't like it!  Am I the only oddball in the group?
>
>Jane
>
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