Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (free biff chip and kipper ebooks txt) 📗

I ordered wine. He shook his head at my poor choice. “You like dry?” he asked. “Sure,” I replied. He brought out a bottle called Asprinio di Aversa, which was dry all right. Perhaps it was the power of suggestion left by the unfortunate name, but the flavorless, flinty beverage seemed to leave a chalky film on my tongue, much like an unswallowed aspirin tablet. I insisted on the gnocchi alla napoletana because it F O R K I T O V E R

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sounded so right for my very first dish in Naples. To the waiter’s credit, he warned against it. The gnocchi were gummy, probably store-bought.

The sauce wasn’t much more than canned tomatoes. We were offered no grated cheese, and when I asked why, the waiter replied, “I didn’t know you wanted it.” Never before had I come upon an Italian waiter mystified by the time-honored concept of cheese on tomato sauce. I insisted on the famous stew, which contained squid, octopus, mussels, and shrimp in an oily, garlicky sauce. I liked it well enough, although the shrimp had been overcooked to mush, which I subsequently found standard in cucina napoletana. My friend’s grilled orata, a harmless local fish of minimal distinction, wasn’t fresh. An arugula salad came soak-ing wet, and the leaves were too tough to chew.

It was a poor excuse for a meal, but worse awaited.

I had been advised by several heretofore trustworthy friends that Dante e Beatrice served traditional food untouched by time, and I looked forward to dining there more than at any other restaurant. After all, I had come to learn about the foundation of the Italian-American food that had sustained me for so long. My initial impression of Dante e Beatrice, like that of Ciro a Santa Brigida, was favorable. It’s a tiny spot of two small rooms, with family photos on the pale-yellow walls and no frills except a guitar player whose discordant refrains turned out to be a perfect accompaniment to the invidious cuisine.

The moment the five of us were seated, a waiter brought out a slice of something he called pizza rustica, a sweet-and-savory ricotta cake laced with bits of ham. It was so appealing I was thrown off guard. When he suggested that we allow him to select our appetizers, I happily agreed.

Out came eleven dishes, as fast as he could fling them on the table. The marinated yellow peppers were fine, and the carrots weren’t too bad, although I can’t say carrots take all that well to a long soak in vinegar.

The other dishes were so outside the parameters of what I would call appetizing, I couldn’t believe they were part of a cuisine that had established an unshakable foothold in the United States.

Most were so overly marinated my tongue shriveled on contact.

The white beans were blessedly acid-free, but they were cold, bland, 1 5 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

and mushy, the only inedible white beans I’ve ever been served in Italy.

The mozzarella was sour, clearly spoiled, but it was highly desirable compared to the marinated unidentifiable vegetable jerky, which in turn soared over the marinated small smelly fish.

I lunged for a menu, anxious to take this meal out of the waiter’s hands. Listed was “tender roast veal.” That sounded like a lifesaver, but my pleas were ignored. The waiter could not be stopped. He presented us with rubbery rigatoni in an insipid tomato sauce. We picked at it, and then I cried out “Finito, finito!” It was perfect Italian, the only time in my life I’ve pulled that off, but it had no effect. The cook came to our table carrying an oversize skillet. “Special! Fried spaghetti!” he said in English. I sagged at the announcement, but gamely replied,

“Okay, but finito after that.” The fried spaghetti was crunchy. There was nothing more to it. Then the waiter rolled out a serving table groaning under the weight of diverse animal products, most of them unidentifiable. We barely muffled our shrieks. The long, bony things were stringy.

The fatty rolled things were tough. The meatballs had been cooked so long they had totally dried out, and yet, in a kind of perverse tour de force, they were absolutely cold.

There was more, as our futile finitos faded into hoarse whispers.

Bitter, bitter greens. Some fruit nobody touched. Finally, a frosty pitcher of ice-cold limoncello, a local liqueur usually offered complimentary after a meal. Here it was reminiscent of lemon-flavored dishwashing liquid, and it was on the bill. In fact, everybody was charged for every course, whether the unwanted food was touched or not. In an effort to pad the check even more, a mandatory tip was added.

It is impossible to recover fully from that kind of gastronomic body blow. What made it worse was that the wretched Dante e Beatrice, surely the most terrible restaurant in Italy, had been touted to me as a place that would exquisitely guide me toward a greater understanding of the cuisine I had come to explore. I was stunned. I finally understood why everybody was always attacking Naples.

And I had yet to visit the pizzeria that would double my bill.

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The pizzas of Naples emerge from ancient wood-burning ovens smoky, charred, and puffy around the edges. Although thin, the crusts are supple and chewy, not cracker-crisp like those on the thin-crust pizzas of America. The cheese is mozzarella, either flor di latte, which is made from cow’s milk, or mozzarella di bufala, made from the milk of the water buffalo. The cow’s-milk mozzarella is as good as the best mozzarella in America, but the mozzarella from the water buffalo is unsurpassed—creamy, tangy, and complex. (On the two occasions I ordered buffalo mozzarella in restaurants—not pizzerias—it was spoiled.) The tomato sauce used on Naples pizzas isn’t much different from the tomato sauce in America, although occasionally chopped