Remember Rome?
We work. We live in this fantastic city ... but it costs so much to live in this fantastic city, so we have to work. We work late; we work weekends. We forget to enjoy our fantastic city, because we're too busy working. We work so hard to live in our city that we need to get away, if only for a little while. Because we live in the city, we have to work hard enough to save enough to leave the city. Just for a little while; we work to get away from work.
Remember Rome? Remember when we got away from our city, for a little while, and enjoyed someone else's? Remember walking the streets at night, past ancient ruins and their more modern similacra, looking for a place to get a glass of wine or a late dinner? Remember the abbachio arrosto at La Campana, the oldest restaurant in the Eternal City, just north of the Piazza Navona? Remeber thinking it was the most perfect piece of meat we'd ever tasted?
Remember how I dragged you, starving, through so many narrow streets, past so many crowded pizzerias, in search of three words in the window that would tell me it was safe to enter? Remember how I raced to snap a photo of our wood-oven pizza before you tore into it with your knife and fork? Remember the difference between that pizza and every other pizza you've ever eaten?
Remember Rome? Remember Florence? Remember the Osteria in Santa Croce with three different names, just up the block from Vivoli (remember the gelato?), where we worked our way up to an enormous bistecca alla fiorentina with a plate of tuscan crostini -- smooth, tender white beans; creamy liver paste; rich, salty lardo? Remember the first time you dipped cantuccini into a glass of vin santo?
Someday we'll go back. Someday we'll summon up those memories and strike out to make new ones. Until then, darling, we work.
I asked the hostess -- who had seen me taking photos and notes and decided I deserved some extra attention -- for a recommendation; she said her favorite dessert was this dried fruit and nut tart. Figs, dates, and prunes float alongside walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, and pine nuts on a pillow of the gentlest whipped cream I've ever tasted - satiny, scented with vanilla, without any buttery clumps or air pockets. Honey drizzles the plate, smoothing out the unrefined sugars of this earthy closer.
The "Priest's Hat" (also referred to as the "Pope's Hat") is a triangular pork sausage, wrapped in sheets of pork fat to hold its shape, and poached in broth for four hours. When it's done, the fat wrapper is removed and shredded, and served alongside the sliced sausage. Picchi pairs this porcine powerhouse with a little tart of 
Lisa ordered a dish that had a very intricate description, but which was essentially eggplant parmigiana. Lisa loves eggplant parmigiana. She sometimes gets it on a sandwich, for lunch. Now she can never do that again.
Once the amuses are done some slightly larger plates appear: not quite appetizers, but too large to swallow in a single bite. These cold dishes can be nursed until your first course arrives, and provide ample entertainment in the interim. The cold tripe salad, dressed in olive oil and lemon juice with pepper flakes and herbs, was a fortuitous way to introduce Lisa to the world of offal. The tripe has been cooked long enough to remove any offensive organ flavor, and served cold it lacks the squishy texture that reminds you you're eating guts.
Soon after we finished our starters, the first course arrived. Lisa ordered a ricotta flan, which came with a meat ragout similar to a bolognese sauce. The flan was remarkable; I think if it had been cooked even one second less it would collapse. Fortunately the cooking was stopped at precisely the right time, and the custard melted like butter on the tongue. A sprinkling of parmesan and a drizzle of melted butter rounded out the dish, but were used with such moderation that it came across as anything but greasy. It was a simple juxtaposition of intense, rich flavors.
I went with an old standby, white polenta with butter and parmesan. The polenta was creamy, faintly grainy, and punctuated here and there with tiny capers and flecks of herbs. But against the bold flavors elsewhere on the menu, this dish didn't really stand up. It's gentle, and comforting in an innocuous kind of way. But I came to Cibrèo to be shaken up, and the mildness of white corn, even augmented with splashes of dairy fireworks, just didn't do the job. It was time to bring on the big guns.
Cibrèo
Once you have placed your order, a parade of amuses begins to arrive. There is a variation on the classic Tuscan crostini with liver paste, on a precious little square of untoasted white bread. An equally precious square of herbed cheese gratin accompanies it, as does a plate of hand-sliced prosciutto. One last crostini arrived a moment later; a toast square topped with melted cheese studded with bits of candied fruits. This is one of Picchi's favorite tricks, to deliver the magical trinity of fat, salt, and sugar in a single bite. When these three elements - each of which we have an instinctive craving for - are combined in perfect balance, you will always be left wanting more. This technique not lost on the best chefs: David Waltuck uses it in his prosciutto, fig, and foie gras pinwheel amuses at 
The market here is smaller than the one in Florence, and not as dependent on local items. But you can still find treasures like these ridiculously long-stemmed artichokes here. It's a lighthearted market with a great sense of humor. On one end a rotund chain-smoker who looks twenty years older than he probably is demonstrates cheap vegetable garnishing tools for German tourists; on another end a playful fishmonger has built an homage to Darwinism out of his wares.
Walking past one of the larger fruit stalls, something in the corner of my vision caught my attention. I did a double-take, then a triple-take, then walked back to the box that had drawn my eye. "This can't be right," I thought. "What is this doing in Rome?" But there I was, holding it in my hand. "Che cosa è?" I asked the vendor, recalling my first lesson of Berlitz's Italian. "Mangosteen," he replied, "da Colombia."
It was true, then. I held in my hand the queen of all fruits, the legendary mangosteen. Mangosteens are native to southeast Asia, and the South American transplants are supposedly of inferior quality. But it is said that Queen Victoria offered a knighthood to anyone who could bring her just one of these fruits, so even a poor example is bound to have something to recommend it. What's more, mangosteens are illegal in the United States (owing to fears of exotic parasites), so this may have been my only chance, ever, to try one. I believe the fruitseller charged me four Euros; I would have given him forty.
Of course, there's more in the butcher stalls of the Mercato Centrale than just severed heads. In fact, most of the flying creatures in the market still have their heads attached. This means the ducks still have their tongues, and the cocks their combs, either one of which could form the foundation for a classic recipe few Americans will ever hear of, let alone taste.
There are also mounds of un-decapitated fish and scampi here. Scampi, not to be confused with a pile of rubbery, garlicky shrimp in a pool of bubbling margarine at the Olive Garden, is the plural of scampo, the Italian word for a certain type of mediterranean shellfish that is something between a shrimp and a langoustine. I can't really find an anaolgy for a head on the baby squid and octopus you'll find here, but I'm sure if there were one, the fishmongers would make a point of leaving it on.
Lest you think the Mercato Centrale is all about gross-out animal parts, it also has magnificent produce stands, salumerie, cheese cases, winesellers, and dried fruit and nut sellers. Some of these items are local, some regional, some come from elsewhere in Italy. Among the most impressive displays: these bouquets of purple artichokes, the crowning jewel of the produce stand.
In the Florentine neighborhood of San Lorenzo, the streets are cluttered with rickety booths where industrious locals peddle everything from kitschy souvenirs to hand-painted porcelain, counterfeit jeans to fine leather, silk scarves to silkscreened t-shirts. Rising above the fray on one side of the bazaar is the Church of San Lorenzo, the parish church of the mighty House of Medici, whose tombs in an 
It is the season of the spring lamb in Italy, when in the run-up to Easter milk-fed lambs of just a few weeks age are slaughtered for their incomparably tender meat. So special are these animals that the Italians have a separate word for them; while lamb is simply agnello, a baby lamb is abbacchio (from abbattere, meaning to butcher). A whole abbacchio is probably only slightly larger in total volume than your Thanksgiving Turkey, and may even have less edible flesh. But they are such a prize, the butchers of Florence display them proudly.
