Tag: Spagheteria

Food Faux Pas 2

1979 – Risotto Milanese – Italy

Sometime later, another continent, another time, but not much later, I was living – and enjoying life – in Italy, despite the fact I was broke, spoke little or no Italian and had trouble finding an apartment after staying too long in hotels I could ill afford. A lot of the food was new to me – I had grown up where the only spaghetti available had been in a Heinz can! It wasn’t until 1975 when I hitch-hiked from the south of the Netherlands down to meet my sister (who was living in Rome at the time) that I first came across such things as pizza and real spaghetti, long strands of durum wheat noodles. 

Anyway, years later, maybe 1979 or 1980, I was working in Milan in Northern Italy when I was having dinner in a simple family trattoria near where I lived at the time – Muggiano – and I saw something on the menu that jogged a memory. 

Years before this, recovering from a broken arm and leg in hospital, my eldest sister would visit and eat her lunch beside my bed before returning to her work dept. in the hospital. Such first tastes – for me, a 13 year old boy – of yoghurt, plain and flavoured – have remained with me to this day and I distinctly remember her enjoying something called Vesta Risotto. Vesta, I already knew was a brand name for these ready made meals like Beef Curry with boil in the bag rice and a separate pouch for the sauce. The Risotto was just another one of their various product line. The thing was I remembered the colour picture on the cardboard cover of the container. There was stuff in the rice – you know, not just rice but there were bits of chopped up things like carrots and other stuff and maybe meat and …

When the Risotto Milanese arrived in a shallow bowl it was – to me – an unappetising pile of grey sludge. Not a hint of chopped up stuff – nothing. I didn’t even bother to taste it but called the waiter over and handed him the dish, No, No, I shook my head. I asked for a Risotto Milanese and this – I gestured dismissively at the bowl in the perplexed waiter’s hand. Take it away.’

Minutes later an immaculate new bowl – in a different ceramic dish – came out, looking exactly the same as the previous one. This time, the anxious / curious waiter stepped back from the table and waited.

I know I objected again, convinced that the colour cover of a take-away fast food dish truly portrayed the original. I am fairly sure, in my ignorance, that I sent it away a second or even a third time before patience wore out on both our sides and since then I restricted my culinary journey in Italy to ‘Spagheteria’ type restaurants where everything – including the ice-cream – was served as recognisable  spaghetti strands.