Of the Italian Bar

Fiesole, Italia

The Italian bar. It is a ubiquitous institution in the Boot. Part coffee shop, part watering hole, part restaurant, part gelateria, part convenience store: this is one-stop shopping, Italian style; a kind of conglomeration that is perhaps one of this country’s few efficiencies. This place might be the closest thing to Italian fast food. (I am purposely ignoring those golden arches that assault one exiting his train at Santa Maria Novella.) Yet, the Italian bar is, in reality, a bastion of a kind of ‘slow food.’

Any frenzy here is of a different sort. On entering, taking in the heavy smell of coffee and tobacco, one gets the sense that he should slow down just a bit to enjoy his coffee and his morning. Or perhaps the coffee is so eminently enjoyable that it demands a minute unto itself. There’s no rushing off with latte in hand, no drive through window. If any paper cups exist, they’re gathering dust some place and the management doesn’t know where that place is. Real porcelain cups reign supreme, complete with saucer and spoon.

So, take five and be an Italian. Order your cappuccino at the bar to avoid paying three times as much for table service. Only hipsters in Seattle have “grande” and “venti.” Here, there’s only one size: a perfect proportion of espresso and milk, probably not enough to qualify for a “kiddie size” stateside. If you’re really pressed for time, drink at the bar, otherwise grab an open table, and maybe a pastry, and linger for a while. The whole town is here: grandma, an old man reaching for a smoke, young maidens with the latest gossip, the parish priest, even the garbage men stop in for a caffe. Strike up a conversation with any one of these characters or just take it all in by yourself.

The scene is admittedly noisy, but in an exhilarating sense. Patrons shout coffee orders over already loud conversations taking place at a break neck pace (apart from driving, it seems that talking is the only thing done with any rapidity in this country). There is the constant clatter of cups and saucers and the hiss of the espresso machine. Attendants behind the bar, often clad in funny little hats, engage in a dizzying dance: taking orders, setting out saucers and spoons to be crowned with cappuccini, clearing away empty cups. The cycle repeats throughout the morning. Half of the fun lies in watching this little show. A certain order and civility emerges from this seemingly chaotic scene, a civility marked by the ability to stop for a moment and say hello to the guy making your coffee or catch up with a friend standing next to you. The bar is a neighborhood establishment; no chains or franchises here. The whole ordeal is very personal. In taking his coffee in the morning, one is actually forced to interact with those with whom he shares his daily existence. Heaven forbid!

This is real community, not in some contrived, politically correct platitudinous sense. Rather it is real people engaging each other, appreciating each other’s being in a kind of local context that is mindful of the human need for place. The Italian bar, then, represents a few moments of sanity in the craze of modern life. It remains a fixture of a more conscientious, slower life in a modern world that is all but devoid of such a thing.

On tripe

Fiesole, Italia

Hot, dripping strips of slime. Ah! And the smell! Without a second thought you’d snarf down a link of processed meat product in Midtown, yet, somehow, this elicits hesitation.

This is the Florentine lampredotto sandwich, served from a cart on Via Dei Macci in a neighborhood devoid of tourists on the east end of town. On a beautifully ordinary Thursday morning, Florentines leisurely go about the day’s business on the street where Sergio Pollini has set up shop. As you learn that lampredotto is made with the fourth stomach of the cow, your own becomes a bit unsettled. What’s more, much to your alarm, it is revealed that some of that same bovine’s reproductive organs have curiously made their way into today’s batch.

Sergio is eager to offer you his succulent selection. There is a large pot a-boilin’ from which he extracts the finest innards. These he proceeds to chop mercilessly, a most merciful act as far as your queasy stomach is concerned. Onto a crusty roll goes the minced mess, bestrewn with salt, salsa verde, and hot chili oil. The top of the roll takes a quick bagno in the brodo and suddenly in your hand you’ve got Florence between two pieces of bread.

It wants you to eat it. Uno, due, tre…and…down she goes! Salty, spicy, slippery, the strips of stomach slink their way down your esophagus. Swallow. Perhaps a brief wave of nausea…but the flavor! It beckons another bite. (Admittedly, a swig of some libation, cold and strong, would have been ideal to wash it all down. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, no?) The entirety of the stomach now in your own, you glance up to see a sly look of satisfaction and pride sneak up Sergio’s face.

Herein is your first taste, your first glimpse of the City of Lilies, a city that’s practical, rough around the edges, an acquired taste that you’ve acquired with a few bites. Will every experience in and of this new place be so terrible and so splendid? Perhaps, but you can’t say with certainty. What you do know is that you have found place: real people, real tradition, real food, real life on a real street corner. It is oddity. It is a thing divine. Perhaps a Deo gratias! wells up inside. This is the common man’s Florence, in a sense, the only real Florence.