One Perfect Lunch
A Week of Great Days, Part Seven
You must hear about Parma.
Our day trip started poorly. The clickety-clack regional train out of Bologna was full, so we spent the majority of the trip dodging passengers in the aisle and perching on those tiny fold-down seats beneath the windows.
Directly our arrival at Parma, the sky threatened rain, and we found ourselves running for the cover of the first café we could find as the clouds opened up.
Our luck turned around thereupon.
To begin, any café in Italy is a beacon of hospitality. Amid clean curved glass and chrome, we filled our tiny table with cappuccini and small pastries, still warm. I crossed my legs like a woman and pretended to read one of those pink Italian newspapers.
After a delay lasting less than an hour, we set out onto the freshened streets to find what we had come for: a place for lunch. Arundel had researched two sandwich establishments, and we intended to scope both of them.
This being Europe however, and this being the height of August, both shops were chiuso per ferie — closed for the holidays. Frustrated, we circumambulated the main shopping district twice, looking for a place to eat that intrigued us as much as had the sandwich shops.
Growing tired, and not getting any sharper with our increasing hunger, we decided to sit down on the patio of a ristorante we had twice bypassed. Promptly, a tanned Italian with a white shirt and black apron provided us menu boards and a carafe of the house red.
Arundel ordered pasta Al Fredo, and I of course had the lasagne. Both were emphatically excellent, and competently complimented by the cool service of our notebook-in-back-of-apron server. Guy never smiled, but he was just so damn professional, standing disinterested at the restaurant entrance, and presenting himself at the precise moment we needed anything.
Sated and a slightly more than half cut, we started to make our way back in the general direction of the train station.
“A gelato would be nice right now.”
A strange detour across a dried riverbed brought us the unexpected delight of Parma’s classicist Giardino Ducale.
I have a great weakness for formal gardens, where benches line gravel pathways, the grass is forbidden, and the phenomena of broken sunlight blankets everything.
This particular garden, quietly restraining its grandeur at the denouement of a frivilous day trip, happened to have a gelateria at its centre.
Due stracchiatelli, per favore.
Grande, si.
ev · PDDCCCVII
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