The New Gastronomes

Overhead view of Vernazzo, on the trail towards Monterosso

What is Cinque Terre?

Cinque Terre, or “five lands,” is a series of small seaside towns in the Italian Riviera, in the Liguria region. It is widely known for being one of the most beautiful places on earth, and is recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Visitors can hike the trails between the five towns and be rewarded with gorgeous cliffside views of the sea. Unfortunately, the booming popularity of the region has turned Cinque Terre into something more akin to Disneyland, particularly during the high summer season. The influx of American tourists toting Rick Steve’s guidebooks, kitschy souvenir shops, and high prices has warped the towns into a bit of a tourist trap, where more English is spoken than Italian.

Where do we get a terrible night’s sleep?

I highly recommend the apartments at 9 Via Visconti. When we were looking for rooms (about 10 days before), this was literally the last room left in town, and at a rather pricey €45 per person to boot. However, the apartment was centrally located, and we’d wanted easy beach access which is available in Vernazza. Good thing our money was going towards a friendly landlord, who told us he was “very busy” when we asked if he could replace the broken fan, and that we could leave if we didn’t like the apartment because there were “lots of other people waiting for the room.” Cramped beds and stifling heat aside, there is a dance party on the beach until 1:00 am on Saturday nights, so you can toss and turn to the pulsating beat of Lady Gaga. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded this (I’d be out on the beach dancing), but we had decided to go hiking the next morning at 8:00 am…. After the DJ sent everyone home, the neighbors came trooping in. As it turns out, our central hall was also the hallway leading to two other apartments, and those doors were not storage closets after all. There’s nothing like meeting the neighbors as you lie sprawled in bed. And for the finale, a flock of curiously nocturnal seabirds began squawking noisily at each other. This symphony continued for the rest of the night, as I dreamed about the number of ways I could roast seagull.
Continue reading Infrequently Asked Questions on Cinque Terre

The gastronomic "expeditition"

 IT ALL STARTED WITH ONE BOTTLE.

When I arrived in Parma, neither knowing what my new home for the next year would look like, nor who my new two flat mates would be, I was excited just like before a first date. I knew their names and where they were from. Curious as I was, I tried to figure out what they looked like by going on Facebook, but still, the first meeting was something special. At around 8:00 pm the last of us three, Nanae, coming from faraway Mexico, arrived and we immediately agreed that we should inaugurate our apartment and get to know each other better.

There we sat in our empty white kitchen, without any food or drinks. The shops had already closed and all we could do was look through the cupboards, hunting for something drinkable. Success. We found a nice warm bottle of Prosecco in our not-working fridge. Ottimo! Maybe it is an Italian tradition to leave a bottle for the next tenant, or maybe just a nice landlord – we still don’t know, but we thank the kind person anyway. The Prosecco was delicious.

A few days later we still had this empty Prosecco bottle in our kitchen and we still did not know where to put it. Do Italians separate litter? It turns out they do, but it took us some time to find the yellow rubbish bin on our street. However, after some time we finally found the right place for the bottle. After taking the bottle back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, I noticed that our empty Expedit (a bookcase from Ikea, but less famous than Billy) looked so sad, standing alone in our living room. That was the moment when the Expedit Project started, with our first bottle of Prosecco, which I placed right in the middle of the bookcase. If you look at our pretty Expedit now, it might look like we three are alcoholics, but NO we are not, and NO, we are not too lazy to bring the bottles downstairs to the yellow bin. This shelf just reflects the wonderful moments we share in our apartment. There are always friends coming over, bringing nice wine/beer/grappa to celebrate the great time we have here in Parma. 

By the way, on Friday we are having aperitivo in our apartment. You want to come and join us on our gastronomic “expeditition?”

Good, clean, and fair, bien sûr

To all the friends who envy us, I offer some consolation: being a UNISG student in Parma/Colorno can be as hazardous as it is joyful. Premature signs of aging, funny belly, hangovers, anxiety—long is the list of injuries that slaughter us on the battlefield.

But we cannot have that, can we?

On the other hand, we cannot resort to heavy medicine every time we are hit by one of the above. We should instead patch ourselves up with natural remedies and healthy food. I just so happen to have a couple of tricks up my sleeve.

Puffy eyes

After an intense week of work, or several, you wake up one morning and as you brush your teeth, it hits you: since when do I have bags under my eyes? Since you work and go out on the same night, darling. Night after night after night. Grab two cotton pads al più presto and soak them with cornflower water. (You know, the one you don’t have in your bathroom cupboard right now?) Put the pads in the freezer for five minutes. Pop them out and right on top of each eye. Leave for ten minutes and enjoy the break. (And if you don’t have cornflower water, no problem: just freeze two slices of cucumber instead, and indulge in the same way.)

Stomach plague

It happens. Especially around here or on study trips—we don’t speak about it, but word spreads. If your stomach decides to finally protest against your mistreatments, you should take it easy for a while and restrict your diet to the following. (Don’t panic, Gastronome, it’s only for a couple of days.) Cooked white rice and its cooking water (for starch), fennel broth with some salt (i.e. more cooking water but fennel-flavoured this time—a special treat), and bananas. Drink a lot of mineral water, and herbal teas made of rosemary, thyme, and sage. (You might want to have some honey with that.)

Garlic/onion slayers

When you eat out so much, whether at ALMA or restaurants or on study trips, you eat a lot more bulbs than you would think. Parsley, basil, and spinach have a reputation for their capacity to capture certain components responsible for the persistence of garlic/onion flavours. One hundred points for whoever can procure some for us during the next study trip.

Before going out

You should never go for aperitivo on an empty stomach. So: either have dinner at one of those places where they have the little pizza pieces and all (then you’re fine), or have aperitivo for a while before dinner, but definitely eat something before. Try to go for some lipids (shouldn’t be that hard in Parma): if you have time to eat something cooked, fine, if not, have a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil with bread and salt.

Stress/troubled sleep

Anxiety can be part of our life here as the timing for assignments is usually very short. And stress is the slippery slope to troubled sleep, which means enhanced anxiety. Should that felonious felon hit you along the way, go to one of the shops that sell plants (the one on Via XXII Luglio in Parma is perfect) and get four of the following (according to your taste and to what you will find): hawthorne, orange blossom, passion flower (sorry, nothing but sleep in that promisingly named plant), verbena, melissa, valerian, lime blossom. Mix them together and brew as a tea every evening (one spoonful of plant material per cup). Drink one cup before dinner, and one more an hour before going to bed.

Hangover

The main problem in this case is dehydration. So drink a lot of liquid (before and after), but not just anything. No coffee (it’s a diuretic), no orange juice or any acidic drinks (seems you’re going to have to stay awake by yourself). Just mineral water, or even better, salted meat broth (if you happen to have made some last night—otherwise don’t even think about it). Forget your grandmother’s miracle mix of coffee and salt, or tomato juice and Tabasco. There is no miracle remedy: only water, broth, water! And, you might also stop falsely promising to yourself “never again.” You’re just hurting yourself more.

Some weeks ago I had a dinner with my classmates in Colorno. Each time we do this, someone prepares something to eat, and Jules had decided to cook spaghetti with vegetables. I was surprised because the dish was perfect, also the cooking time…. The problem came when we started to eat: looking around, I realized that no one was able to eat spaghetti in the “correct” Italian way.

-       Arina (from Holland) started to cut up all the pasta with a knife, like food for babies!

-       David (from Taiwan) used a fork like chopsticks, also using the suction-pump technique!

-       Jules (from Belgium) used his fork like a caveman!

-       Shauna (from the USA) wanted to use a spoon, and she looked like my grandmother knitting me a wool scarf.

Attending this master program, I know that I should have an open mind, but I just couldn’t bite back my words: “Please stop! Now I will show you the correct way to eat spaghetti!”

All my Italian blood rushed to my brain, which started to throb madly. I think that when you are born in my country you have, from the first moment that you open your mouth, a sense of pasta!

It is the symbol of Italy despite being a reflection of a connection to a different continent: pasta from the Middle-East Middle Ages, the tomato from the Americas, and Spain where they made sauces.

I know that it wasn’t a friendly act, but one of the best opportunities that we have here is to leap into the culture and traditions of our classmates’ countries. (I also have a lot of problems with chopsticks, even though I love sushi!)

Maybe another solution is to start to eat like we did millennia ago: we already have the best cutlery in our bodies: teeth to cut, and hands to bring food to the mouth!

Walking through the Palazzo Ducale di Colorno garden and watching it grow has become a daily ritual for me following the hungry hurricane that can be considered lunchtime at ALMA. I often ponder the many similarities between my wonderful classmates and the garden, taking pride in knowing that together, we are changing and growing alongside it.

After its’ snow-fallen and barren winter, the garden has begun to show signs of life. The arches that border the garden are sprouting with lushness, while the water from the stone fountains bursts with vitality. Both the young and old of Colorno are happy to frolic amongst the foliage again, as the days grow warmer, and increasingly humid. With time passing I find myself delving further into the garden, where I try to discover things that are often not seen from afar. Towards its deepest parts, wild flowers of purple and yellow are scattered throughout the grass, fallen chestnuts lay sleepily, and sour cherries secretly hide close to the pond. I think about how each one of us are our own “Palazzo Ducale di Colorno garden,” in that, we all have things we can discover about one another the closer we look.

After tasting and studying for nearly thirty classes (and counting), traveling to three regional and one international stage, and spending many picnics, strolls, bike rides, and last-minute adventures in between, we have blossomed into a lively, gastronomic bunch. We have shared stories from back home, and have shared unforgettable experiences together that will be stories to tell when it is time to go back home. As fast as the garden seemed to flourish right before my eyes, it feels the same has happened for the time that has passed thus far with my classmates.

I can only continue to look forward to how we all grow together, as individuals and as a group, the stories we continue to create here, and what the rest of this year will bring.

In the days before I ventured to Italy, my friends bid me adieu with requests of “drink some good wine for me!” and “eat some good pasta for me!” I dreamt of a life of pasta picnics in an olive grove here and sips of Chianti in the rolling hills of Tuscany there.

But as my feet amble over the uneven Parma cobblestones everyday, I begin to understand more and more what this whole “Italy thing” is about. Italy is not that of our daydreams, it is not that of the movies. Our Italy is, as my classmates have so eloquently stated, authentic and true—our Italy is built around each other and our shared experiences. Our Italy does not have quotation marks around it.

As our life has unfolded, my daydreams of pasta carbonara fade to make room for the memory of vibrantly red coarsely chopped horse tartare, and my meandering thoughts of drinking Chianti under the  Tuscan sun are overshadowed by the impression of tasting vitovska  from the barrel in the vibrant-green vineyard hills of Friuli.

Each one of these taste experiences has been as thrilling as the next, but nothing I have encountered has surprised and perplexed me as much as Italian beer. Before crossing the pond, the ubiquitous Peroni was the only Italian beer I knew—crisp, basic, Peroni. But since my arrival, the innovative and burgeoning industry of Italian microbrews has caught my attention.

I have come to learn that what some have dubbed the “Italian Microbrew Renaissance” and the “Italian Craft Beer Revolution” is all the buzz in the beverage world. And since several of my classmates and I had the great “right to pleasure” pleasure of attending the Pils Pride Festival at Birrificio Italiano, I am a convert.

We students at UNISG never could have imagined the olfactory, gustatory, visual, somatosensory, and aural adventures that awaited us here. But the sweet and toasty, or chocolatey and smokey, or bitter and hoppy tastes of these microbrews, which do-si-do flirtatiously through my life in rhythm with cheeses and meats and wine, build a life that is way better than the Italy of the movies. Italy, grazie for doing so many things right.

Next time someone I know hops on a place to Italy for vacation, I will bid them arrivederci and say “Cheers! and drink some beer for me!”

cheers!

I didn’t know I had a cheddar problem until I moved to Italy. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, but you do know you’re an addict when you’re begging your visitors to illegally lug two-pound chunks of that extra-sharp awesomeness on their transatlantic journeys. While working at a cheese shop with an extensive international selection of cheeses, I had had the world at my fingertips, or rather, in my mouth. I worried that as a full-time graduate student I wouldn’t be able to maintain the diet of cheese, cheese, cheese, and then more cheese, to which I had become accustomed.

I needn’t have worried. Italian Cheese Therapy (as recommended by Cheddarholics Anonymous) has filled the void, and in the process, expanded my waistline. In order to satiate my desire for that elusive extra-sharp (or French favorites, which are few and far between here), I’ve just been forced to seek out beloved old Italian standbys and discover new cheesy delicacies. Italian Cheese Therapy is tough stuff, but somebody’s got to do it.

ICT isn’t limited to UNISG students, however. ICT is just as tasty and positive-mood-inducing whether you’re watching The Godfather in New York or meeting a real godfather in Sicily. Below are a few guidelines for how to put together your own perfect Italian cheese plate, wherever you may be. 

Composing Your Cheese Plate:

An excellent cheese plate is all about highlighting flavor differences, and there are two main ways in which I like to do so:

A. Choose a particular theme and then present its various iterations.

• Pick one cheese or category of cheese (such as washed rind, blue cheese, fresh cheese, etc.) and present various iterations that highlight how differences in location or production style can create flavor differences. At Antica Corte Pallevicina, we were served a cheese plate that featured three types of Parmigiano-Reggiano: one from the hills, one from the mountains, and one from the plains. Tasting the three cheeses side by side showed how a Parmigiano is not a Parmigiano is not a Parmigiano. Three iterations of the same cheese on one plate truly allowed us to see how difference in location made for very different flavors and textures.

Photo Courtesy of Lauren Sudekum

B. Choose three to five cheeses that differ widely from one another in texture(soft, semi-soft, and hard), milk (cow, goat, sheep, and/or buffalo), and flavor (mild to stinky). 

• As a rule of thumb, an easy way to accomplish cheese-plate diversity is to tell yourself: Something Old, Something New, Something Stinky, Something Blue. And because this is Italian Cheese Therapy, you need to include a fifth category: Something Pecorino. The stuff is inescapable here (and frankly I don’t know why you’d try to avoid it: it’s delicious). I’ve included some of my personal favorites in each category with a brief description below.

Stracciatella, Gorgonzola Piccante, Bra Duro and Raschera with Strawberry Balsamic Jam, Millefiore Honey, and Almonds

Something Old:

• Parmigiano-Reggiano: The classic cheese from Parma. Nutty and slightly sweet in flavor, it is excellent both served in chunks or grated over foods. Get one that has been aged for at least 24 months.
• Bra Duro: A firm, sharp cheese from the Pollenzo area. A nice alternative to Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Something New:

• Stracciatella di Bufala: Strands of mozzarella cheese soaked in cream. Stracciatella is made with water buffalo milk, which gives it a lovely tang that cuts through the creaminess.
• Burrata: A pouch made of mozzarella and filled with cream. Very fresh and buttery tasting.
• La Tur: This is a real crowd-pleaser. It’s always the first one to go at any party. Mild, creamy, and made from cow, goat, and sheep milk.

Something Stinky:

• Taleggio: The Italian version of a brie, which tends to be earthy and full flavored.
• Brescianella Stagionata: This washed-rind cheese is lovingly referred to as the Stinky Diaper Cheese at my cheese shop because of the delightful smell that it takes on when it’s perfectly ripe. A well-aged one gets incredibly oozy and gooey.

Something Blue:

• Gorgonzola Dolce: a creamy and slightly sweet blue with a fairly spreadable texture.
• Mountain Gorgonzola (also known as Piccante): firmer and crumblier, with a stronger blue taste and bite.

 Something Pecorino:

• Pecorino di Pienza: this sheeps milk cheese is made in Toscana and a little bit of tomato sauce is rubbed into the rind of the cheese to help naturally prevent bacterial growth. The taste is a little acidic and sweet.
• Pecorino Dolce: a younger and softer sheeps milk cheese that is sweeter, milkier and less salty than most pecorinos.

Where You Can Buy These Cheeses:

I always recommend finding a good local cheese store and buying your cheese from them, but in case you don’t have any in your area here are a few websites you can order some of these tasty cheeses from:

Murray’s Cheese http://www.murrayscheese.com/,

DiBruno Bros. http://www.dibruno.com/StoreFront.bok

 Tips on Serving Cheese:

• Take cheese out of your refrigerator about 30-45 minutes before you intend to serve it and allow it to come to room temperature. This brings out the flavors of the cheeses better and makes them easier to cut, spread etc.

• If possible, buy cheese that is cut to order. It simply tastes better and will stay fresher longer.
• Don’t pre-slice or crumble your cheese if possible. A whole wedge of cheese presents a more striking display and pre-slicing it tends to dry it out.
• Garnish, garnish, garnish. Although a plate of delicious cheeses is a treat in itself, I frequently can’t resist putting something extra on my cheese plate. It makes the cheese plate look a little fancier and it gives your guests an interactive element. Some particularly great Italian products that are excellent paired with cheese are: mostarda (candied fruit with mustard in it), strawberry-balsamic jam, apricot jam, aged balsamic vinegar, hazelnuts, olives, monovarietal honey (I especially like the Miele Thun brand), chestnut cream, and of course, the ubiquitous cured meats such as salumi, Prosciutto di Parma, and culatello.

Some say that love is rare, that true love is something one experiences only a few times in life. My experience at UNISG over the past four months, however, seems to be proving that theory wrong. I have found myself head over heels in love more times than I can count. I’ve got to say I didn’t expect it at all coming into this program, but now that love has decided to cross my path time and time again I could not be happier.

Just imagine a place where mountain upon green mountain is stacked one right after the other for as far as the eye can see, where cows roam the hillsides guided by one lonely, long-haired shepherd and his dog, where wildflowers of vibrant yellows, soft lilacs, and a veritable rainbow of other hues blanket the hillsides, where pines, birches and beech trees shade nearly every inch of the valley below, where the sound of trickling streams and cooing brooks soothe your every nerve and a delicate breeze caresses the back of your neck, as you hike your way up a winding path that brings you, seemingly fortuitously, to an isolated cheese hut in the-middle-of-nowhere Friuli. Just imagine. It was my heaven on earth, and I found myself falling…immediately…in love.

Now picture this, late on a Monday night, in the heart of a small city in Crete. Summer has just begun, the sky is clear as clear can be, and the stars are out in full force. We have just had an amazing, 12-course meal in a small, family-run taverna, followed by a hypnotizing performance of traditional Cretan music by three Greek gods of men. We end up, under the wise tutelage of one Aspasia, at a place that, it turns out, is half pottery studio, half bar-garden-performance venue. As you enter, every which way you look there are plates of various shapes, sizes, designs, patterns and colors, displayed in delicately arched alcoves. This entry leads into the workshop area, a bit disheveled, a bit unkempt, but with the tell-tale signs of human creativity at work. Continuing blindly down the hallway, in the only direction possible, with not even the smallest inkling of what awaits us, we emerge into a secret garden, a safe haven of sorts. The ground is covered in pebbles that crunch with your every step. The stage, simple and concrete, hosts a traditional Cretan band playing instruments native to the island and led by a vocalist whose voice reaches in and grabs for your heart. The bar itself is small and wooden and lit by lamps that, to my eye, resemble jellyfish. However the bar is a mere side note to the intimately vast garden that spreads out in front of us, swimming with people, tables and chairs, dotted with planters, and exuding a vibe of pure calm and pleasure. The moon is full, the music overflowing with emotion, the scent of the mint in the planters intoxicating. All there was in that moment was the moment itself. Nothing else in the world, in life, mattered or even existed. I had found my peace. I was…once again…in love.

My most recent run-in with love was at the Multicultural Fest that is taking place in a town called Colecchio just outside Parma. It was the embodiment of everything I had been missing here. It was a crowd of people with liberal/hippie/alternative tendencies. It was ethnic food, with a spectrum of spices and flavors, from seven different African countries. It was bongo drums, dancing and capoeira. It was Pisco sours and “poof pants”. It was hours of sitting in and walking barefoot through the grass, under a full moon, and huge linden trees. The inner hippie in me could not have felt freer or more content. Needless to say, I fell…once again…in love.

My encounters with love however are not confined to grandiose, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Rather, I have experienced the aforementioned love while nursing a glass of good Lagrein surrounded by my three closest friends, while jumping into the ocean fully clothed with not a care in the world, while roaming through the “woods” of Colorno trying (in vain, mind you) to find the perfect spot to go “fishing,” while strolling through Parco Ducale on a clear day, and while people-watching on Via D’Azeglio over a nice aperitivo, to name a few. The truth is that this year is one of a kind, and despite the obvious personal challenges that can come along with such an intense experience, each day is full of moments, people, and places that have the ability to touch your heart…or, at least, mine.

Tripe: what to some is gooey, treacly, and viscid strips of boiled cow interiors is comfort food at its best for others. Tasting it for the first time is very often considered a rite of initiation to true omnivorism for real foodies.

Every aficionado always remembers their first time with what I like to call the Pale Beauty; its soft and spongy yet resilient texture paired with an haut-goût of white pepper and animal sensation and, finally, the aftertaste of cow shed lingering on for a few sweet seconds….

“The Fifth Quarter,” as connoisseurs also like to call their object of yearning, is, against popular misconception, not a part of the cow’s intestine, but in fact from the cow’s first four stomachs: the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum. It needs to be thoroughly cleaned before it becomes suitable for human consumption, and then boiled for about 12 hours to be soft enough.

It’s said that the ancient Greeks ate it grilled with rosemary and other spices, whereas the Romans made a special kind of salami from it. The culture of tripe existed and still exists in many countries, but it has always had particular importance in Italian peasant culture.

It was the meat of the poor and, together with polenta, is one of the rustic staple foods. Still today, each region of the Bel Paese is proud to have several recipes featuring trippa.

Troppa Trippa, one of several websites dedicated to the star of offal, lists close to 350 different regional recipes. The most famous renditions include trippa alla romana, trippa alla livornese, trippa alla parmigiana, and trippa alla trevigiana.

The love of trippa takes interesting forms in different places. The Milanese, for instance, are said to have been referred to jokingly as busecconi (those who eat busecca, a famous tripe soup).

Those who wants to eat tripe in Italy, however, have to go to Florence. The panino al lampredotto is the city’s most important street food. This local tripe specialty is made from the cow’s fourth (and only “true”) stomach, the abomasum. It is not cooked in tomato sauce, as the trippa alla fiorentina, but simmered in stock and served on Tuscan bread with salsa verde. It is also said that many Florentine celebrities, including Dante Alighieri and Michelangelo, enjoyed their occasional load of tripe.

So, the next time you find yourself hesitating in front of a plate of tripe, face your fears and have a taste of history! (You might even enjoy it.)

To Mrs. Eleni Papadogiannaki

How can you define what “tourist food” is? And how did this term emerge? Definitely when it comes to mind, memories of really low-quality food immediately come back. So, why are tourist places so famous for their bad-quality food? Is it because tourists are considered a special category of people that doesn’t know anything about food, do we seek to punish them for being noisy and crowding popular places by inventing “special” places of retribution that offer our worst food? Of course there is a small exception: those people who choose gastronomic tourism. They are well-informed about food, having done research, and are therefore demanding. The truth is that the poor tourists are basically people who want to relax from the frenetic pace of big cities. They therefore spend a few days going around, tasting food in several places. So if they are lucky, they find something at least decent to eat. To find something good to eat is often an adventurous experience; you have to climb steep mountains or drive on back roads, finally to find a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. And instead of a greasy fat cook, a grandmother or a housewife will be there, ready to amaze you with her cooking skills.

I still haven’t figured out how people view us, as students of UNISG, visiting places to eat during our study trips. Are we seen as tourists or just a bunch of students training to be “experts?” Usually the latter. My query emerged when we visited a famous restaurant in Crete, particularly acknowledged for its devotion to localness, seasonality, and, above all, tradition, in regard to the preparation of food. Needless to say, what we experienced there was the complete opposite. I am still trying to figure out who was fooling who: the “chef” who had no hesitation in serving us out-of-season, frozen vegetables, and offering us pork cooked in a simple manner, naming it with some variation of the famous cured meat of the island; or us, who clapped our hands at the end of the dinner, suspended between our own impressions and what others had tried to convince us of about what we had just eaten. It is again true that when you are not a native eater it is hard to judge whether or not what you ate is good and/or original. And it is certain that owners of tourist restaurants count on this. However, in our case, the contradiction was more than obvious. You did not need to be an expert to see it.

The previous day’s disturbance of our tasty peace was quickly forgotton after our next dinner. In this small, little-known restaurant, the cook was not a famous chef, but a local housewife. Regardless, she taught us the real taste of local, traditional, and seasonal food, without frill or declaration, without fancy ambience, cheap music or endless, colorful catalogs, without annoyingly persistent waiters who drag you into the restaurant. The irony is that all of the big cooks and chefs of those restaurants visit this small taverna at least once a month, because for them this food is their benchmark, their inspiration, and their yardstick to realize how far they are—or not—from what they consider as tradition. Hopefully there are these little places—islands of quality food in the sea of tourist-corruptive restaurants. But who can protect tourists from having such bad experiences? Maybe we should take into serious consideration the establishment of a body of guards to go around to tourist places, assigned to inspect for true taste and to discipline offenders.