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Posted: July 30
(Rome) It really feels like summer this week, the kind of hot days for which Rome is duly famous. During the day the smothering heat makes me content to stay in my office and work on web pages, but at night I like to wander through the neighborhood to see people and enjoy the relatively cool breeze. A few days ago I went to the area near Castel Sant’Angelo above the river bank. The city has set up a sort of bazaar area with lots of stalls selling trinkets, old books and whatever else shopkeepers want to get rid of. There are also two music stages set up, with different entertainment every night. I found myself seated in front of a six-person orchestra doing 50’s-era traditional Italian songs. Many people seated near me mouthed all the words so they were clearly old favorites. The band’s routine included lots of humor, and a cool breeze off the river added to my pleasure. I could not understand the lyrics of the songs from Naples, which were probably in dialect, but the broad gestures of the singer made them easy enough to understand.
Summer nights are also a good time to eat outside and almost all the restaurants of Rome sprawl out onto the sidewalks this time of year. I recently had two U.S. guests who wanted to go out so I took them to La Vittoria, a neighborhood place just around the corner from Piazza San Pietro. As we walked there I told them the story of my mother and spaghetti carbonara. Five years ago my sister Rosemary brought Mom to Rome as a present for her 80th birthday. They stayed at a hotel very near La Vittoria so we ended up eating there three times in one week. Now, in Rome if you go to a place once, you are a customer; twice, you are a friend; three times, you become family. By our third dinner in one week, the waiters greeted us warmly indeed. When the waiter asked what my mother wanted to eat, I explained that she wanted to try their spaghetti carbonara because she also makes it and she is a very good cook, so she wanted to see what their version tasted like.
The waiter became suddenly very serious and said, “I am sure your mother is a very fine cook, but there is no way her carbonara can compare with our carbonara. I will serve her anyway.”
At the end of the meal he came back and asked her how she liked it. She said that it was very, very good.
“ Exactly,” he replied.
My friends laughed at the story, and quite naturally decided that they had to try the carbonara. The waiter recognized me, even though I don’t go back there all that often. He even gave us a table on the sidewalk even though we did not have reservations. The privileges of being ‘family’, I guess. I told him my friends wanted the carbonara, and asked whether he remembered my mother’s visit a few years earlier.
“ Of course,” he said. And that is another kind of Roman warmth.
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