Emily in France 🇫🇷 A Quick Trip to Italy
Musings on Rome
Would you permit me a quick jaunt to Italy?
I'm not actually heading back to the boot just now, not just yet, despite embarking a few days ago on an endeavor to perfect my mastery of the language by way of a workbook borrowed from my local library. I also recently retired a notebook in which, on my last trip to Rome this June, I had jotted down a handful of thoughts while sipping a morning espresso at the bar downstairs from our albergo. There were a lot of thoughts that don't merit sharing (oh, the perils of writing pre-caffeination…) but there were a few I quite liked that I can't help but share.
I’m sitting on a café terrace in Rome drinking my first espresso of the day and remembering how much, when traveling with friends, I used to enjoy these still-same moments of solitude, these pieces of time wrought from the bigger picture, settling, not just into my own head, but into the hustle and bustle of the city as it is without me, without us, new arrivals, visitors. Here, in the early morning, when I’ve done nothing save occupy a café chair, order and drink a boiling hot espresso, I can slip a new city on like a second skin, becoming, within its massiveness, nothing at all.
A man sneezes at a ferocious volume. A red-haired bartender seems disappointed I need neither cornetto nor water to accompany my espresso.
The man at the table next to me speaks on the phone with all of the wild gesticulation one would hope for and expect. Opposite, a man in a purple baseball cap flecked with green and orange, in a pattern straight out of the 90s and complemented by a green and yellow short-sleeved shirt, eats what appears to be a bowlful of whipped cream.
A woman with my curly hair and my mother’s red-varnished toes takes a seat in the covered part of the patio, then rises just as quickly – her florals, her sunglasses, making her look like she walked right out of the 70s. As she leaves, I notice the massive red flowers crawling on the patio trellis, opening their faces to the world. Do they know that they, that we, are sitting on the edge of a nondescript road in one of Europe’s oldest cities, haunted by itself?
I’ve forgotten most of my Italian, which only again makes me cling harder and faster to the words I do remember: per favore, grazie, and perhaps the most useful: posso.
Posso while holding a menu: May I keep this? Posso while pointing: at a pastry, at a menu line item: May I have that? Posso while indicating my destination on Google Maps, the train idling on the tracks: May I take that train to get here?
And then always, an effusive “grazie” to the si, certo, si.
Cheese of the Week
Ubriaco Rosso hails not from Rome but rather from the Veneto: a firm cow’s milk tomme whose fruity flavors are only magnified by a wine bath, lending it its name – ubriaco or “drunken.” The cheese is typically washed in wine when it is young, and this for up to six months, lending the cheese its unique color and flavor.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I'm Eating
Café les Deux Gares may well be my new local, with a delicious steal of a lunchtime prix fixe and a location that couldn't be more convenient for my 10th arrondissement home. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france and on the blog.
Where I’m Going
To La Ciotat (I’m actually writing this missive from the train!), for the next long weekend edition of TERRE/MER! Follow along on Instagram as we embark on our ceramics and cuisine retreat.
What I'm Writing
1. I chatted with Cheese Journeys founder Anna Juhl to discover some of the world’s most beautiful cheese terroir. Here are the five underrated cheese regions she thinks it’s high time you visited. For InsideHook.
2. This all-American burger recipe will light up your next grill night. For InsideHook.
3. From the archives: Falafel foes shout across Paris' rue des Rosiers. For Paste.
What I'm Reading
1. I've had Song of Solomon on my to-read pile for so long, and now that I've read it, I can't believe how long I waited. Toni Morrison's vivid, poetic language brimming with musicality paves the way for a discovery of perfectly imperfect characters in a world tinged with human cruelty and other-worldly magic. Her authority makes even the most unbelievable of elements a pure pleasure to read, and her humanity renders the emotions sublimely visceral.
2. I’ll admit I love me a bright orange egg yolk, but I had no idea until reading this piece in Eater that occasionally, the color of a yolk doesn’t mean what you think it does. In Eater.
3. This gorgeous memoir from Kate Hill about how she fell for France aboard a Dutch inland river boat navigating France’s canals (and grocery shops). In the Camont Journals.
A bientôt !