03/24/2024
Well, surprises are part of travelling.
Last night we ask our host in Cassano del Murge where would be a good place to eat. He asks « Carne? » or “meat?” And we say yesh, certo!
So off we go to the place around the corner, and find three doors, two of which enter into butcher shops and the middle into a restaurant c***e Ted to the butcher shops.
As has been happening lately, no one speaks English or French, so Bahman and I pull out whatever rusty Italian we can muster and do our best. The woman indicates a table, Bahman mutters menu, and ne t thing we know plates of meat begin to arrive. Two huge round pizza sized platters,
one with various cured meats, and another with bright pink super thin sliced meat covered with cheese and lemon juice. Delish!
Before we are anywhere near done, a crockpot is delivered with a stew. Soon it’s followed by another stew with a reddish sauce. Next comes a platter with sausages, merguez, and other pork products. We’re looking at each other with some concern, this is easily enough for two more dinners.
Soon yet another platter comes, this time with roasted potatoes and onions. Ah, we think, not just meat at this meal, some veggies are nice. And lastly, a platter with raw carrots
and fennel.
So now we’d like to take this food with us, that was not a problem, throwing it out would have been à pêche to me…. A single.
So dessert we ask, dolci ?
No says the waiter. I say Non che l’ai Gelato? And his eyes get big. Si, si, gelato.
He disappears and soon returns with a box of chocolate covered small vanilla discs. He literally grabbed the box out of the freezer and gave us
the whole thing!!
As we watched families file in to eat ( Italians don’t eat dinner til 8 pm), we saw that every table got the same size servings in the same order. Even the family with two little girls had this crazy amount of food brought to them.
Our total bill for this extravaganza for four adults was 90 euros, with drinks and fancy dessert (haha) included. Pretty amazing.
I’m telling you all this about the meal, but really the thing that motivated me to write was actually the kind of meat we had. Turns out this town is called the capitol of horse meat. So there’s that.
