The Food of Love Read Free

half-jokingly, half-seriously promised her friend that from now on she was definitely only
    going to date men who knew their Bearnaise from their Bechamel.
     
    Tommaso had made up his mind he was going to speak to the
    American girl. Who could resist a laugh like that? As Vincent had said, he had an excellent track record with female tourists, who seemed to melt when they saw his big-featured, handsome head
    with its shock of corkscrew ringlets. Not that Roman girls didn’t melt as well, but Roman girls had a tendency to want him to meet their parents afterwards. Foreigners were altogether less complicated.

He
    waited for the right moment. The American girl stayed on
    the phone, occasionally sipping slowly at her macchiato - no
    wonder she’d wanted it hot - until Tommaso realised with a sigh
    that he was going to have to go. He would already be late getting to the restaurant. He slapped a few coins on the counter and
    waved a farewell to Gennaro. His motorino was parked outside,
    next to the girl’s table, and he lingered for a last moment as he crouched down to unlock it, savouring one more glance at the
    slim honey-brown calves stretched over the chair opposite.
    ‘No more Italians, then. Not unless they can cook,’ she was
    saying. ‘From now on, I don’t date anyone who isn’t in the Good
    Food Guide.”
    Tommaso’s ears pricked up.
    She reached into her cup for the final frothy globs of latte,
    scooping them out and licking them off her finger. ‘My God, this coffee is fantastic. Hold on. Yes?’
    Unable to stop himself, Tommaso had tapped her on her
    shoulder.
    ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your call,’ he began in his best English.
    “I just wanted to tell you that your beauty has broken my heart.’
    She smiled appreciatively, if a little warily. Nevertheless, she tried to sound polite as she replied, ”Vatte a fa3 ‘u giro, afessa ‘e mammata’ using the words that her first Italian date had told her to employ whenever she was paid a compliment. Tommaso’s face
    fell. ‘OK, OK,’ he said, backing off and throwing his leg across the scooter.
    Laura watched him go, then turned her attention back to
    Carlotta. ‘Who was that?’ her friend wanted to know.
    ‘Just some guy.’
    ‘Laura,’ her friend said carefully, ‘what do you think you said to him?’
    Which was how Laura discovered that she had actually been
    telling the young men of Rome in perfect idiomatic Italian to piss off back up the orifices of their mothers from which they were
    delivered.
    ‘Oh,’ Laura said. ‘Oh dear. That’s a shame. He was quite cute,
    too. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because from now on
    I’m holding out for someone who can cook.’
     
    ‘Once the general and commonsense principles of menu
    planning become clear, the choices remaining before us are
    an infinite number of agreeable and workable combinations …’
    Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
     
    It was a week before Tommaso saw the girl again. He had gone to
    Gigliemi, the great food shop near the Piazza Venezia, to pick up some supplies for the restaurant. Earlier there had been a phone call to say that a hunter, one of dozens in the Castelli Romani who supplied Gigliemi with specialities, had driven in from the countryside that very morning, with his Fiat full offender young lepre; baby hares, the first of the season. Tommaso had been instructed to be quick, so he walked straight through to the back, shouldered the box which Adriano gave him with only the briefest of pauses
    to discuss Adriano’s family, his uncle’s marriage, his second
    cousin’s business and his brother’s new girlfriend, and was hurrying out again when a movement in the corner of his eye caught his
    attention. It was a girl. She was reaching up to the top shelf for a packet of pasta, exposing a band of taut stomach. Tommaso
    caught a glimpse of a tiny whorl of belly button, as intricate and perfect as the knot of a balloon. A keen