When you go to a football game in the southern part of Australia, where we follow Australian Rules Football, a home grown style of footy first played in Melbourne in the 1800’s, the standard stadium food is a meat pie, with sauce, otherwise known as a pie ‘n sauce. Meat pies are essentially English – but when […]
For better or for worse, Australia occupies a sort of novelty position in the eyes of many Italians. Newspapers run spots about killer sharks and koalas on the loose, and us auw-stra-yalini get lots of questions like how long does the flight take? and are there really seven varieties of deadly spider? Beyond this Italians often ask me […]
Sometimes I think about my final year history teacher, and how nice it would be to bump into him in a random piazza somewhere in Italy. Russel Staiff was one of those stand out teachers who take their students far beyond the standard textbook. We started our final year of European history with a screening […]
Roughly three years ago Rachel Roddy, Carla Tomasi and I sat in Carla’s kitchen with mugs of tea, looking out onto Carla’s blooming kitchen garden and chatting about how Market to Table would become our chance to cook together with curious travelers from around the globe. Market to Table has become a glorious celebration of […]
There is often a huddle of people waiting outside the nondescript bakery on a corner of the Jewish ghetto, the one so small there is only room for 3.5 customers at a time, the rest obliged to wait outside gazing into the windows filled with biscotti and crostate and whatever festive specialty there happens to be at […]
I’ve been asked quite often recently about whether a Roman version of a charity shop actually exists. The answer is no, kind of, in a way, yes. Charity shops are my idea of the perfect equation. Old things are handed on, making room in cupboards for new ones. The thrifty, like me, get to rummage […]
The sun climbs as we leave the soft olive hillsides of the Valle D’Itria, where we are staying, for the red plains of the alto-Salento, and the road cuts through carpets of primitivo vines as it reaches out toward the almost irresistible waters of the Ionian sea. We are on a family holiday, but today we are […]
The Greeks that settled in southern Italy during the period between the 8th and the 6th century BC called the fertile land with its happy climate Oenotria; land of the trained vines. They most probably brought with them cuttings to plant, among them Aglianico and Greco or Grechetto, varieties that are still found in central and southern […]
La Tuscia is the ancient land of the Etruscans that stretches between southern Tuscany, northern Lazio and Umbria; a volcanic landscape of rolling hillsides, vines, olives and towns crumbling from their cliff-top perches. The Etruscans were the sophisticated people who proceeded and were subsequently engulfed by the early Roman republics. They cultivated grapes and built […]
In Italy fair trade products; most often coffee, sugars and chocolate, are marked by the words Equo e Solidale. Equo meaning equal and fair, with solidale translating as solidarity; together with, in union. Solidarity is a word that gets used a lot in these trying times, and I think (many) Europeans seem to have an inbuilt […]
Made in Italy is renowned for shoes and bags, fast cars, alta moda and serious furniture design. Hiding behind the big names and famous brands are the artisans; leatherworkers, furniture designers, glassblowers, mosaicists, shoemakers; craftsmen and women of so many kinds, and in between the famous brands and the artigiani are the medium size businesses that are the backbone of […]
A writer I do not know personally, but whose writing I very much like for its directness, recently wrote of a Roman trattoria; why can’t we have more of this unpretentious shit in Sydney? She hit the nail on the proverbial head because Roman food is, on the whole, very simple, and the environment in which […]