A day in Napoli, in the shadow of Vesuvius

Vesuvio

Arriving in Naples from an overcast London was an intravenous shot of Italian espresso for the spirits. The sun was high, the sky cobalt and to the left, as we sped by car to the centre of the old city, loomed Vesuvius.

Vast docks with container skyscrapers led to narrow streets before we were dropped outside the boutique hotel that would be our home for a single night.

Bags were gratefully deposited – we’d overpacked, since every weather forecast available had suggested we’d need clothes for at least two climates.

Then it was out and a search for lunch. Just around the corner we found Tandem, recommended by the receptionist at the hotel.

Slow-cooked octopus

Setting aside the young woman trying to give passers-by leaflets to lure them to a table – this is 21^st-century Italy’s version of sirens – the menu appeared authentic and there were clearly locals enjoying a leisurely Saturday repast.

Service was equally leisurely, but when you’re sitting in the sunshine with no concrete timetable, it’s difficult to be churlish. When a waiter came over, it was with a container of different pastas to help us understand the menu.

I opted for a tubular pasta with a Genovese ragu of octopus, onion and carrot. Slow-cooked for eight hours, it was excellent.

The people watching wasn’t bad either. Not for the last time, we saw men in hi-vis jackets, clearly in charge of off-street car parks that were somehow buried in buildings that didn’t look at all like that would be possible.

How high is this arch?

It didn’t seem to be a particularly onerous task, leaving them with time to stand around and chat, accompanied by plenty of gesticulations.

It’s worth realising as quickly as possible that Neapolitans in general speak loudly, quickly and with a lot of hand movements. Once you have that sussed, you don’t start every time you hear a conversation, thinking it’s a domestic.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the old city; down the narrow street that slices through the old quarter and is full of shops selling tat, such as limoncello in penis-shaped bottles. And no – it was not tempting even given the knowledge that the ancient Romans saw large, erect phalluses as a good luck charm.

Then we found ourselves deciding that the queue to see the sculpture of the Veiled Christ really was just too long, so we carried on admiring the age of the buildings and the architecture and also (in different ways) the sheer amount of street art and graffiti that, in places, seems to cover every millimetre of available wall.

Fidel – mirrored, on a university building

There are churches everywhere. There are more than a few shrines – and neo-religious references to Saint Hand of God Maradona also abound. And red chilis as decorations. Colours abound and washing hangs outside the windows of pastel-painted apartment blocks while the paint silently peels.

We’ve visited Venice twice – that was our Italy. But this is a very different of Italy. To be fair, Venice is a place apart. One assumes that Venetians are as happy to be regarded as a people apart as the rest of Italy is to be regarded as something different from La Serenissima.

But back to Napoli itself. Crossing roads felt like taking your life into your hands: horns tooted and with scooters not required to stop for a red light at a crossing, you have to learn quickly to follow the Neapolitans’ own example – just stride into the road when the light’s in your favour and trust that any vehicular traffic will stop.

We survived. Just.

Back at the hotel, we rested and freshened up before heading out for dinner. That was a slow descent toward the marina and the sea front, where we’d been advised that there was good seafood to be had. What there was, was our first real view of the bay as the day slipped gently toward its end.

Do you think we should have gone down here?

Shades of indigo all around. Vesuvius presiding over the bay. In the distance, across the water, the island of Ischia: a strip of pale mist appeared to sever it from the sea, as though it levitated, as mysterious as Bali Hai. It’s a view you cannot stop looking at: full of promise and, in that brooding volcano, power.

We eventually opted for one of the tourist traps along the promenade. There seemed to be no alternative and we were tired after a long day that had started at around 4am.

Service was dire. Orders were part forgotten and my squid, when it eventually turned up, was overcooked and tough. We ate one course and finished our bottle of wine, congratulated ourselves that we’d not ordered more, paid up and left.

Sunday morning: 8.29am on the dot and a lone church bell rings out for a few minutes before fading away.

The car park is closed

Below the window in our hotel room was a garden with apricot and lemons trees. Beyond were low buildings and, further off, Vesuvius. Swifts darted around.

We had breakfast and left, a taxi taking us down to the marina. There, it was swiftly on to a ferry for the journey across the Bay of Naples to Sorrento.

To the north, Vesuvius dominates as it would do for the rest of the trip. The bay was calm, the ferry remarkably comfortable. A vast, flat cloud fanned out over the top of Vesuvio.

When it exploded in 79AD, Pliny the Elder described the column of gasses and debris that were hurled into the stratosphere as looking like a stone pine.

As we near our destination, the coastline changes: it rears, craggy and precipitous – quite different from what we have seen so far; sculptural stone pines are visible in silhouette against the changing skyline.

And we realise that, as we should have earlier, that where mountains meet the sea, weather forecasters flounder.

What will the days ahead hold – and not least in the weather?

Life and lunch in Italy

Wednesday in Sorrento; overcast and with rain in the air. In discovering an Italy outside Venice, The Other Half and I realised that far better planning is needed if we were not to find that all our boats (to the Amafi villages) had sailed by the middle of the morning and left us wondering what to do with the rest of the day.

That I was not sure where my purse is did not help. I was fairly certain it was in our room at the hotel, because I am good about this sort of thing. But nervousness hovered.

Sipping cappuccinos by the marina, we contemplated what to do. In the event, we decided to see if there was any of Sorrento’s old town – at least the shopping bit of it – that we had not checked out two days earlier.

It turns out that we had not seen everything – even in tourist shopping terms. We had not, for instance, seen any of the shops selling the cameos that feature highly in guide books for the town.

Our first encounter was in a shop where a craftsman sat at the front, crafting a cameo on shell, while completed works were on display in cabinets around him. An assistant hovered, ready to take cash or card.

There were some interesting pieces. They took conventional cameo style and used it in a more modern way: some of them quite Goth.

There were works in coral as well as shell.

Climbing the steep street we discovered further shops selling cameos, but none as good and none with someone inside the front window showing how it’s done.

After filling time in such a way, what about lunch? The Other Half asked the question. I didn’t know what I was in the mood for, but shortly after, spotted a sign to an eatery that was off the street. No waiters – the new mermaids – were trying to lure us in, so that was a recommendation.

We found a table under plastic cover, in a garden. To my right, with a table between us, sat a middle-aged American couple. They had come from the vast cruise ship moored just outside Sorrento’s marina.

The experience of the cruise was telling and husband was musing to wife that what he was seeing and experiencing in Europe was showing him that actually, it was the US that had vast problems.

But his philosophising was a cut short as another couple took this table between us.

The new couple were also American. In this case, just married.

The OH's salt-baed fish, about to be served

The younger woman was Barbie in a pink, belted tunic coat, over pale, flowered leggings and with large, looped earrings covered in glimmering stones, impossibly smooth foundation and huge eyelashes.

The women talked as though the US is a tiny island and they’ve known each other for years. They discussed fashion across the tables. The older woman then asked how you got to Sorrento if not from the sea, astonished that this part of the world can be traversed by train.

The newly married couple shared oysters with a sense of intimate theatre. They were also ‘experimenting’ with different wines, so depending how much they got through, the oysters may have been rendered useless.

He wore a cream, soft leather jacket that screamed a high price tag and was probably bought locally.

As the older couple, who were from Arizona, departed, the woman told their lunch acquaintances: “Just keep saying ‘I love you’ – that’s something I learned early.”

Once they’d gone, it was clear he was already learning to love conversation about shopping.

For their second course, she had a plate of spaghetti with black truffle; he, a lobster with ravioli. After a few bites, they exchanged plates.

Terrific turbot

Compared to young, female diners seen elsewhere, terrified of the calorific content of half a bowl of leaves, she was trying an interesting and sensual tack – relishing her food with ‘hmms’ and ‘ahhs’: there was even a breathy sigh that is all polite orgasm. How long can this last?

Her conversation quickened with the wine.

At one point, shaking her head and fluttering her eyelashes at the same time, she gazed across the table and said: “Amazing!” Shortly after came a whispered ‘wow!’

When he went to find the rest room, she Instagramed her food through a filter.

On the other side of us sat a multi-race British couple in late middle age. He was hoping for onion in his salad, but had no luck when he asked the waiter if this was possible. Both had lobster.

He and the boiled crustacean shared a complexion. In his case, this was in contrast with white hair cut short in a fashion that seemed almost military: a pink polo shirt, a navy sweater and a beige gillet. She sported an elegant scarf in blue and white over a sea green top and seemed to take her husband’s worries about the importance of onion as a salad ingredient with good grace.

They worked at the lobster with quiet pleasure. In the event, the lack of allium amid the leaves did not seem to be such a major problem.

Nearby, a French couple dined; he swirled a glass of wine and then tasted it with a certain disdain.

I had turbot in a lemon cream sauce that supported the view, discovered online, that this restaurant is really very good. I’d say it was the best turbot I’ve had. The Other Half had salt-baked bream. It produced theatre, followed by good eating.

This is life and lunch in Italy.

Oh: and my purse was back in the room, in a bag. So much for the panic.

Lichtenstein at the Tate Liverpool joins all the dots

In the Car (1963) Oil paint and magma on canvas

Whenever work sends me away from home for a day or so, one of the first considerations is food. Hot on its heels comes the question of whether there is any art to be hunted down.

Thus a working weekend in Liverpool instantly meant two things: at least one visit to the Docklands Fish & Chips for lunch and a look at what was on at the Tate Liverpool, which is just along the same stretch of the Albert Dock – both no distance from the conference centre where I’m working.

Arriving yesterday in mid-afternoon, a quick lunch saw me choose scampi and chips – served in a box with mushy peas, sliced lettuce, gherkins and silverskin pickled onions. I’m not convinced by this approach, so today I made a point of asking for just battered cod, two potato scallops and mushy peas.

Reflections: Art

If yesterday’s wasn’t bad, this was much better. The chips are not sensational – I still remember a fish ‘n’ chip lunch to die for in Scarborough in 2011, where the chips were double-fried properly, in front of us, in dripping – then today’s fish was absolutely superb.

And the service is as warm and friendly as you would expect north of Watford Gap.

So, what of the art?

Tate Liverpool is 30 years old this year and it’s staging a major show by Fernand Léger, together with one that pairs works by Egon Schiele and Francesca Woodman to examine nudes and self portraiture.

Water Lily Pond with Reflections

At present, however, the main exhibition is work by the British artist John Piper. However, there is also a concise, two-room show by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Perfect for the time-strapped and free to boot.

Having not actually seen any Lichtenstein in the ‘flesh’ – and probably because one unthinkingly knows that a comic fits in your hand easily – I hadn’t even given much though to the scale of Lichtenstein’s works or, indeed, to the mixture of media and techniques that he used.

These are big pieces – and when you realise the precision that is key to them, it’s hardly surprising. But the variety of techniques, from print-making to working with all sorts of media on canvas, to mass-produced ceramics, is the real eye opener.

Sea Shore

For instance, in Reflections: Art from 1988, we get oil and acrylic on canvas. Pretty conventional, really. But then Sunrise (1965) is porcelain enamel on steel and Sea Shore (1964) is oil paint and magma on plexiglass, while Seascape from the following year is screenprint and paper on plastic.

Then there is Water Lily Pond with Reflections (1992), a screenprint on enamel on stainless steel.

Together with Water Lillies with Cloud from the same year – it was a series of six made in collaboration with master printmaker Donald Saff – it’s impossible not to think back to Monet. Indeed, a series of four haystacks prints takes us directly there.

Seascape

Yet part of the pleasure here is in seeing the links to the past, but in conjunction with Lichtenstein’s extraordinary mastery of such a range of modern materials. And he used those materials to gain specific effects that actually add to the work, rather than simply as some sort of art geek’s technical exercises.

After moving from comic-style works to landscape and a video installation, we come full circle to finish the two rooms with Wall Explosion II (1965), executed in enamel on steel – in many ways, a work that epitomises the power that this incredibly concise exhibition packs: not everything needs to be so vast as to exhaust.

Wall Explosion II

Mixing some of these iconic comic-style works with less-expected landscapes makes for fascinating viewing.

Indeed, such is the familiarity of the comic-book images that I suspect many people scarcely even begin to imagine that Lichtenstein did anything much else.

It’s very much the case that, while those comic works are a very long way from being disappointing, the landscapes are the revelation and the unexpected delight that you come away with.

The Roy Lichtenstein artist rooms are open at Tate Liverpool until 17 June 2018

Ludwig van offers up a culinary ode to joy

Salsify

After a difficult year, a pre-Christmas trip to Vienna for some culture and shopping seemed like the perfect way to bring 2017 to a climax.

Food would, of course, feature and, in a perfect example of serendipity, just a few weeks before we flew out, a friend pointed out that Rick Stein’s recent series of food-oriented weekend breaks included the Austrian capital.

Thus, with the aid of iPlayer, we began the trip with culinary expectations that went beyond the iconic Wiener schnitzel and the apple strudel to include such delights as Viennese goulash and tafelspitz – the latter being but one among the many versions of boiled beef in Germanic cuisine.

In the event, our first meal – lunch on a grey, drizzly afternoon, in a café on the legendary Naschmarkt – saw The Other Half try the goulash, while I opted for sliced liver that came in a big, rich gravy and was utterly scrummy.

Goulash followed again during the trip, giving evidence (were it needed) that like so many other dishes, there are as many variations on the way it can be made as there are people who make it. Varying amounts of paprika and little or lots of onion are just two of the possible variables.

Trout

But just as we’d settled into such hearty, down-to-earth eating, The Other Half spotted an interesting-looking establishment not far from our hotel.

Ludwig van, we were to learn, only opened its doors in January this year, but it’s already essential to book.

Presumably, our looking genuinely upset at there being no tables available, our instantly asking if we could make a reservation for the following evening (and trying this in German) produced sympathy – and with amazing good fortune, a table in the bar area.

It’s a snug space in an old, old building, with dark wood everywhere and a feeling of being an inn.

Host Oliver Jauk found us a corner and guided us through the menu.

Such was the briefness of what was listed – with so much that tempted – that we both decided to go down the route of the tasting menu.

After gorgeous bread, with the best butter I’ve ever tasted and wafer thin slices of a sausage from a 10-year-old “calf” that were packed with flavor but still tender, our taste buds were further tickled by a tiny dish of kimchee-style vegetables, accompanied by a local wine infused with herbs.

Oatmeal

The first of our ‘proper’ courses was salsify, with butternut, parsley and hazelnut. Lovely tastes – the parsley, for instance, was a perfect illustration of being so much more than a garnish, while fresh tomato shot through a light-as-silk sauce.

The bar was set high.

Next up was trout with cauliflower, grapefruit and chervil.

Standards maintained.

Then a dish of oatmeal ‘risotto’, with chanterelle mushrooms, that called up the autumn forest as though by sourcery rather than saucery.

Pike-perch (zander) from Lake Neusiedl followed, perched atop red cabbage, followed by a noisette of calf, with a rich gravy and spinach leaves that burst with flavour.

Elvis van

To finish, we were served ‘Elvis van’ – a dessert that combined banana, a peanut mousse and bacon wafers and somehow worked.

This was simply fabulous food: rich, yet light, with great textures and astounding flavour. Head chef Walter Leidenfrost and sous chef Julia Pimingstorfer are reinventing traditional Austrian cuisine in a thrilling way.

Ludwig van’s ethos means that drinks are sourced from smaller producers who might well be less-known producers and as locally as possible. We enjoyed a variety of white wines – all of which were exemplary, but which displayed an astonishing variety of tastes.

At the end, with most other diners having finished and left, Oliver offered us a choice of schnapps from unlabelled bottles.

We both chose one flavoured with pine: it was a smooth delight – and continued that underlying sense of the forest.

Ludwig van is far from cheap – but it was worth every cent. This place is going to win awards and I wouldn’t hesitate to dine there again – though I’d certainly book well in advance!

Find out more at www.ludwigvan.wien. For information and booking, contact info@ludwigvan.wien.