Mythology, cats and ceramics

 A view from Relais Regina Giovanna

Off the boat and into the Sorrento sunshine, we were far too early for hotel check-in but just in time for the start of lunch. Of the two waterside eateries, we picked Ristorante Bar Ruccio, since it seemed to have the most conventional and Italian-looking menu.

As it happened, it also had cats. Although not before we had food in front of us.

I rarely opt for soup – it’s usually too filling a starter for me – but the primavera caught my attention. I’m glad it did. A huge bowl of beautiful, seasonal vegetables in a light but flavoursome stock. Genuinely scrummy – bang full of flavour. I had grilled octopus next, refusing to let myself be put off by the previous evening’s poor Neapolitan experience.

A generous portion, it was shared with the two cats – a ginger tabby and, we believe, her daughter; still technically a kitten, but with a very grave face and advanced skills in the ‘give-me-food’ telepathy department.

Mummy tabby cat

It was a pleasant meal and the cats – who were clearly not considered a problem by the staff – added to the experience. Then it was into a taxi for the trip up the steep, hairpin road into central Sorrento and then south along the coast, hugging the hillside, to the hotel.

Relais Regina Giovanna is a series of buildings, gloriously refurbished and set in a 50-acre estate. The hotel itself has a dozen rooms, while a block 500 metres away has five apartments for self catering. Other buildings are dotted around, including one that hosts yoga classes.

The estate is a joy to wander in. It’s never going to be crowded and includes olive and lemon groves, plus the vegetable and herb gardens that supply the hotel restaurant. Relais Regina Giovanna makes its own olive oil and limoncello.

There’s a small, private beach at the top of a small inlet, with clear emerald waters washing gently in. Unfortunately, we were too early in the season for that to be open. Another time, then. And more of that another day.

‘I want the octopus’

Signs let you know what birds you might see: during our stay, we spotted at least one buzzard, many white-throated swifts and flashes of bright yellow that we eventually identified as canaries, plus abundant Italian wall lizards.

In places, you can hear only the sea below, the wind in the trees, birds singing and your own thoughts. If you want an idea of paradise …

And at this point, let’s digress for a spot of history.

Queen Giovanna D’Angiò was a sovereign of Naples. It seems that, between 1371 and 1435, she often went to the area. And it now bears her name.

So this is a point: the whole area reeks of history: you simply cannot escape it.

And at this juncture, let’s take a step back a few decades.

In the first year at my (state) grammar school, everyone did Latin. I took to it like the proverbial duck to water, while modern languages never caught my imagination.

Around the estate

To be fair, that might have been influenced by my father who, while he had nothing negative to say about Latin, was disgruntled at my having to learn French and, when I had to swap Latin for German in my second year, was apoplectic. It was not, after all, Why We Won the War.

But stopping Latin after a year meant that I was not introduced to the mythology of southern Europe. When I finally came across any mythology it was years later, when a friend told me the story of the Nibelungen.

I was gripped. Memory can be a dodgy thing, but I don’t remember my parents telling stories like that (or even reading to me). German and Norse mythology leapt in to a vacuum. I’ve dipped into the Classical variety since, but it’s always seemed tame.

Yet between the presence of Vesuvius and the knowledge that this part of the Mediterranean has the far older sounding name of the Tyrrhenian Sea, something started to come to life.

On a long, narrow street in Sorrento, after passing shops laden with mass-produced souvenirs, we found Terrerosse.

Terrerosse bowl

It’s a small shop with space at the back to work. There, Allessandro and Enrica create unique ceramics that are bound up in the mythology of the region.

Sorrento … the name comes from ‘siren/mermaid’: winged creatures that became sea-bound.

If you’re in Sorrento, seek out Via Fuoro, 73 – because the work of Allessandro and Enrica has a magical, mythical quality you’ll rarely find elsewhere.

We’ll be going back in September. Italy has captivated us. In August, we will now spending time in the shadow of Etna, at Aci Trezza, before making our way back to Sorrento and Relais Regina Giovanna. I fully intend to make a trip to Terrerosse my primary ceramic aim of the the holiday.

And in the meantime, I find myself increasingly dreaming of an amazing mythological landscape that is coming alive for me as never before.

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.

Venetian food sets the senses alight

Fegato – liver and onions, Venetian style

Were you to ask most people in the UK to name an Italian food, it’s a fairly safe bet that spaghetti bolognese might be mentioned, along with pizza, pasta in general, panettone and ice cream.

Setting aside the point that the Bolognese would eat their classic ragu with tagliatelle and not spaghetti, some might be able to get a little regional, knowing that, for instance, it was Napoli that gave birth to the pizza.

But what of Venice and the Veneto? Many would be stumped, although it’s most famous dish outside Italy is almost certainly tiramisu – and when made properly, it comes without any alcohol.

On this matter, The Other Half approves, even though the presence of mascarpone in the ingredient list means he hasn’t ever tried it. Then again, while I don’t mind a dash of sweet sherry in a trifle, he disapproves of that too. I wonder if this is a sign of a Yorkshireman considering booze in a pudding as an unnecessarily spendthrift act?

But let’s set that aside for the present – although Yorkshire will make an appearance later.

When we first visited La Serenissima seven years ago, brief homework beforehand had meant that we knew about tiramisu, together with a few other local delicacies. Early spring is wonderful for many reasons, but it is not the time to expect rise e bisi – the iconic Venetian pea risotto.

It is, however, just in time for the very end of the radicchio season. Grown on the mainland around Treviso, this bitter, red and white leaf, is a regional speciality.

Tiramisu at the Peggy Guggenheim

As with most anywhere else, the key to finding the best food is finding where local people eat. By and large, that means avoiding anywhere declaring itself a ‘restaurant’. As an acquaintance insisted before the trip: look for trattorias.

On our first night, this led us to Ai Cugnai, around the corner from where we were staying on Dorsoduro. There, surrounded by locals – at least some of whom we suspected worked at the nearby university – we began our culinary trip in an old establishment that has clearly been in one family for many years, and is currently headed by the son, with the father now taking it easier by helping wait on tables.

In a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, we both began with a vegetable soup. Nothing complex, but perfectly cooked vegetables in a tasty broth.

Next up for me, an absolute classic of local cuisine: fegato – liver and onions, with polenta on the side. Again, this was not complex food, but good ingredients cooked well.

The following day, as the sun blazed down on us, we lunched al fresco at the cafe inside the Peggy Guggenheim museum – delightful confit salmon for me, with seasonal veg and a cream that had been ‘soured’ with lemon (as opposed to being yer actual bought ‘sour cream’), plus an excellent tiramisu. With no alcohol.

All the culture vulturey can be quite tiring. That evening, we crossed the Ponte dell’Accademia and, thanks to the excellent memory of The Other Half, found once more a place that we had enjoyed back on the first visit in 2010 and where I’d first experienced fegato.

Lunchtime calamari

Trattoria da Fiore was busy, but the staff managed to find us a table – next to a couple from Harrogate. In late middle age, they were quiet, but we were so close it was impossible not to hear to comments about how wonderful are the gardens at Prince Charles’s Highgrove home.

When the wife – who was only inches away from me – ordered fritti misti (fried fish and sea food) she appeared confident of what she was getting.

Except for one small detail: she clearly believed it was a version of goujons, complete with dipping sauce. The absence of any such sauce left her, after a short while, close to despair.

“It’s very dry,” she murmured in a drawl that was atremble with innate sadness.

They called the waiter.

“Do you not have any tartare sauce or may-o-nnaise?” she asked, her mournful voice bursting with the suggestion that there was not a culinary establishment on Earth worthy of the name that would not, at the very least, have these in tear-open sachets.

The young man explained, in excellent English and entirely patiently, that this was the way the dish was an no, they didn’t have such condiments in the building. He left.

A moment or so later: “I’m sure he could have found something,” she intoned wearily.

I was biting my tongue, trying desperately not to burst out into hysterical laughter, and with a memory unfolding in my head of Catherine Tate’s ‘disgusted couple’ sketches.

Later, albeit without this as my intent, I restored some dignity to us Brits in a conversation with the maître d’. He had come to check whether our meal was fine. I responded with asking whether the radicchio in my pasta dish was from Treviso and wasn’t the season over yet? All this enthusiastically, I should add.

The Other Half says that his expression suggested that he was genuinely impressed.

Rather earlier, our young waiter had come around carrying a platter of the fresh fish and seafood the place had that night. There was no smell – in other words, this was as fresh as you can get. I picked two shellless crabs for my starter.

Superb guinea fowl at La Bitte

I’d never had them before – genuinely doubted whether they were really shell less (and then how do you eat them etc). But oh my, they were lovely. Sweet – but not the overpowering sweetness of much British crab meat. They came with a little polenta, some of that Treviso radicchio – a perfect counterbalance to the sweetness – and some lettuce.

And I enjoyed – very much so – a big, bold pasta dish of mushrooms, gorgonzola, walnuts and radicchio for my main.

The following day, after long wandering, we had a basic lunch. But though we expected little, it was perfectly decent. I enjoyed a large plate of calamari, with lemon. Done right, what else do you need?

That evening, we pulled big time in culinary terms.

Thanks to top food journalist Joanna Blythman, we knew to try to get into La Bitte, which was only about a 10-minute walk away from the hotel where we were staying.

It has no website booking facility, but our hotel rang up for us and did the business. We were in.

La Bitte is small and rustic and intimate. It is dedicated to the meaty food of the mainland Veneto rather than the fish of the lagoons.

And oh my god – it is a joy.

We both started with a smoked carpaccio of beef: plenty of it; delicate beyond belief and sitting atop a pillow of fresh, tasty salad leaves – all dressed in Balsamico. If it sounds simple, well then yes – it was. But how many places get such apparent ‘simplicity’ so right?

For me, I followed that with guinea fowl.

Good grief – half a bird, tender as anything yet falling off the bone, served with a velvet-smooth cream sauce. How the hell can that be done? It’s a culinary contradiction! For the meat to flake, it needs long-slow cooking, yet doing that will render it tough and dry.

I asked.

Apparently, the game is cooked long and slow. In cream, together with pancetta and sage.

So when the meat is lifted out and some of the cream sauce strained, it’s flaking and yet moist.

Served with quenelles of Jerusalem artichoke, this was utterly stunning. I’ve been to posh places in London that cannot come close to this. It was simply glorious.

Ravioli at  Taverna La Fenice

Maintaining an almost dangerously rich note, I ended with a vanilla panna cotta – impossibly light yet rich, and with a caramel sauce that had the authenticity of length, with just the suggestion of burnt toast at the end.

Stunning – simply stunning.

Over the rest of the visit, we returned to Ai Cugnai (where I sampled sarde soar – in effect, sardines done in a way similar to rollmops) and enjoyed a really fine pre-opera lunch at Taverna la Fenice, which managed to combine posh with local, seasonal quality.

There, we enjoyed there first asparagus of the year in simple crudités, with virgin oil and mustard – and I had an excellent dish of white meat ravioli with a gusty gravy (you can’t call it a ‘sauce’) and slivers of truffle.

One of our other discoveries this trip was the wine: forget the piss poor excuse for a pinot grigio or soave that you are likely to be served in UK hotels, the real deal is excellent.

Venice is a joy for many reasons. But this was the visit that helped us really appreciate just a few of the ways in which it can tantalise the tastebuds.

Just promise me that you won’t ask for any tartare sauce.