I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts that during my trip to Italy, I was frustrated and disappointed with Italian food. We tried to do everything right: we tried not to eat near tourist attractions, we looked for Italians in the restaurants that we went into, and we looked for restaurants whose menus were only in Italian. Despite all of this, we only had a few decent meals the whole time.
Forgive me for a second and let me rant about the food.
Here are my issues with the Italian food that I encountered:
1. The bread. At 90% of the restaurants that we visited, the bread was stale and flavorless. I love occasionally indulging in the bread basket but in Italy, it wasn’t the least bit tempting.
2. The wine. Perhaps I’m more of a french wine person but the wine that we had there always had a very strong alcohol-y smell. Now I know that wine is an alcoholic beverage (duh) but when your wine smells like rubbing alcohol, you know you’ve got a problem.
3. The service. At many of the restaurants we visited, the waiters acted like it was our privilege to be able to eat at their restaurant. Many were pushy and most were rude. Ugh.
Now I realize that my experience could have been unique – perhaps I have exceptionally bad luck when it comes to restaurants. Who knows. All I know is that the food in the JFK airport that I ate on my way home was better than most of what I ate on my trip. If that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what would.