Viva Italia

The World Cup came to Boston's North End the other week. Unfortunately, it was only a replica - and when the Italian fans found out they were not pleased.

The Italian identity of the North End is strong indeed. Restaurants, gelataria, and pastry shops line the streets. Above us - banners supporting an Italian-American for political office, and banners supporting the Italian football team. In the "Connah Shop", there were T-shirts supporting the World Cup Champions, and with little slogans saying "France Sucks" and "Yankees Suck". Yankees being, of course, the NY baseball team. The chap standing at the entrance to one of the restaurants also looked a little mafia-like, but I suppose that is a wicked stereotype on my part. There's also a Catholic church - St Leonard's on the street.

We were in the North End for dinner - the second time I've been here, but the first time on a Friday night and it was crowded! We went into a few restaurants but there was no place for anyone without a reservation. Finally we went into the "Florentine". We opened the menu and someone goes, "they have a Machiavelli pasta"! Need I add that we are all reading Machiavelli now for our ethics class. So two of my classmates had his pasta, and flung around a few quotations ("it is better to be feared than loved") for good measure. I just had a tagliatelle with seafood. We are not getting much else except chicken, meatballs, sausages, and vegetables at our dinner buffets so every time I go out for dinner I look for some variety.

I personally preferred Bricco, the restaurant we went to on our last outing to the North End to the Florentine. The menu was more interesting and the cooking better overall (I also thought my seafood could be a little fresher). When we went there (must be around a month ago) it was also a lot warmer. The restaurants have large windows which are opened up in warm weather - they were all closed today. Temperatures are starting to fall.

To end off an Italian post on food, it seems appropriate to say a bit about Fig's pizza. Fig's is the budget restaurant of a celebrity chef, Todd English. He is also the owner of a far more expensive and upmarket restaurant, "Olives". Fig's is a small little restaurant on Charles Street. They don't take reservations but you can call ahead to put yourself on the waiting list. So when you actually get there your waiting time is reduced. The pizza is huge! It comes on a rectangular tray (and in our case was flopping off the tray) and is put on a little stand in front of you so the pizza is elevated to just below your face. My room-mate and I had a half-and-half pizza, half figs and prosciutto and half steak and onion rings. We managed to eat about half and took the other half back. Refer my last post on where the left overs ended up.

Ciao!