The Life in My Years

“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Food. Glorious food. Pure food. Real food. Food that you can taste just by looking at it. Food that you never knew could smell so fresh and look so perfectly beautiful. This is the food that was always featured on the Travel Channel, before Travel Channel morphed into bizarre bullshit that has nothing at all to do with travel. It’s the food that you would swear must be Photoshopped.

Tomatoes by the thousands. Cherry tomatoes; dazzling, little crimson orbs hang in clusters from the top rails of booths and look down at their larger, plump cousins of different varieties and colors; bright red, green, purple, black, and some decorated with stripes of orange. A sea of green vegetables broken up by islands of bright orange carrots and gleaming yellow and red peppers and gleaming purple eggplant. It’s autumn in Rome and seemingly bottomless baskets of chestnuts are surrounded by a variety of squashes.

Butchers wielding razor sharp knives slice steaks from giant roasts and with their mallets pound slices of veal paper thin. There’s a boundless selection of meats here, where the butcher is as likely to have rabbit in his case as he is pork chops.

At the fishmongers, there are fish and seafoods of untold varieties, colors and sizes; filets, steaks, roasts and whole fish. While the variety is endless, there is one thing that they all have in common. These fish stare, in their eternal repose, through eyes as clean and clear as newly polished glass, just as they did when they swam alive and free. That’s how you know that the fish here is as fresh as you’ll get.

Over on the other side of the great hall, a tall slender young woman made even taller by her deadlocked hair that’s stacked and bound in a burnt orange scarf, slices strips of lasagna from a giant sheet of fresh pasta. The girl stacks the strips on a scale and looks to the attentive customer for approval. The customer, a middle aged woman, pauses for a moment of serious consideration and then points at the sheet. “Di piu, (more)” says the customer. The girl slices a couple more strips, pauses, and glances back at the customer. “Va bene (is that good)?”
“Bene,” the customer.

At the delicatessen, rows of whole shanks of prosciutto hang above display cases filled with cheeses of all types and textures. The deli man reaches up and snips some sausage links from a meters long, coiled rope of goodness that dangles over a display of salamis; sopressata, calabrese, finocchiona, and, of course, a great log of mortadella, it’s face daubed with slivers of pistachio and splats of fat.

This, is Mercato Trionfale, just a short walk from Vatican City in Rome.

At one of these deli booths a young woman deftly shaves slices of paper thin prosciutto from a whole shank. Back home in America the prosciutto is sliced on an electric slicer somewhere in the nether regions of the deli section. Here at Trionfale, it’s done in front of the booth, where the young woman puts on a show, wielding a scalpel sharp knife with the concentration and precision of a surgeon.

Bottles and tins of olive oil rest on shelves behind stacked jars of olives, condiments and preserves. Wine merchants offer wines from Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, and Liguria. There are breads, pastries, dried fruits and rolling hills of bulk spices. Mercato Trionfale is an homage to all that’s good and right about food.

***

I’m standing in front of a booth marveling over a display of cheeses that I’ve never seen before when a young woman, asks if I want to try some cheese. I hesitate for a moment and she says, “No? Then you have to try porchetta.” Noticing my continuing hesitation, she takes my arm. “C’mon, I don’t bite. You have to try.” Her accented English is like a siren.

Fine, who am I to turn down a pretty Italian girl who wants to feed me? I follow her to a cutting board where sits a golden skinned pork roast stuffed with garlic and herbs. She cuts a small piece and hands it to me. She smiles as she watches my, “I just died and went to heaven,” response. She knows. Oh yeah she knows. She’d just tossed out the bait.

 

“Now you have to try some cheese.” And now she’s setting the hook.

“Il signore, vuole provare del formaggio,” she calls to an older man who’s appeared from behind the counter and is slicing samples for a couple.

The man, who it turns out is the girl’s father, flourishes his cleaver towards the array, inviting me to choose. I’ve no idea where to start or what’s in front of me so he takes the initiative, slicing little pieces of cheese and offering the samples to me on his blade. “Here, you take,” he says.

There’s a cheese that’s wrapped in chestnut leaves, another with a rind of red wine, and yet another in a Champagne rind. There’s cheese wrapped in hay (yes, hay and its fucking divine), another in tobacco leaves (a paean to Bourdain maybe?) and Pecorino cheeses of varying ages. A small tub holds some creamy gorgonzola which the man tells me just arrived today.

Each sample is better than the other. No, wait, the one before this one was better. Or was it the first? Maybe it was the second. The gorgonzola sends me into orgasmic bliss.

A customer has decided to buy and dad excuses himself to finish the transaction, so daughter takes over again. She points down to some brine filled tubs. “Do you know bufala?” Do I know it? Ha! Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods? (or something like that). Yeah I know bufala, but not well enough. Please, give me a proper introduction.

Bufala, also known as buffalo mozzarella, is made from the milk of a domestic Mediterranean buffalo. It’s a soft and creamy little orb of bliss that in no way resembles the phony mozzarella found in America; a rubbery, round ball that, in a pinch, you could use as a baseball if you’re putting together an impromptu pick up game. Throw bufala against the wall and it goes splat. Try that with American mozzarella and then call the drywall guy to patch the hole in your wall.

Each tub before me seems to have bufala of different sizes. They might come from different cheese makers or be of different varieties. Hell, what do I know? I’m just a hungry, ignorant bastard. Feed me.

With a ladle, she carefully pulls out one of the creamy white balls; silky, delicate. She places the ball on a board and as she slices, a delightful ooze of fat laden milk leaks from the cheese and forms a puddle. She carefully offers the slice to me on the blade. You don’t chew bufala so much as you just allow it to melt in your mouth and slide down.

It’s time to put up or shut up. I know that I can take cheese home as long as it’s vacuum sealed, and dad (I’d gladly adopt him as my dad, as long as he brings some cheese to the party) has assured me that he can do just that. We go back to the array of cheese.

“How much. Quanto costa?” I ask. He waves his cleaver with another flourish and says 7.50 euro per 100 grams. Fuck me. Here we go again with the grams bullshit again. I’m from America the land of fractured weights and measures. Is 100 grams a sliver, a slab or a wheel? Seeing my confusion, he takes his cleaver and defines a wedge, “Cento grammi.”

As I make my selections, he defines the wedges. More often than not, I’m greedy for a larger wedge. “Un po ‘di più,“ I tell him, and he shifts the big knife until he hears, “Va bene.”

With the selections done, he goes to the back of his kiosk to vacuum seal my cheese. His daughter opens another plastic container and pulls out an oblong that’s been breaded and fried. “Here, you try.”
I take a bite and a string of cheese stretches out between my mouth and the breaded ball in my hand.
“Potato croquette with bufala,” she tells me.

My cheese is sealed and ready to go and I decide to get some slices of porchetta for dinner at the apartment. The three of us bid each other arrivederci and I’m off.

***

With my purchase in hand, I start to head back to our apartment but the place captivates me and I’m compelled to take a few more circuits through the market. There’s a bounty here of beautiful food, no doubt. But there’s something else in abundance at Mercato Trionfale.

There’s joy here. Contagious, omnipresent, boundless joy. You couldn’t fault the customers if they showed some measure of frustration. It’s mid-morning on Saturday, and everybody who was busy at work during the week is here to do the shopping. The place is packed. One literally has to squeeze through the crowd. Little knots of gossipers clog the aisles. Some shoppers are lugging shopping bags, some are dragging carts, others are dragging complaining children and still others are dragging the family dog – and some are dragging a little bit of all of it. Every now and then a fellow carrying paper cups of espresso weaves through the crowd delivering an order to one of the booths. He’s from the sole dedicated cafe here and the crew there is in a frenzy, taking care of customers at the counter and delivering orders around the market. And if all of this madness isn’t enough, they all have to negotiate their way around a few fools like me who are standing around in the intersections, gawking, taking pictures, and generally getting in the way.

And the sellers? There’s no resting here. It’s a constant flow of customers, from the ball busting finicky ones, to the ones who know just what they want, to tourists like me who don’t know what a gram is, and fumble through coins they can’t identify. Through it all, the sellers seem happy to be here. How many people do you know who are happy working retail?

There is more than business being transacted here. Every exchange of money for a fresh branzino, a loaf of bread, or a jar of preserves, includes an exchange of smiles and kind words.  Walt Disney and his annoying falsetto rodent can go kick rocks because this might just be the happiest place on Earth. And what’s more, it doesn’t cost you one thin euro to get in.

There is no pretension here. Hell, from the outside, if you didn’t know better you might mistake this place for a bus terminal.

This is not the new thing that’s featured on some celebrity chef’s tour of Rome. It’s not a, here and famous today, and gone and replaced by the next new thing tomorrow, kind of place. Mercato Trionfale began in the late 19th century as a sort of way station for hunters and wayfarers to stock up on supplies for their journey. Originally located on Viale Giulio Cesare it now sits on busy Via Andrea Doria, about a ten minute walk from our apartment.

One doesn’t come here to see if it lives up to the hype. There is no hype. Mercato Trionfale exists for the people, not the experience seekers. But here’s the secret. Mercato Trionfale is an experience, especially if you’ve never been before. Once you’ve been, you want to go back. If not to buy then just to go gawk and savor the atmosphere.

For some, this vast promised land of food might be just another food market. In that case you can go get your “experience” at Babingtons over at Piazza di Spagna where you can drop € 11.50 (12 bucks USD) for a serving of yogurt or € 44.00 for eight scones and a pot of tea. And what else did you get? I suppose you can tell Aunt Mabel back home that you over spent on some tea and crustless sandwiches while dining in the company of a crowd of Americans, Brits and Russians. Me? I’d rather tell Aunt Mabel about the porchetta sandwich with bufala on fresh bread for € 5.00, which came with a side order of experiencing the real Italian culture.

In Italy, food is not only an essential part of the culture, food is a celebration. Food is the magnet that brings family, friends and even strangers together. Bread, wine and cheese are a universal bond. There is no rushing with food here. Why would you? Here, food is to enjoy and to savor in the company of friends, and after the main course there’s always time for more wine and maybe a little grappa. Fellowship is as much a main course as vitello Milanese. I’ve been at many an Italian family table where conversation, laughter, arguing, making up, and commiserating are staples.

For me, visiting this Roman market is just as important as visiting the Colosseum. This is where you experience the country and the way of life. The security blanket of signs in English, tour guides, brochures, and being in the company of scads of your fellow countrymen are all absent here. Here you’re in the midst of it all.

And what does trionfale mean? Triumphal.