Little did I know I would discover the key to Italian cooking my first night in Italy….

…we found a small hole ristorante on one of the side streets in the San Spirito neighborhood of Florence.  The place was everything we dreamt of Italy – red and white checkered tablecloths, cheap table wine and a dark, heavily mustached waiter whose ridiculously extreme moods ranged from unbridled anger to playful nonchalance within seconds.  I ordered the spaghetti pomodoro (spaghetti marinara), clinging to my cowardly eating ways, and knowing that a good tomato sauce is the poor man’s ambrosia.   Yet what my charmingly flustered waiter set it front of me was no mere collection of noodles and sauce – it was gastrointestinal bliss, salivating, stomach-enlarging… the culmination of all that is good with food.

I had finished my plate long before my companions and my mind raced to figure it out – what was the magic ingredient? Was is just Italy? What made this seemingly simple tomato sauce SO good? I bravely chanced asking our waiter, in my broken Italian.  He broke into a great moustache smile and began an impassioned speech in blistering Italian.  With “my needs-improving” Italian I was only able to discern some of the meaning, but the speech was tied together with one word: Fresco! The American plate was ruined by processed foods and large/slow grocery stores.

Fresco! Italians took their food seriously enough to use only the freshest ingredients.

Fresco! The tomatoes for my sauce had come from his grandfather’s farm, only five miles up to hill in Fiesole. 

Fresco! Freshness is the key to the Italian way of food.  The waiter walked away mumbling curses towards all the other local establishments that used less that the freshest food.  

I left the restaurant not only full, but with the most important lesson I would learn on my trip – Fresh food = Great food.

Sunnyside Gardens…..grow your own.

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