A Tale of Italian Hospitality

Finding Community at a Table of Strangers in a Foreign Country

When planning a trip to Rome, you expect that the food will be amazing: pizza, pasta, gelato, coffee... this is why people travel to Italy, right?

But what you don't expect, or perhaps what Americans cannot even expect to expect, is the magic that makes the food so noteworthy. When you eat the food of Rome, you're not just experiencing a combination of fat, salt, acid, and heat. You are experiencing their world of radical hospitality…their community of the table. For my husband and I, our initiation into this world occurred in spring 2022, in an Italian apartment with 12 strangers. Let me tell you about it.

For me, a type-A, first-born daughter, planning a trip is a delicate balance of planning and more planning. I try to have about 80% pre-arranged agenda items (tours, reservations, hotels, activities), and about 20% downtime. The fact that I have given you a formula here tells you about how comfortable I am with travel surprises. However, I do actually understand the benefit of allowing time for the unexpected, in theory. The best travel stories usually come from those unplanned times, when you get out of your comfort zone, when you allow for spontaneity, blah blah blah.

All kidding aside, I do try to live by the Anthony Bourdain credo: "Be a traveler, not a tourist."

Still, when it was suggested to me by a travel planner that we should book an experience with EatWith for our Italy trip, I was slightly terrified. Dining with a group of people, in a stranger's home, without knowing what we would be served, in a country in which we do not know the language? My husband isn't the most adventurous eater, I was nervous about the language barrier in general, and COVID was still a background threat. But I was also strangely excited... this was going to be a memory-maker, for sure. Good or bad. Comfort-zone pusher, FTW. 

The day of our dining experience, only our second in Italy, had already been one for the books: the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and the Arch of Constantine all before noon. We walked where Julius Caesar had walked! We saw Corinthian flowers and aqueducts and the Circus Maximus! In the afternoon, we went on the Scavi Tour of St. Peter's Basilica, where we walked through the catacombs and were shown where the (alleged) bones of St. Peter are entombed. Even this Protestant was convinced, and then (and then!) we saw Michelangelo's breathtaking Pietá--one of the pieces that caused me to enroll in an art history program when I returned to American soil. It was a monumental day. I was tired.

Michelangelo, La Pietá, 1498-99, St. Peter’s Basilica

Thankfully, Italian culture is built around coffee and late dinners. Our exhaustion was conquered with a late afternoon nap and a shot of espresso. I was still nervous, but as we walked across the Tiber to our host's historic neighborhood of Trastevere, I felt enveloped in the literal millenia we had been introduced to that day. What's a few hours in the long history of Rome, eh?

We found our host Barbara's apartment in the heart of the Piazza Trilussa... a deliciously charming neighborhood that was likely built before Columbus sailed to America. Twinkle lights lined the streets that were only wide enough for scooters to pass through. I felt like Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant could pop out of any alleyway and carry us away on their Roman Holiday in a haze of prosecco.

Barbara's door opened and we found ourselves tumbled into a charmingly chaotic apartment. Ten people filled the combo living/dining/kitchen area. The room oozed with coziness. There were tall ceilings with old beams running across; the walls were painted moody blues and yellows; overlapping rugs covered the terracotta tile floor. The architecture and finishings looked about a thousand years old in the best way possible. Art and tchotchkes covered the walls and shelves of the apartment. Oil paintings were partially covered by stacks of mugs from around the world. Huge antique mirrors collected taped snapshots and notes from countless smiling people. The chandelier over the dining table was draped in Christmas ornaments, one of them a boot shape declaring "Texas!" (an odd choice considering it was late April and we were, you know, NOT in Texas). Nothing went together. It was a decorator's nightmare. I loved every inch of it.

 
Barbara introduced herself to us in a blend of Italian and English and ushered us onto a mismatched leather couch. She pushed Aperol spritzes into our hands and encouraged us to "Eat, eat!" She pointed at beautiful plates piled high with something that smelled divine. My husband and I, still sort of shell-shocked, grabbed a plate and took a bite. The aperitivo revealed itself to be a delicate puff pastry filled with tart goat cheese, spicy-yet-sweet Calabrian chiles, caramelized onions, and drizzled with the most exquisite balsamic vinegar. My heart (and my stomach) flipped joyfully in anticipation for the rest of the meal.

 
As our senses adjusted to the chaos and chatter around us, I realized that our couch compatriots were speaking English in thick Southern drawls. My instincts kicked in and I turned to them, starting into our special Southern language that I like to call "Where are you from and who do you know?" You see, if you put two or more people from the Southeast U.S. in the same room, it's only a matter of time before you find that you know someone in common. As I was soon to discover, this particular group of Southerners consisted of two retired couples traveling together from Georgia. And it only took about five minutes for us to figure out that they were friends with the Georgia Congressman my brother interned for one summer in college. Aha, now we were acquainted!

As new confidants, my Georgia friends told me that this was their third or fourth visit to Barbara's apartment. In fact, no trip to Rome was complete without it, said they! They had become so endeared to Barbara that they exchanged Christmas cards and letters throughout the year. What a beautiful friendship they seemed to have--which would prove odd when they revealed their weird travel quirk. In the middle of our chat, observant Barbara noticed that everyone had arrived, and finished their aperitivo, so she invited us to please have a seat at her dining table so we could begin our meal.

 
To be continued next week….

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