(notes from March 2025)
We are still working full-time throughout the week, so pretty much the only interesting thing I can post about are our meals… Sam was up almost till 2:00AM last night with one of her teams.
Today as usual we slept in late: stocks don’t open til 2:30 so I’ve got plenty of time.
Or so I thought… we returned to Pane & Vino, the most eccentric restaurant we know here, it’s the one with the frightening granny lol. Sam had the ravioli here for the first time: three HUGE slabs of pasta and whatever… I had a freakishly good risotto of pumpkin and saffron
So as usual, we ate and we ate, as much as we could–it’s the same every meal, we are always served ‘way more than we could ever eat! Finally, all stuffed & bloated, we laid our utensils across our plates in defeat: pretty much the universal signal that we are through with the meal.
But it was not as easy as all that, oh no. Nonna shuffles past, sees our guilty partially-filled plates; she pauses, and then keeps going as if she sees nothing.
So does everyone else… there was this whole “we are going to teach you a lesson about eating” vibe going on suddenly.
Meanwhile, as we’re being ignored, the whole place suddenly fills up… and Italians being who they are, there have to be long involved conversations about which tables they were allowed to use, versus which other ones might theoretically be better; it was hilarious yet endless, just trying to seat these people!!
I was thinking that they could have our table if only we were allowed to leave… and to think that I had figured two hours would be plenty of time for us to have a nice lunch and get back home to trading on time…
The guy in charge. the manager (the only person allowed to accept payment!) has ensconced himself somewhere upstairs out of sight, we haven’t seen him for at least half an hour.
Meanwhile, Nonna keeps pacing by disapprovingly, taking more notes on our embarrassing still-unempy plates.
And the clock keeps ticking away my work day, while the waitstaff argue about how some certain person should really be seated slightly more to the left, with perhaps a different placemat… our hearts had been set on dessert but I’ve run out of time. I am a REALLY patient person, but when I am finally done, I am done.
I head up to the front counter, where the credit card devices all live, only to find it completely deserted: the manager is still hiding somewhere upstairs. I really need to pay and go, so I try to look conspicuously about to pay: wallet waving in one hand, credit card out in the other, pacing all around the front area, hello????
It was a bit like being held hostage! How long will we be stuck here unable to leave? Of course, I totally missed the stocks today, i.e. my freaking job here, but OTOH we were both dying with laughter at the ridiculousness of it all… how Italian can ya get???
And at last Nonna spots me from upstairs: our eyes meet–with a flash of understanding, she sees that her restaurant has let me down, I have been left waiting with no one to help me. But it’s better than that: we both realized that in a huge turnabout, I have suddenly achieved moral superiority here, and she is not happy. She heads back upstairs; immediately the manager’s head appears over a railing, “duo minutos, duo minutos!!!”
Sam was laughing, literally in tears, while this snail-paced drama played out, I feel like I’m not doing it justice here: the endless waiting, the attempts to talk to anyone, anyone!!!, the shame of our not-completely-empty plates… but damn if I didn’t suddenly feel the moral authority finally shift, and how sweet was that!!!! The manager meekly appeared, he quickly wrote up our ticket, we paid and left, and street-side burst out again laughing—it was so funny!!! Yeah my trading day had blown up, again—like nearly every day in Napoli—but OMG so funny!! We just about died laughing, both actually in tears!!
That’s about all I have for today lol so next up are a bunch of random pix
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