Chapter 9

Gluttony Without Tears

San Teodoro, Sardinia, Italy

September 17

After our sybaritic stopover in the wine cellars of Beaune, we leapt back on the autoroute and blazed south toward the warm Mediterranean seashore. Our plan was to spend three days sightseeing on the Côte d’Azur before heading off to the rugged island of Sardinia where Devi’s father lives.

It was a long drive from Burgundy to Nice, and we didn’t arrive until well after 9:00 P.M. Since our modest hotel wasn’t exactly a local landmark, we drove up and down the dark city streets for more than an hour until we finally found it. Then we fell into bed exhausted. When we woke up the next morning, it was a warm, sparkling day on the French Riviera. After the grey skies of Burgundy, we were all glad to feel the sun on our necks—especially Devi, whose spirits always warm with the weather.

We had a nice enough time on the Cote d’Azur. The tourist season was long gone, so we didn’t have to battle the teeming crowds of August. Still, the whole time we were there, I felt as if we’d wandered into someone else’s private club, where we didn’t know the rules. After all, this is a pretty glamorous corner of the world, and after three months without benefit of dry cleaning, Devi and I didn’t feel particularly glamorous. So our short stay on the Riviera didn’t include any black-tie evenings in Monte Carlo or candle-lit dinners at the Carlton. Once in a while, we poked our heads into a fancy joint like Nice’s Hotel Négresco. But mostly, we just played in the park, swam on the few free public beaches (most charge an arm and a leg), and strolled along the promenades in Nice and Cannes.

When it came time to leave, we boarded a huge yellow ferry to the rugged island of Corsica. Devi’s father was supposed to meet us there and drive us down the coast across the Bocche di Bonifacio to the neighboring island of Sardinia. Pete—or Prabhakar, as he’s known in his native India—works as an aeronautical engineer for the Sardinian airline Meridiana. He is, without a doubt, one of the most gracious, generous men I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, but dependability isn’t his defining characteristic. Devi tried to call Pete several times from Nice in order to confirm our meeting in Corsica, but she never managed to reach him. So as the ferry steamed away from the French coast, we weren’t entirely sure whether Pete would be waiting for us when we arrived or how we would get from northern Corsica to Sardinia if he didn’t show up.

My lack of faith was entirely unfounded. The moment we landed, we saw Devi’s father waving from the pier exactly as he promised. He wasn’t alone either. By his side, kissing all the grandchildren on both cheeks, was a bombastic dark-haired woman in her early forties named Franca. Franca had a deep voice and dancing eyes, and she spoke Italian at the speed of light.

While we were loading our suitcases into the van, I mouthed the words to Devi, “Who’s that?”

Devi shrugged and said sotto voce, “Maybe she’s from Meridiana Airlines.”

Whoever she was, Franca was a gregarious whirlwind of a presence. Try as I might, I could not convince this woman that I didn’t speak Italian. Franca and I had long, one-sided conversations, sometimes for ten minutes at a time. Her Italian had a lovely, mellifluous sound, but I didn’t have a clue what she was saying. And God help the man, woman, or child who innocently said to Franca, “Oh, you’re Italian.”

This happened three or four times while we were in Sardinia, and each time it did, Franca’s impressive bosom rose defiantly and her eyes flashed with indignation. “I am not Italian,” she said, “I am a Sard.” This reflected the proud Sardinian sentiment that the mainland Italians were only the latest in a three-thousand-year series of foreign aggressors who had temporarily conquered their island. They too would pass.

My favorite moment with Franca came when we were all driving in the van one evening. Franca was speaking to her ten-year-old son, Paolo, on a cellular phone, and apparently, he wasn’t eating enough dinner (This, we later learned, is a relative concept in Sardinia.) Anyway, Franca was vigorously urging Paolo to finish his meal. It was a long discussion, and after a while Franca was no longer holding the phone to her ear. She just held it in front of her face with her left hand and gesticulated at it with her right. We all stared in amazement as Franca screamed at her cell phone.

“Eh, Paolo, Mangia! Mangia!”

We heard a tinny little reply from the phone. Then Franca showed the cell phone the back of her hand and yelled, “Mangia, Paolo, mangia!”

After weeks of French sangfroid, Franca’s earthy Sardinian style came as a welcome relief. In France, we couldn’t even take the kids out to eat without fear of embarrassment. But in the small-town trattorias around Olbia, the children were welcomed with open arms. The moment we walked through the door, the waitresses were all over them, cooing, pinching their cheeks, and lavishing affection. We never had to worry about the kids disturbing the other diners, either. Lucas was passed around so much that his feet rarely touched the ground, and any commotion Kara and Willie might make was inevitably drowned out by the roar of the robust Sards.

Good thing, too. Because after a while, we realized we were spending roughly 40 percent of our waking hours eating. Devi’s dad had made several good friends during his four years in Sardinia, and each and every one of them displayed a level of hospitality that may be unparalleled in the world. This was particularly true because one day, about a year ago, Pete showed up unexpectedly at our house in Mill Valley, California, and announced that eight of his Sardinian friends were coming to dinner. Pete (a strict vegetarian) said they might like steaks, and that they had ravenous appetites. Devi and I barbecued about half a cow, and our guests devoured every morsel. Now we were on their turf, and they seemed determined to return the favor tenfold.

The second night we were on the island, Pete’s good friends, Giancarlo and Pia, took us to an old Sardinian farmhouse that had been converted into a restaurant. It was a simple, rustic place perched high on a rocky hill. The restaurant had small windows, rough beams, and wide plank floors. One wall was covered by an enormous hearth with a whole polished juniper trunk for a mantle. There were only two tables in the entire place, but each could accommodate twenty diners.

Our table was crowded with people who knew each other from Meridiana Airlines, and when we walked into the room, the party was already in full swing. Everyone was drinking full-bodied Nepenthe wine, yelling, gesticulating, and dandling babies on their knees. Soon after we arrived, a violent storm kicked up. Since the old house was perched on a hillside, the whole place seemed to twitch in the wind, and the iron chandeliers flickered as bolts of lightening illuminated the sky. This didn’t faze the diners alone bit. They just battened the wooden shutters and carried on their revelry with an air of camaraderie that seemed to hold the storm at bay.

The restaurant was family-owned, and a different family member presented each dish with a flourish. The first course included huge trays of salami and prosciutto accompanied by platter-sized sheets of Sardinian flatbread called panne carasau. The bread was drizzled with virgin green olive oil and sprinkled with rock salt. Next came zuppe gallurese, a delicious meat, bread, and cheese casserole that was a cross between pizza and lasagna.

Because we were guests, everyone at the table insisted we have seconds and thirds. I mistakenly thought the salami and prosciutto course was the appetizer, and the zuppa gallurese was the main course, so I happily complied, leaving just enough room for dessert. But we weren’t anywhere within shouting distance of dessert. After everyone praised the proprietor’s zuppa gallurese, his wife emerged from the kitchen with a huge dish of malluredos, small pasta shells covered with cheese and tomatoes. People kept filling our glasses with wine and shouting “Mangia! Mangia!” But after two helpings of pasta, I had to rub my stomach and wave my napkin in surrender.

“What are you doin’?” Giancarlo said pleasantly. “You canna stop now. The pasta dishes are only … the begeening. You insult the owner if you don’ eata the main course. Itsa delicious.”

He was right. The next dish on the menu was cinghiale, thin slices of wild boar in a savory brown sauce. It was one of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten, but it was only marginally better than the fifth course, a whole roast suckling pig, borne triumphantly from the kitchen on a coffee table–sized cork platter garnished with myrtle branches. It took two men to carry it. The suckling pig was obviously the highlight of the feast, because it was met with lusty cries of “Bellissimo!” from all the diners.

By this point, it seemed evident that dining out in Sardinia was something of a gustatory marathon. No one’s ever accused me of being a piker at the dinner table, but these guys were way out of my league. They ate plate after plate with boundless enthusiasm. From time to time, one of the men would glance at my ample stomach and raise an eyebrow as if to say, “You obviously know you’re way around a dinner plate, so how come you’re just nibbling tonight?”

After a plate of suckling pig, I really was nibbling. I barely made it through the salad course and a dessert called origliette—fried dough drizzled with honey and dusted with powdered sugar. After that, all that was left was rich Italian coffee and three or four bottles of a 100-proof Sardinian moonshine called filo ferro or “iron wire.” It got that name because the Sards used to hide bottles of this stuff from Italian revenuers by burying them in the dirt and marked the spot with thin iron wires attached to the bottlenecks. As you might expect, filo ferro can take the paint off a tractor.

When it looked like the orgy was winding down a bit, and a few filo ferros had loosened my tongue, I turned to Giancarlo and asked him, “Is this a normal night out for you guys?”

He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and said, “No, this food, itsa better than usual.”

“No, that’s not what I meant, Giancarlo. The food is wonderful, some of the best I’ve ever eaten.” Giancarlo looked pleased at that. “What I meant is, do people in Sardinia normally eat this much? Where I live, in California, people take the skin off their chicken, order pizza without cheese, drink milk without fat, coffee without caffeine, and soda without sugar. Here, people chow down like it’s their first day out of prison. Yet, compared to the average American, you guys all seem reasonably slim.”

Giancarlo considered this for a moment. He’d been to America several times, so he was in a good position to comment. He said very politely, so as not to hurt my feelings, “Here … I think itsa more important to cook things well. Also,” he said, “there is another trick.”

Oh good. Here it was: the ancient Sardinian secret for consuming massive quantities of meat and pasta without turning into a zeppelin.

“What’s the trick?” I asked excitedly.

“The secret,” he said, “isa to leave the ristorante before midnight.”

“Interesting,” I replied. “Why midnight?”

“Itsa old tradition. If you stay past midnight, the owner muss bring out another pasta dish, and to be polite, you mussa eat it … Anna sometimes thatsa just too much food.”

Since it was past 11:30, and the storm had passed, I figured that was our cue to leave. This was a twenty-minute process, and we nearly missed the midnight deadline. First, we thanked everyone at the table and shook hands with all the family members involved in the preparation of the meal. Then we kissed a dozen people on both cheeks and tottered out into the bracing night air. The storm had passed, and we’d just finished one of the grandest repasts I’d ever seen, read, or heard about. I thought it would be a very long time before we saw its like again.

But as it turned out, it would be less than twenty-four hours. Sardinian hospitality is apparently boundless. We had dinner at Giancarlo and Pia’s house. Then we ate at Gianni and Anna Maria’s house. Then we ate again with Giancarlo’s brother, Mino, and his wife, Birghit. Then again with Pete’s neighbors, Andrea and Adriana. Nearly all of these meals included the eight traditional Italian courses: antipasto, primo piatto, secondo piatto, contorno, formaggio, frutta, dolce, and caffé. And it was all liberally washed down with Sardinian wine, filo ferro, and an aperitif called mirto.

The grandest meal of all took place on our last evening in Sardinia. It was a modest seven-hour affair in a small inn called the Hotel Montenegro. Once again, this restaurant was hidden way up in the Sardinian hills, and I doubt very many tourists have been there. This time, it was a seafood feast. The first dish was truly memorable—mussels in a sublime garlic, wine, and olive oil sauce. It was, far and away, the best shellfish I’ve ever eaten, and everyone employed little pieces of bread called scarpetti—literally, little shoes—to sop up the last of the sauce. After that came crustino—bread topped with chopped tomato and fresh basil. Then—in succession—octopus in olive oil, pasta with fish roe, and risotto blackened with squid ink. By then, we were pretty much ready for the main course: a platter of prawns, squid, and two types of fish called orato and taglia. We finished with roasted raddichio, cake, and coffee.

There was so much food, it was like a Bible story—or The Flintstones. In fact, at the end of the meal, I mentioned to Giancarlo’s brother, Mino, that we had a cartoon in America called The Flintstones, in which the main character, Fred, ate like a Sardinian. Apparently, they also broadcast The Flintstones in Italy, where it’s called Gli Antenati, or The Ancestors. Since we were well into the filo ferro, all the men at the table started doing Fred Flintstone imitations in Italian, bellowing “No, no, Dino,” and “Wilma, dammi il bastone.”¹¹

As we walked out the door I asked Pete what a feast like this might cost. He said no more than about $25 per person.

“Are you kidding?” I asked incredulously. “All that for twenty-five bucks.”

“That’s why you should stay out of Porto Cervo,” said Pete, referring to the ultra-chic tourist town on Sardinia’s nearby Costa Smeralda, “They charge you five times as much, and the food isn’t nearly as good.”

We actually did go to Porto Cervo twice—once for dinner with a friend of Devi, who happened to be on the island, and once with Giancarlo’s sister-in-law, Birghit, who gave us a tour of the $1,000-a-night Cala di Volpe resort where she worked. It was all very elegant, very exclusive, and very expensive—just as you’d expect. And I suppose if you had a few extra mil lying around, Porto Cervo would be as good a place as any to drop some of it. Still, Devi and I thought the entire town looked like a cross between Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Pirates of the Caribbean. We felt fortunate that Pete, Giancarlo, and their friends had shown us the real Sardinia—an earthy, gregarious place that was infinitely more comfortable.

Devi was also gratified to see her father so well settled in Sardinia. Ever since he left Mumbai for an American education at age fifteen, Devi’s father has been hovering somewhere between mother India and the West. Now he had finally landed in a small, out-of-the-way place where everyone adored him.

One day at lunch, Pete’s friend Mino told us the story of a Norwegian couple who decided to sail around the world. They left Oslo, and went port-to-port down the western coast of Europe and through the Mediterranean. When they landed in Sardinia, they only expected to stay for a week or two. But, like us, they were enchanted by the island’s rugged beauty and ancient brio. According to Mino, the Norwegians’ round-the-world trip ended in Sardinia and never resumed.

When Mino finished the story—which may or may not have been apocryphal—everyone at the table looked at us expectantly, like maybe we would do the only reasonable thing and linger amongst the congenial folk of Sardinia. On one level, it was tempting. Who wouldn’t want to stay on a fabulous island with white beaches, crystal-clear water, and jagged mountains? And who wouldn’t love a place full of exquisite food, good wine, and warm hearts? We had to move on, of course. We’d only just started our journey, and there was a whole world left to see. But as we boarded the ferry to Rome, we could hear Sardinia’s siren song.

¹¹ “Wilma, hand me my club.”