Smart Move, Going for Pasta Over the Lumberjack Brunch When in Italy
Smart Move, Going for Pasta Over the Lumberjack Brunch When in Italy
Spaghetti aglio e olio in Turin
A woman is screaming in the apartment above us.
We don’t know what she’s screaming about, but she’s doing it at such a pitch that no one, presumably including whomever she’s screaming at, can understand anything. Residents have come out on their balconies to see what’s going on, pedestrians have stopped to listen, their thumbs on their mobile phones, ready to call the police if glass starts to shatter.
We’ve come for Sunday brunch at Slurp!, a well-known restaurant off Via Vittorio Emanuel II. It’s a pleasant little place with a cute balcony on the sidewalk, napkins and tablecloths in bright, primary colors, and lots of chatty young locals in sunglasses, kissing each other and chatting away their hangovers.
The menu is a bit of a disappointment, though. They offer something called the Lumberjack Brunch, which as far as I can tell involves a massive pile of eggs, sausages, pastry, salmon, and plenty else. It’s also 18.50, which is a bit beyond our budget, especially since we spent 70 euros getting drunk last night.
There is a pause in the din. Perhaps they’ve made up? Jo gets the salmon sandwich and I go for the spaghetti aglio e olio, largely because of the price, and because hey, we’re in Italy! While we wait for our meals, the screaming begins again.
When the food arrives, I ask the waitress, “You have no idea what’s going on here?”
“Well, they sometimes scream,” the waitress replies. “They are a couple, two women. They fight sometimes.”
Both the spaghetti and the smoked salmon are fantastic. Simple dishes done right—this is why we’ve come to Italy, to eat our way through the day in the mountains and Mediterranean sunlight. It feels like an Italian cliché made flesh: a Sunday at noon, with little cars going past, chatty, smoky locals, the al dente pasta, the lady above us screaming blue murder.
Photo by: Jo Turner.