Buon Appetito! Adventures in Italy

Gianna downed oxtail broth like a glass of milk & moved on to pickled zucchini.

I had high hopes that Gianna’s first trip out of the country was going to change her eating habits forever. How could it not? We were in Italy, Florence to be exact, the land known for delicious meals like ribollita, the famed Tuscan soup made with leftover bread, Parmigiano-Reggiano and white beans.

Even though we ‘snacked-up’ before the trip, equipped with everything from juice boxes to Cheddar Bunnies to fruit squeeze pouches, I was determined to break Gianna of her mundane daily eating routine. There would be breakfasts of Nutella and toast in her future, and maybe a nibble of some prosciutto di Parma.

At her first dinner at a family-friendly Florentine restaurant, spaghetti (or Spaghetti-O’s as she calls them) was her priority. To my chagrin, the waiter was all too quick to oblige, making the familiar spaghetti with butter (olive oil, in this case)

appear in aninstant, followed by an orange soda (aranciata). Gianna felt right at home. I snuck in a fried artichoke, which I lovingly passed off as a ‘French fry.’

Her second dining experience at Cibreo, an upscale trattoria in the Santa Croce district, was a lot more refined and a lot less kid-friendly. The restaurant had come highly recommended and was at the top of my list of must-trys. As my anticipation for the meal grew, so did my stress. The first thing I noticed: No menu. Translation: no spaghetti. No worries, I thought to myself, Gianna will just eat something else. As she sat patiently with her amuse bouche untouched in front of her (chicken liver pate on a sun-dried tomato crostini with pickled zucchini), I was hoping I would hear the word “pasta” come out of the waiter’s mouth as she recited the dinner choices to us. “Trippa Insalata, (the edible stomach lining of a cow), polenta, ricotta flan, calamari stew…” Eventually, I was able to pick up on a magic word: noodle. Something to entertain Gianna’s palate and keep my nerves at bay: Okay, it was a noodle made of Parmigiano-Regianno in an Oxtail Broth, but still: BINGO!

When the food arrived, I quickly took the ‘noodles’ out of the broth and placed them on a plate. Her response: “Where’s my spaghetti, Mommy?” With an unconfident grin, I moved the plate closer. To my surprise, it was the oxtail broth that caught her eye. She downed it like a glass of chocolate milk, praising its deliciousness. After that she moved on to the pickled zucchini, wiping out the entire bowl, then munched on some potato bread and a couple of grissini. I kept my fingers crossed that she’d take a bite of the chicken liver pate crostini still on her plate, but that was pushing my luck. But all in all, pretty good for a two-and-a-half year-old.—Nicole Denis