I ate a perfect dish the other day and I was lucky enough to be with friends who were able to document the whole experience.
Trista and Cappy have visited us before in Umbria and they are on the A-list, as far as we’re concerned. They’re the easiest, breeziest houseguests in the business. One day, we were noodling in the fridge, trying to concoct a lunch out of various leftovers – very high-level leftovers, I may say – when Jill came up with an idea.
“Have we ever taken you guys to Pettino?” So much for leftovers. Pettino is a tiny village about ten miles (and two thousand feet of altitude) from our house. We jumped in the car and slowly made our way up the twisty hill. At around 800 meters above sea level, we started to see the striped poles on the side of the road that are used in the winter to measure the snowfall. We still had 300 meters more to climb. Pettino boasts a population of 74 inhabitants and many more sheep. The only commercial building that I know of is the small inn that houses the Trattoria Pettino. This was our lunch destination.
Normally, one encounter with an old bear would terrify a person. It would probably scare a person out of the wilderness and into solitude
for an unforeseeable amount of time. It would most likely be an
experience worth putting behind and never having to relive. In fact,
the only person I have ever read of, other than circus acts and zoo
trainers, to have ever made his life about becoming friends with old
bears is Mr. Timothy Treadwell, who was deemed Grizzly Man by Mr.
Werner Herzog in a 2005 documentary by the same title. Treadwell was
the victim of one of the old bears he had become friends with during
his life in the wilderness with them.
The first time I ate at Coco Lezzone in Florence, it was at the invitation of film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who knows a thing or two about Italian cooking: 