Italy

I love Italian food, and I love food writing and TV shows, so you might think I’d love Stanley Tucci. And yet I find him creepy and his recipes are rubbish. I can’t be the only one. The actor, who I first saw in the brilliant film Big Night, about a Jersey Shore Italian-American restaurant, is probably best known for The Devil Wears Prada, a film I adore. His character in that film did wind me up, but it took a while before Tucci himself got on my nerves. I suppose it began with him coming over all chef, like he’s the new Anthony Bourdain. I kept being told to watch his TV series where he travels around Italy, but the sight of his smug face on my screen turned out to be more than I could bear.

I love Italian food, and I love food writing and TV programmes, so you might think I’d love Stanley Tucci. And yet I find him creepy and his recipes are rubbish. I can’t be the only one. The actor, who I first saw in the brilliant film Big Night, about a Jersey Shore Italian-American restaurant, is probably best known for The Devil Wears Prada, a film I adore. His character in that film did wind me up, but it took a while before Tucci himself got on my nerves. I suppose it began with him coming over all cheffy, like he’s the new Anthony Bourdain. Who cares what Colin Firth eats when he’s round at the Tucci gaff? I kept being told to watch his TV series where he travels around Italy, but the sight of his smug face on my screen turned out to be more than I could bear.

“Wow.” My younger brother stopped still on the runway as we disembarked our plane at Innsbruck. In every direction, snow-capped mountains shot up to the sky. I found myself rubbing my eyes like a cartoon character, while he picked his jaw up off the floor. Delivering us across the border to Brunico, our cab driver felt moved to score the scene. “All this untz, untz, untz music, I can’t do! Phil Collins OK?” The Alps looming majestically on both sides of the road, “In The Air Tonight” blasting comically loud, the journey fast became a core family memory. It felt stupendous, exciting; like your first time seeing Manhattan sparkle in the distance from JFK. “This is the Brenner Pass... and now, Italy. Welcome in Italy!

Summer in Rome. Expectation: breathe the soul of the classics, soak up the history, feel the romance. Reality: breathe in the AC, soak in a pool of sweat, feel ever so slightly unhinged. My plans to indulge in Italy’s time-honored tradition of la passeggiata — strolling around looking stylish, gelato in hand — were quickly nixed by the Cerberus heatwave. Dreams of meandering around perhaps the world’s most famous open-air museum gave way to lying recumbent with a handheld fan. Jumping from the relative cool of a sleeper-train carriage onto the platform at Termini station felt akin to opening an oven door and climbing in. Red alert warnings were issued as the mercury soared toward 119°F.

It’s a mist-steeped weekday morning in the Dorsoduro district. The kind when the rising lagoon licks at the old stones as if trying to devour the city, footsteps echo mournfully between peeling palazzi and even the marble statues seem to hang their heads. But not too early nor too dismal, it turns out, for wine. In Osteria Al Squero — named after Venice’s oldest boatyard, which it faces across the narrow canal — the lights are on. A huddle of Venetian men stands beneath the wooden beams with their grocery bags and small dogs, enjoying un’ombra. It means “shade” in Italian but also, here in the Veneto, a small glass of vino.