Early Sunday morning on NPR in Syracuse is pretty calm, sedate stuff. Normally.
On an early Sunday morning in mid-January I was emptying the dishwasher and making a pot of coffee with the radio on in the background, bleary eyed, trying hard not to stumble and break the dishes that I was putting away. Then I heard something about Florence.
The program was Inside Europe broadcast by Deutsche Welle Radio. Normally on Sunday morning it is the caffeine that wakes me up. This morning it was Deutsche Welle Radio. The announcer mentioned something about a person who is taking people to try real food in Florence.
Food. Florence. Suddenly I was alert
Here's a link to the audio from Deutsche Welle Radio. The clip is about 7 minutes long.
The link to the audio is under AUDIOS AND VIDEOS ON THE TOPIC. It's worth listening to.
The reporter takes you to the Sant'Ambrogio Market, the market we go to most days while we're in Florence. The reporter stops at the stand of a person named Urbano Innocenti, a guy we visit every time we go to the mercato (that is, the local market.) You'll hear Urbano saying "The best in the world ..." in the background and he's correct. Everything he sells is excellent. He also flirts will all the women.
Then it's onto a butcher in the same market who describes the ideal Florentine porterhouse steak.
Finally, they walk from Mercato Sant'Ambrogio a few blocks to Vestri. The report describes Vestri's gelato as the best in Florence. The person being interviewed is right on this. There are lots of good gelato places in Florence but Vestri is excellent. The reporter, however, fails to mention that this is more of a chocolate shop than a gelato shop and there are chocolate goodies everywhere. The piles of chocolate turn into mountain ranges of chocolate at Easter time.
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| Toni Mazzaglia (right) and her colleague, Pam Mercer |
The interview involved places we go to most days and Annette and I wondered if we’d cross paths with this person who haunts some of the same places that we haunt. Fortunately, we did meet her and, not surprisingly, it was in front of Urbano Innocenti’s small shop in Mercato Sant’Ambrogio.
The woman who was interviewed in the Deutsche Welle Radio story was Antoinette Mazzaglia. She goes by Toni. She has a business leading visitors to Florence on tours to try the best of the tastes that Florence has to offer. She has a web site, of course:
She also has a blog where she shares her opinions about eating and everything associated with eating. Here's the address:
In her blog she has an amusing discussion regarding bruschetta, a word that is always mispronounced by Americans (because that "sch" cue in the middle of the word is a booby trap; In Italian it's pronounced "sk" as in skate in English, not as "sh" in shame.) She has a few choice words on the subject in her blog:
“Most of all, I am upset with anyone who owns an Italian restaurant and pronounces bruschetta wrong. There is just no excuse. If you are charging people for an Italian dish (with a 500% profit margin!) you should throw in the f%#@king proper pronunciation! No excuses.”
Toni is a transplanted Italo-American but you can tell she's Italian at heart, not because of her last name, but because her blog is all about the fundamental Italian subjects of family and food.
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