Tuesday November 21, 2006

Simple Ideas Did you ever notice how the best ideas are often the simplest ideas?

We recently spent some time on vacation in Tuscany, exploring the beautiful country side and hill towns, visiting churches and museums, and of course, sampling the great food and wine of the region. 

One day we found ourselves at lunch  in Montepulciano at  Osteria Acquacheta (Via del Teatro, 22).  If you're ever fortunate enough to be there, don't miss the opportunity to dine there, assuming you can even get in.   It's a real authentic Italian experience; family run, over flowing with locals, raucous and bursting with abbondanza.  The kind of place where you slam your fist on the table and shout "Bene!" when they drop off your steaming plate of  eggplant Parmesian.  The kind of place where they serve a small miracle of simple bruschetta drenched in local Tuscan olive oil and enough garlic to deter Mussolini, but to try to recreate at home results in a humbling waste of bread and hope. The kind of place where the wine comes by the carafe rather than the bottle.

The kind of place where the darn waiter won't give you a wine glass for your vino.  You have to use your water glass. 

Wait! What's wrong with this picture?  Why would such a perfect place be too lazy to give you a glass for your wine?  They even carefully explain to you that it is a tradition at their restaurant that you only get one glass.  Cheap skates!

But as you progress through your meal and juggle the competing priorities of drinking water and wine, you are forced to alternate between glasses of one or the other.  And thus, you end up getting less inebriated as you slow your wine consumption and switch off with water in between.  Brilliant! 

It turned out to be a natural regulating mechanism and we left the meal perfectly delighted with the food, comfortably soothed by the wine, and well hydrated.

( Nov 21 2006, 04:35:00 PM MST ) Permalink