An image of the inverse proportion between quantity and quality.
This is a drastic departure from one of my most deeply held beliefs about my blog, which is to make no recommendations about any commercial enterprise or product. I make plenty of recommendations about behavior, but so far I’ve never mentioned any person or object that was involved in making money.
But the Time has Come to change that. This once. For the simple reason that it just seems wrong to me to keep this place to myself. And since I consider anyone reading these lines as a friend — don’t worry, I’m not going to come visit for the weekend — I would have brought you to this place personally if you were in town. Even if you do come to Venice, you can skip me and just follow the instructions below to a bar/cafe whose coffee is provided by the heavenly host, by means of two women who act like it’s normal to brew something that only the angels are accustomed to drinking.
Even if you don’t care about espresso — I’m going to say, even if you hate espresso — you will be thunderstruck by the ambrosial quality of this liquid. I’m not going to attempt a description because it will make me sound stupid, though I will say its quality is a dazzling blend of aroma, flavor, and texture. Hard to get even one of those to rise above the average. So far, it’s been impossible, even here, in the homeland of coffee, to taste something which gets all three of them totally right.
Lino and I go to the Rialto Market at least once a week, and even if we have no intention of buying anything, we have every intention of stopping here for coffee. The trip could therefore never be called a waste of time.
I want you to go to this place the next time you’re in Venice. If you don’t agree that their coffee is exceptional, I’d like you to tell me what you think is better. I’d really be curious.
It just occurred to me: If they ever thought about making coffee-flavored gelato, they could rule the world.
The cafe is called L'ERBARIA, because it's in the fruit-and-vegetable section of the Rialto market. Like many shops, its name is nowhere to be seen. So all I can tell you is to go to the corner of Calle de le Donzelle and Campo de la Pescaria.
I’ve never thought to ask their names. Does it matter? It’s enough for me that they’re there and that the machine is turned on.
L'Erbaria is at the corner of C.po de la Pescaria and Calle de le Donzelle. If you come by vaporetto, get off at the "Rialto Mercato" stop, take your first right, and it's at the next street, on your left.
If you’ve either flown into/out of Venice, or driven into/out of Venice, you already know that the mainland (a/k/a “the rest of the world”) involves a surprising amount of farmland. Or fields, anyway. It’s not Kansas, true, but there is a noticeable amount of cultivation going on.
Back in Venice, we have a first-rate country option which doesn’t involve going over the bridge. Or getting in a car. We go there in a small boat, rowing.
It’s the island of Sant’ Erasmo — the largest island in the lagoon (3.26 km/s, or 1.25 square miles), though that isn’t what makes it worth knowing about.
It’s farms. Or better, market gardens, though some of them are larger than what we usually think of as gardens, unless the garden were to be Longwood or Stourhead or the Villa d’Este.
We pull the boat onto the beach at #13, where the two brothers labor in their spare time. The "Sapori di Sant' Erasmo" is slightly inland from #12.
I have mentioned Sant’ Erasmo from time to time — odd, perhaps, when you consider that it isn’t on the way to anywhere, and that if you’re not interested in vegetables or biking or mosquitoes, there isn’t much reason to come all the way over here.
Ninety-eight percent (I made that up) of the island consists of comfortably large plots of grapevines, artichokes, peas, asparagus, and whatever else is likely to grow in its appointed season.
The words “Sant’ Erasmo” scribbled on signs stuck among the produce at the Rialto Market always means something special (fresh, local, really good). I eventually discovered that (A) the label isn’t always accurate (fancy way of saying “untrue”) and (B) that I can get them at the source itself. This has made me insufferably demanding now. That may seem a little silly when discussing mere vegetation, but I can taste the difference, and I can really taste how much less expensive they are than at the vendor’s stall in the Big City.
Shopping for vegetables is also a great excuse for an excellent row across part of the lagoon.
We have two sources, so far.
Our first option is a modest but flourishing commercial operation called “Sapori di Sant’ Erasmo” (Flavors of Sant’ Erasmo — not a bad name unless you’ve come here often enough to associate the island with the flavor of mosquitoes). It belongs to Carlo and Claudio Finotello and there is virtually always someone there, ready to sell you some of their produce. If you’re lucky, also a bottle or two of their wine. I don’t drink, but I’m very happy that there’s a place where you can get some real local Raboso.
Sant' Erasmo has canals too. This one leads from the lagoon toward the "Sapori di Sant' Erasmo."If the water weren't so turbid today, you could see what this string is doing: It's attached to a moderately large rubber tube maybe two feet long, which is lying on the bottom waiting to trap any passing eel. Eels check in but they can't turn around and check out. Either red or white grapes make a very appealing local wine.Just looking at all this chlorophyll makes me feel healthy and strong. This little mascareta has been reincarnated as a flower bed. Waste not, want not. And speaking of wanting, as far as I can see, Sant' Erasmo was (and maybe still is) one of the few places on earth where hunger would be virtually unknown. Apart from the fruit and vegetables, there are the fish in the lagoon (or in small fishponds), wild ducks to be hunted, chickens and pigs and goats and anything else you can either find or cultivate. Venice? We don't need no stinking Venice.
The second option is the modest but variegated plot belonging to a man — actually, his aged parents — two steps from where we pull the boat onto the beach near a rumpsprung bar/restaurant called Da Tedeschi. He’s been known to buy artichokes from him that he’s just cut off the stalk for us. Tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant. Only problem is, he isn’t always there. And/or there’s nothing growing that’s ready or that we even slightly want.
The other morning we went ashore near the second option: The plot near the beach, where we found the man (I still don’t know his name) and his brother (ditto) tilling the soil by their parents’ house. Parents nowhere in sight. This is what kids are for.
The older man got to talking with us as we watched his brother working the soil with a broad hoe, preparing it to be sown with tiny little Ukrainian onions all ready to take root.
He imparted the following fragments of information: He retired three years ago after 45 years as a master glassmaker on Murano, work which he started when he was 12 because back then, not so many people went on to study and besides, he didn’t like studying all that much.
That there used to be a big acacia tree right over there (pointing toward the beach) that put out pink blossoms in the spring. They would pick the blossoms, then bread them and deep-fry them, the way people do more commonly now with zucchini blossoms. His expression as he remembered this delicacy told me that it was worth experiencing and that he misses it. I’ve never tried fried acacia flowers, but after having seen his face, I resent the fact that I never had the chance to.
Artichokes: Everyone, even I, knows that Sant’ Erasmo is famous for its “violet” version, and that the salty soil is one factor in their flavor. What I didn’t know is that one plant will put out roots to create four or five other plants, and that a normal plant will produce up to 21 artichokes.
Near the beach, the two brothers (well, one, anyway) are preparing to plant onions.The little Ukrainian onions waiting to return to the soil.
I have now also learned that they can’t be grown in hothouses. You’ll be glad to know I can’t tell you why (we’d be here all day, at this rate), but I believe him when he says that under the big top the plants grow unnaturally tall, produce fewer artichokes than normal, and that the artichokes they do produce are kind of — he made a soggy, wilting sort of grimace — what they would call “fiapo” (FYA-poh). Fiapo is what happens to your grilled-cheese sandwich when you have to leave it to go answer the phone. People can also be fiapo, usually in August.
Unfortunately, artichokes from Sant’ Erasmo have one thing in common with pieces of the True Cross: There are too many of them to be real. In fact, artichokes from Livorno, which are trucked over to Venetian markets, come in so much earlier than the Sant’ Erasmo product that labeling them as local eventually caused serious protest. Telling that little fib will get you a fine, if you’re caught.
Then there was the year of the Big Freeze: His friend had 1,300 peach trees on Sant’ Erasmo. They were all destroyed.
The "violet" artichokes from Sant' Erasmo are famous. The little morsel that's left when you remove those leathery outer leaves is utterly delectable.
But then there was this: The year of the Big Acqua Alta (Nov. 4, 1966, as all the world knows), was the only time Sant’ Erasmo has gone underwater. In fact, he said, the island was like a semi-submerged barena. Nobody had ever seen this happen, but there were two results.
One: All the crops were totally ruined by the salt water soaking. No surprise there.
Two: The following year, they had a mythically great harvest of just about everything. Whatever the Adriatic had taken away with the flood, it more than gave back the next year by means of whatever elements it had brought in. I don’t believe it was just salt, because salting the fields has been a time-dishonored way of destroying future crops for several whiles.
Lino supports my theory that the tide brought something that the salt couldn’t vanquish, because he said that when you raise a sunken boat out of the lagoon, it’s covered with the finest conceivable layer of some kind of material. I’m imagining melted earth that’s been clarified, like butter.
Anyway, that’s just my theory — obviously the fields knew what was happening, so let’s move on. What we do know is that the next summer, the memory of the lost winter harvest had been transformed into a glowing realization that life is, indeed, good.
At least on Sant’ Erasmo.
All the plum trees (Prunus domestica) have bloomed at virtually the same moment. You can't see them but there are hundreds of bees gorging themselves in these blossoms. Later, we'll be eating the fruit, known here as baracocoli (roundish and golden).
There ought to be a special Venetian handshake, or greeting, or food (what? no special food??) to mark this little anniversary.
But I did hear something that sounded like a mystic knock at the year’s door, loud enough to be heard but perhaps not enough to be noticed.
The knock that struck ever so faintly on the old cochlea was delivered at the Rialto market. (You see? Of course food belongs in the picture. I was only testing you.)
These are carletti, and their moment is so fleeting you might not even see them the day you go to the market. Lino forages for them along the lagoon shoreline, and if you don't get them at just the right moment, whatever their parent plant may be will develop them into something inedible. They aren't cultivated anywhere; these little bouquets were picked by somebody, leaf by leaf.Bruscandoli, or wild hops, stay in the market longer than the carletti. Both of these plants make an excellent risotto -- that appears to be their main mission in life.
Instead of an occult greeting, there is an assortment of poetry passed on by the ancients to acknowledge the moment. Once again, it comes from the fathomless store of balladry that Lino memorized as a lad. If his teachers had had any notion that his brain was going to retain all this material far, far into the distant decades — maybe even forever — they might have wondered if it would have been better to have him memorize something else. Like algorithms, or the names of the then-68 member countries of the UN, or all the books of the Bible.
But poetry seems to have turned out to work better, because how often in any day or occasion would it be necessary, or even appreciated, to burst out with all the books of the Bible? Poetry, however, is always the Right Thing to say.
In exactly the same place (and perhaps bucket) where you can buy calicanthus in December, peach blossoms appear for a brief period in early spring.
So this morning, like every March 21, was marked by a spontaneous recitation of the vernal poesy of Giovanni Pascoli and Angiolo Silvio Novaro. Read these to the mental music of blackbirds cantillating in the dawn, and the sound of the truck delivering the branches of peach blossoms from Sicily.
If I had time, I would research the reasons for selling peach blossoms, and not apple or apricot or almond or any other flowering tree. I myself would like to know the reasons, but for now I can only say that these are here because that’s what people do. “People” meaning the growers, sellers, and buyers. So don’t come asking for pear or loquat blossoms or any other frippery.
Valentino, by Giovanni Pascoli. Lino launches into it like greeting an old friend: “Oh! Valentino vestito di nuovo/come le brocche dei biancospini!/Solo, ai piedini provato dal rovo/porti la pelle de’ tuoi piedini…”
Biancospino, or common hawthorn, is one of the first heralds of spring.
Then there are lines he doesn’t remember so I’ll skip those, then the conclusion and the link to March: “… e venne/Marzo, e tu magro contadinello/restasti a mezzo…ma nudi i piedi, come un uccello:/come l’uccello venuto dal mare,/che tra il ciliegio salta, e non sa/ch’oltre il beccare, il cantare, l’amare/ci sia qualch’altra felicita’.”
Valentino is a poor country boy whose widowed mother survives by selling the eggs from their chickens. Winter is brutally hard and he has outgrown the shoes she made for him. The poet compares his bare feet to those of a bird. But then in March come the first signs of spring, and he concludes, “like a bird that came from the sea, that leaps in the cherry tree, and doesn’t know that other than to eat, to sing, to love, there could be any other happiness.”
The second of these classics is a little paean to the soft rain of March, which makes the plants begin to bloom.
Che dice la pioggerellina di marzo? by Angiolo Silvio Novaro:
Che dice la pioggerellina di marzo/che picchia argentina/Sui tegoli vecchi/Del tetto, sui bruscoli secchi/Dell’orto, sul fico e sul moro/Ornati di gemmule d’oro?”
“What says the misty rain of March/that strikes silvery/On the old tiles/Of the roof, on the dry motes/Of the garden, on the fig and on the mulberry/Adorned with buds of gold?”
He goes on to say that winter is past, tomorrow spring will come out, trimmed with buds and frills,with bright sun, fresh violets, the beating of birds’ wings, nests, cries, swallows, and the stars of almond, white… The entire team, in other words, plus cheerleaders.
All this sounds much better in Italian, but in any language these poems and their ilk amount to a deep sigh of relief. Sometimes it’s not so much that spring is here, but that winter is gone. Less winter, more spring. If that doesn’t call for a poem, you may have a soul made of styrofoam.
No offense.
"Quando la rosa mete spin/xe bon el go' e el passarin." When the rose begins to bud, the go' and the passarini are good. In other words, to everything there is a season, and March is the moment for these creatures.The passarini are looking good.
