Photo Courtesy katieparla.com
Sitting in the O’Hare International Terminal one rain damp spring midnight four years ago—lightning splintering the far off horizon, dotting the tarmac with warning-light flashes of foreboding—fidgeting, running through end-of-life litany, fourth quarter armpit sweat streaking, I found myself ready for a honeymoon. Or not ready, exactly. The ticket in my hand said “Istanbul.” But I couldn’t quite figure how I’d arrived here, couldn’t quite resign myself. To the point where I was the guy getting scoffs, the guy standing, stretching, unable to sit, up to the ticket counter, to the window, doing grandpa-level calisthenics in an annoying display of physical ADD. I wanted to explain to everyone else: This was my first time overseas. And going from zero-to-Turkey seemed like taking driver’s ed in a Ferrari. Like foregoing high school ball for the NBA. I didn't even know what sumac was.
Later, the bird cutting through the night and storm, passengers dozed around me, highlighting my lack of cool. I walked the aisles, avoiding blood clots, I sat sweaty palmed, continued to impulsively smash next on my Spotify playlist. Insatiably punchy, I ordered gratis cocktails until annoyed stewardesses disappeared behind the dark curtain in the middle of the Atlantic night. Now at 30-some thousand feet I fully realized my dearth of foresight—I lacked even the wherewithal to ask my doctor for some Xanax.
My worried mind did have one piece of security though. Even as From Russia With Love played on my iPad, previewing my destination as a mosque-peppered landscape of calls-to-prayer that seemed exotic even by James Bond standards, I knew, buried within the folds of my carry-on, with a backup in my back pocket, with further reserve copies saved in the Cloud, and plenty emailed to parents, siblings, cat-sitters, etc, was a manicured, bullet-pointed itinerary of eating places from Istanbul to Rome to Naples to Positano and back again. Nearly every restaurant was planned, with alternatives, coffee stops, cocktail destinations, snacks—so many snacks—by the travel guides of writer Katie Parla. wife dozed. She trusted me. She knew I had it covered, that I was good at this kind of thing. The kind of thing being not actually the kind of thing that anyone can be good at. The kind of thing built on reading, research, or, in other words, just the exhaustive following along of people who actually are good at this kind of thing.
Parla first had me at DiFara—the Brooklyn pizza institution universally lauded, adored, dominating of all Best Of lists. He cuts the basil. With scissors. Nobody can get past that. She disregarded the entire enterprise in not so subtle shades of: “sucks.” At once it made me think on my experience there—that sense of pizza pilgrimage, the long train ride, the unhip heart of old Brooklyn; but the regular gas oven, the long wait, the grease, the trying to convince myself. Dammit, I thought, she’s right. DiFara isn’t that good. Aside from a few outlier local contrarians, nobody I’d come across had taken this tone before. Denigrating pizzaiolo Dom DeMarco was on par with belittling Santa Claus. And she did it based primarily on the use of low grade olive oil. It was so pretentious, so right. She called it a “Q express train ride to stomach cramps.” The piece, in Food Republic, gave a full gut sense of everything I liked, like, about the work of Anthony Bourdain, Jonathan Gold, Helen Rosner—caustic, knowing, it was haughty and condescending in precisely the way you want your anesthesiologist to be. This is your lunch, but this is my life, she seemed to say. For those of us who measured a trip to Rome in the number of meals and not nights, she suddenly appeared to be a necessary kind of authority figure. Who else to trust? Throughout her work she seemed at once passionate, in love, and yet, voraciously, aggressively, dismissive. Critical to the point of spite. Logically, philosophically, it seemed clear: How could you have one extreme without the other? If you like everything you like nothing. And then you might as well stay in your hometown, go to Olive Garden.
So we followed along. It felt we had no choice. Our concierge seemed happy, impressed even, by our request to make reservations in native tongue at a blue-tiled fish spot near the Bosphorus. Then there was first-lunch kofta and no turning back: red chile-flecked, flattened meatball wedges with beans and foreign peppers. By the time of our first Roman meal, we were literally tromping, through Testaccio like it was just another, only slightly less familiar neighborhood in Milwaukee. Filled with confidence, a cocky know-what-to-order swagger, emboldened by pocket Parla, her riding along in iOS form, we strutted toward burrata with anchovies, cacio e pepe. Eventually there was the carbonara with guanciale, in an impossibly romantic wine cellar, with a bite so beautiful I cried. And there was gricia, an ancient stone’s throw from the Parthenon, somehow still miles from anything so Rick Steves, where it was my wife’s turn to get emotional, lunchtime wine-drunk and in fear of only last bites in life. There was craft beer on Via Portuense, there was a plethora of artichoke hearts. Crackly Roman pizza seemed slung with a ridealong lesson—my hip pocket lecture cribbed from Parla, one for anyone that will listen, that wants to know what exactly Roman pizza is. There were the Neapolitan pizzas, all the doughy wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas, in Naples, selections from a food tour feature highlighting her expertise in the Houston Chronicle. There were twisty, slopey back alleys off of Istanbul’s teeming Istiklal Street, us craving Parla-endorsed craft cocktails, so befuddled a stranger accosted us, knowing we needed directional help. There were last night mezze's, where we propped ourselves upright, yawning from two weeks of road-tested marital bliss, through the endless customs check crawl in Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, all for one last dinner and snack, one more bullydown of baba ghanoush, smoked fishes, in a second story place hidden on a maze-like street of Beyoglu that our hotel concierge had never heard of.
Aside from requisite Bourdain spots, an homage at the site of Gandolfini’s last meal, and a tourist-trap or two for a view, Parla was responsible for maybe 90% of our stops. 90% of full life affirmation, new chapter celebration. The dozens of alternatives, the could have beens, the next time’s, the “maybe we should have’s…” remain litanized in a dusty but oft pondered Google doc. For idle daydreaming, for hopeful mind meandering, for Kerouac-ish yearning when it’s gray and forever winter March in Milwaukee, and we need to remind ourselves that, one time at least, maybe sometime again, we did so much.
Late one night in Rome, we found ourselves with Parla-approved reservations at a museum piece-feeling restaurant called L’Arcangelo. You could hear a pin drop as we walked through the door. At once, instantly and collectively, they didn’t like us. Stupid Americans read legibly on furrowed eyebrows. They wondered how we would desecrate their sanctuary. Still, we drank deep, the wine and the outrage, took it as vindication, validation. We pounded tender supplizio, soulfully spiced amatriciana, laughed subtly at our waiter’s disdain, assured in our order, huddled together conspiratorially in our marginal otherness. We followed the vibe back across the Tiber, feeling the eternal candlelight romance of a later era Woody Allen scene to a nearly empty cafe Parla had once touted for tea and brownies and a Wu Tang soundtrack. We quickly made friends with the bartender, becoming only slightly dismayed by the intrusion from a soft float of American voices out of a couple huddled in the corner.
Later, rounding the bar for the bathroom, spotting a crooked nose, pairing it at once with Zoolander-esque pants and a distinctly nasal falsetto, did I realize that it was Owen Wilson. Hanging at a lowlight back table, with Kristen Wiig. Maybe we could have done without fellow Americans. Maybe it was an unnecessary touch of Hollywood, a famous person anecdote for future cocktail parties, a chance bit of big dealism. But emboldened by Campari, Peroni’s, I casually stopped Wilson as they brushed by us on the way out. We briefly exchanged lines from The Royal Tenenbaums. He was appreciative, shook my hand. I thanked him for the film, for the character, for all of Eli Cash. He laughed. Kristen Wiig laughed. It was impossible not to feel like a Talking Heads song, like we were in the right place. Exiting into the night, I whispered “Vamanos amigos” to my wife. Our laughter bounced around timeless cobblestones, the only people in the world, but for one silent, third wheel partner gently nudging us. Properly, for maybe one more Negroni. Through the cacophony of Yelp and the cavalcade of internet dickheadedness, everybody thinking themselves a critic, all the influencers, everyone their own self-assured tastemaker, we seemed to have found just the right person to tag along behind. The right person to show us the world.
Katie Parla’s Food of the Italian South: Recipes for Classic, Disappearing, and Lost Dishes was released on March 12.
Parla will be at Glorioso’s (1011 E. Brady St.) on Friday, March 15, for a cooking demo and book signing, and Anodyne (2920 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.) on Saturday, March 16 for a meet and greet and hang with Neapolitan pizzas and wine.
