A Slice of Verona

Rashmi Uday Singh’s

Good Food Guide

I see the world with my mouth! And whoever said, all the world's your oyster, definitely had me in mind. How else can you explain the fact that when I visit a new city, I prefer to make a beeline to the local restaurant, instead of the local museum ? Even if I hadn't been writing about food for the past twenty years or systematically studying it for my books, I would've still been preferring restaurants to museums. After all, food is more than just flavours and ingredients and nourishment, it is much more. You go to a local restaurant and you can taste, smell, touch, hear and feel the local culture and customs, you can taste living history and that's what is most exciting. Each time, the line between the centuries gets blurred and a delicious timelessness envelopes me. This happens to me again and again in Verona, this 2000-year-old charming historic city of Italy. Just for you. With love. From Verona, the world capital of love immortalised by Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and Juliet’ I bring a restaurant experience of peering at the 200AD ruins through the glass floor of ‘Enoteca Segreta’ (Secret Café) where art history and food flirt outrageously. Of course, I plan to opt for the Opera season in the 1st century Arena. Sit, where the 20,000 strong used to and instead of cheering the gladiators, revel in the operas of ‘Aida’ and ‘Turandot’. But right now I'm at this ‘Enoteca segreta’ where our gracious bachelor host Carlo Neruzzi (also a wine maker) opens very special wines for us and I have a truly Veronese experience. Not only do I eat the local fare (marinated horse meat, polenta, pasta e fagioli (pasta and bean soup) salt cod from Norway (a great favorite here) but find out all about Veronese fare. Here, not only do people eat beef, horse, pork and game birds, polenta is the preferred starch and the quality of radicchio, lettuce and all veggies, and fruits is superlative. All this is due to the remarkable variety of terrain in this Veneto region. All this is topped off by tiramisu created in nearby Treviso. While the spongy fingers, mascarpone cheese, coffee and chocolate dessert are working their magic Monte cheese is served with Lessinia honey (from the nearby mountain range) and it actually tastes terrific together. Our host escorts me to see through the glass floor of the loo, where I have the unique experience of seeing 200AD ruins. They stand mute and still and for the first time in my life I understand the meaning of the words ‘time stood still’.

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