"Get them the fuck out of here!"

Sorry for the salty title but Jeff said that's what it should be. I agreed.

We were in a storied restaurant in Siena, Osteria delle Logge, which is owned by the fine Brunello producer, Gianni Brunelli. The food was excellent, very traditional Tuscan cuisine with no newish touches. The veal cheeks on pureed potatoes were a poem. Brunelli's 2003 brunello Riserva (10€ a glass) was balanced and pleasing with none of the jamminess you might expect from that vintage.

OK, so why the headline?

The place was lousy with Yanks. Some were discreet and well-mannered. But there were two adjoining tables with a total of about 12 of our countrymen who got louder and LOUDER as lunch went on. Shrieking, screaming, cackling. They drowned out all conversation at the other tables in the small dining room.

A table of elderly, genteel Italian ladies kept eyeing the three of us as if we were to blame. But WE weren't the ones with the cartoon clothing (did J Crew throw up on those old Midwestern assholes??) and WE weren't the ones who were so obnoxiously loud.

Maybe it was me who provoked them. At one point I did say, perhaps less sotto voce than I believed, "Will they shut the fuck up?"

All was tranquillity after they left. We talked, finished our wine and coffee and emerged serene, content and, as certain brilliant wordsmiths have been known to say, "tired but happy."

---

I've been away for a week and so many things have shaken America. The financial crisis...John McCain's morph into a raging populist....the start of Sarah Palin's meteoric fall into ultimate, irrelevant triviality. And then there's the late emergence of commander in chief, all grim-faced and everything, reading a statement addressing the crisis with all the informed passion of a Sarah Palin speaking at Brotherhood Week.

Hmmm. Do I really want to go home next week?

(Italians to each other: "Get him the fuck out of here!")

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Comments

[gianpaolo]

ah, so you went there after all! Good. And you are well mannered because you drink good wines, that's what it is.