Recipes for Trouble

Sometimes, a food, a piece of art, a window on a wall, can catch you unawares.

We stumbled out of the Venice Biennale, dazzled, overstimulated, hungry. We had just seen shafts of golden threads by Brazilian artist Lygia Pape; an evocative piece about immigration in Europe by Polish American artist Krysztof Wodiczko, shadows of immigrants peering in from outside, and an audio Babylon of their stories; an installation of rope made from human hair by an artist from India, and a simulated audio guide by an artist from United Arab Emirates, commenting ironically on art tourism. My eyes and ears were full of the beauty, grief, humour, and determination of a world of artists; my people, my colleagues.

How on earth do you pick out a restaurant after all that?

I.Want. A. Bowl. Of. Cheesey. Old-School. Spaghetti. I announced to the Literary Tour Guide. By then we’d eaten fish lasagna; crespelli with pine nuts, cheese, raisins and arugula saucei; gnocchi with crab sauce. We’d had torte with our coffee, and cappuccino with our breakfast. We’d had everything except spaghetti with tomato sauce.

OK. She said in her agreeable Maritime way. How. About. Here.

The restaurant she was gesturing to was but fifty metres from the Biennale entrance. What, no hunt, no scanning of menu after menu, no exhaustive culinary overview?

Uh. No. I don’t think so. I said. The. Menu. Is. Translated. Into. English. And German. I said. That’s. A. Very. Bad. Sign.

The LTG sighed. You. Said. Old. School. Here it is. This is where we eat.

And so we shared a big bowl of cheesey old school pasta arrabiata. The noodles were lovely and firm, the sauce was made from fresh tomatoes and was sweet without being cloying. The waiter left a bowl of parmigianno on our table, an unbelievable extravagance.

The light, clear and luminious, highlighted an ochre wall. We talked about the art.We ate those noodles up.

We both agreed it was the best meal we had in Venice.

Have you ever been surprised by the simplest of foods? Did a person or a flavour or an artwork ever unsettle you because they were so straightforward, utterly direct and clear?

The Literary Tour Guide, with whom I am traveling to Venice, insists on taking a coffee break at the Marco Polo airport when we arrive. Taking Luggage To The Hotel By Bus Is The Most Painful Part Of The Trip. She says. So. First. You. Have. Coffee. Recognizing the determined set of her face, knowing better than to argue, I comply.

But oh what coffee. And rectangles of pizza; and square-shaped calzone. I see sprigs of rosemary, slices of Serrano ham, grilled zucchini. Don’t even get me started on the pastries.

And so begins our vacation in Venice.

We float to our hotel on The Lido via vaporetto, Venice’s water bus, which I have dubbed The People’s Gondola. Fifteenth century pale terracotta facades with ravaged shutters; pillared mansions teetering over water, and domes of churches float by.

Once we check into our hotel it’s snack time again. The Literary Tour Guide and I like to eat every few hours. We find a mediocre restaurant where even the most banal of salade nicoises sings with fresh sweet baby tomato, anchovy, and gorgeous arugula. I have peach gelato with flavours as rounded and sensual as summer. A delicatessan down the road from our hotel is arrayed with exquisite salads, meats, and cheeses.

Neither the LTG nor I take many vacations and when we do, they’re justified by work (indeed, this trip was motivated by two conferences next week, one in Amsterdam, another in Glasgow).

The Blue-eyed Stranger asked me recently, How. Do. You. Indulge. Yourself. (I had just told her about yet another pair of delectable shoes I hadn’t purchased).

A slow stroll along narrow Venetian streets as the sun begins to set.

A simple appetizer of warm cooked shrimp, calamari and sardines coated in olive oil and lemon.

A stolen jazz concert at a café on St Mark’s Square: we can’t afford the 8 Euro coffee so we install ourselves further down the arcade, eat Italian chocolate and talk about our mothers, our work, and the next day’s art excursion, as rain drizzles down, illuminating ancient cobblestones.

She has been my friend for twenty years or more. We met at a party, or we met at a demonstration, or a lesbian film screening, in Montreal. She would often appear at my door in her trademark rollerskates; I can still remember the sound of her clomping up the stairs, taking them off only when she entered my apartment. I remember that we used to talk for hours, a pot of tea growing cold as we sifted the fine details of politics, love and art through our words.

Now, The Literary Tourguide lives in Berlin. Tour guide by day, writer by night, married and mother of a young boy, she is beyond busy. Still, she insists on meeting my plane at Tegel Airport at 8 in the morning and except for the missing rollerskates she looks exactly the same.

Soon enough, we are at a café on the Spree River, sharing a wedge of apfelkuchen mit sahne (apple cake with cream) and delicious coffee. The changes she has experienced, which parallel historic changes in Europe and Berlin, are marked not by appearances but by the way she talks, the stories she tells. Berlin, she tells me, is going through a Jewish renaissance, result of years of what she used to call “memory work”. As a tourguide for Holocaust survivors and their descendants, she is fully part of this moment. On the way to the café she proudly showed me the new skyline of Berlin, where old buildings mesh with new, in a conscious architectural strategy of intervening into history.

The cake is light as air, yet rich with butter and cream. My body settles into European ways of being with familiar discomfort. I feel more myself here, in this slower, older environment. And I feel so North American . Where’s. Our. Cake. I mutter as we sit with our coffee. The. Coffee. Comes. First. Says The Literary Tour Guide, matter-of-factly. You’re. Supposed. To. Relax. And. Take. Your. Time.

The cake does come and in the meantime she shows me photos of her 90-something mother in New Brunswick, provides advice for my heart, tells me more stories. Around us, Berliners read books, sip coffee, drink beer. The river glows, in a sudden brief moment of sunlight.

My dad was the breakfast-maker when I was growing up. Never anything fancy: boiled eggs, rye toast, kasha, and in the summer, cornflakes with strawberries.

I continue the basic breakfast trend. Granola and fresh fruit, oatmeal and nuts, or toast with almond butter. But I use only the best bread: St John’s Bakery, or Dufferin Grove Park’s. The granola is from Harbord Bakery, rich and moist, and the strawberries are local.

The Anti-Poverty Organizer has been known to make me perfect French toast, with Portuguese cornbread and Ontario maple syrup, yogurt and fruit. The Blue-Eyed Stranger makes me the best homefries I’ve ever eaten, and pancakes so light yet wholewheaty they practically float over the plate. When I visit my ma, it’s eggs every morning, fried in a ton of butter, or perfectly boiled, the ubiquitous rye toast filling out the plate.

The Guitar Player made fantastic scrambled eggs. The folks at Fanny Bay produce smoothies that sing. The gay boys running Inn on Somerset in Ottawa leave you to your thoughts at breakfast, and quietly place a plate of queerly over-the-top stuffed baked eggs in front of you.

I get fancier with guests. Frittata with feta cheese, tomatoes and olives. Montreal bagels, cream cheese and lox. Mushroom cheese omelette. For The Novelist, once, I even attempted French toast. The crunch and rustle of the Saturday paper. And always, creamy lattes made with organic espresso.

Breakfast is pre-discursive, intuitive, non-linear. Breakfast is looser, less rule-bound than any other meal. I love breakfast. Breakfast is love.

Has anyone made you breakfast lately? What will you make for yourself? For someone else? Where will you eat it, and what will it be?