follow the flavor
THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A FOOD STORY. It was supposed to be a story about eating baby anchovies in a stew of Calabrian chilies and spooning spicy, fatty ’nduja sausage onto crunchy bread. I pictured myself sampling this fiery, peculiar food while sitting beside the Tyrrhenian Sea, watching a horizon specked with Old World swordfishing boats. I saw myself tipsy on wines I’d never heard of and imagined myself drunk on a fresh love of Italian food, the food of “my people,” whatever that means for a second-generation Italian American raised in rural Northern California, far from the East Coast epicenters of Italian immigrant culture and farther still from Italy itself. But by my second night in Calabria, I already had a hunch this wasn’t going to be such a tidy story.
After landing in Naples, my husband, Tim, our two-year-old daughter, Roxie, and I drove south for four hours on the autostrada, a raceway in the shadow of Vesuvius, and arrived in Altomonte. The medieval town stands atop a hill in the northern interior of Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot and among the country’s least touristed regions. We were staying at an agriturismo, which I had assumed would be a rustic farmhouse surrounded by orchards and fields and grapevines. To my surprise, the luxurious Hotel Barbieri looked like a modern business hotel with world flags lining its driveway. Exhausted, we staggered to dinner at La Cantina, a stone tavern beside the town’s nearly 700-year-old church. The restaurant, also owned by the Barbieri family, didn’t offer us a menu. Instead, we asked for wine, and soon after, plate after plate began to crowd the table.
There were slightly pickled sweet Tropea onions, uncommonly delicious vinegar-doused zucchini, salty ribbons of uncooked eggplant, house-made bread with mulberry jam, , and cheese. Every dish was delicious. What grabbed me most, though, were the crispy, airy. They were sweet and smoky, slightly spicy, and a tad bitter. To my delight, they would be served with every meal during our time in Altomonte. At breakfast the next morning, which we ate on the hotel patio beneath blooming linden trees, cruschi were served alongside an olive oil–fried egg, a simple pairing that made me want to never eat eggs any other way.
