si mangia bene

The way an Italian indicates that you have a good place in mind for your weekend getaway is short and sweet. You tell them the name of the town, and they say: si mangia bene. (The food is good.) If you tell an Italian where you're going and you don't hear that response... you might want to change your plans.

Si mangia bene will always be the first thing out of their mouth. Which means, of course, that it's the first thing that comes to mind. And we love this idea, that food either makes or breaks a place. It's such a delightful way to rate a city, to judge a region. Forget the chit-chat about architecture. Stop wasting time talking about the art. Let's get straight to the point and discuss whether or not we like the food.

And I think we've made it clear... we like the food.

The last weekend of the year we took an early 3+ hour train ride past dark and frosty fields, past Lake Garda and the snow-covered mountains deep in the distance... to Treviso, in the Veneto. Despite train delays that caused us to miss our connection, and crisp temps that kept us both wadded up in more layers of clothing than I appreciate, my response to anyone considering a visit to Treviso would be a stomach-busting "si mangia bene!"



As soon as you enter the city walls, you're buffeted through street upon street of chocolate and sweet shops. Within our first fifteen minutes in town, we were lured by the siren call of three different chocolate shops. I won't go into the gory details of our inability to resist chocolate because - as everyone knows - resisting chocolate is an overrated and useless skill. Especially in Italy.

A far more commendable skill is Stefano's spot-on restaurant research. Based on his Treviso advance planning, our first item of business was swinging by the restaurant where we would later eat lunch in order to make a reservation. Second item of business: hot chocolate in the chocolate shop across the street.

The petite and cosmopolitan woman whose chocolate shop we visited was the perfect person with whom to discuss hot chocolate texture. In Italy hot chocolate always falls somewhere between pudding and syrup on the viscosity scale. The woman agreed with us that hot chocolate should not be a pudding, because only pudding should be pudding. She also was diplomatic enough to state that the American version, which we described as powder + water, could probably be attributed to cultural norms rather than defective chocolate technology. Her hot chocolate, which had the ideal consistency of a thick drink, happens to be made by melting dark chocolate in milk. It's not too sweet, not too thick, and is perfectly accepting of a little extra sugar swirled in for good measure. It's quite good.

After our hot chocolate we still had a cappuccino and brioche on the brain. We've indulged in this perfect morning combination nearly every Saturday morning that we've lived in Italy and by now it's become something of a staple. In our hunt for a good cafe we went in the direction of what, from a distance, could have been a pastry shop. When we got closer we found something that changed our plans.

It was a cichetti bar - the sort of enoteca we're used to seeing in Venice - and it was full of men working their way through small cups of wine and savory snacks well before noon. Each chunk of bread was covered with slabs of cheese; thin piles of cured meats; pickled and briny vegetables. And for us there was no turning back.



The very idea of cappuccino and brioche flew out the bar room door and all that remained before us was a petite tumbler of red wine and a plate of savory delicacies. And we've never made a better breakfast decision. The next time someone tries to tell me that the breakfast of champions can be found in an orange cardboard box, I'll have to insist that it's actually sitting in a cichetti bar, down a small street in Treviso.

The similarities of this city to Venice don't end at snacking styles. Like Venice, Treviso is also threaded by a fair amount of canals, one of which is crossed by a bridge mentioned by Dante in Il Paradiso. While the canals here are nowhere near as mysterious and complex as Venice's, they do add a nice disturbance to the normalcy of the city and seem to host a fair number of swans and ducks. There's also a wonderful fish and vegetable market found along one of these canals.



Wandering the market is what brought us to one of the most incredible gastronomias that we've had the good luck to visit. After passing stalls piled high with curling magenta radicchio we found "Fermi" at the end of the market road. It might as well have been bathed in a heavenly glow from above...

Suddenly the lady rolling her motorino halfway up the back of my leg faded into the distance and all that mattered was this beautiful vision of food loveliness. In fact, our New Years Eve meal has Fermi to thank for its ingredients. There was a blended squash with garlic - so perfect on ricotta. A creamy and mild baccala. Delicate anchovies in oil with herbs.



Our lunch at the trattoria was nearly as fantastic. We started with an artichoke soup heavy with tender leaves and topped with two hunks of garlic toast. We moved on to fresh pastas enrobed with thick sauces and ended with cake, café and grappa. In truth only one of us had the grappa but we tend to share everything else.

We spent the remainder of our afternoon shopping under porticos, enjoying what seems like a very prosperous city by the looks of its high end shops. When we stopped in an optics boutique to buy a certain someone a gorgeous pair of Persol sunglasses, we received our final mission for the day: we were to visit the first pair of eyeglasses ever painted.

The owner of the optics shop sent us high-tailing it over to the Sala del Capitolo dei Domenicani, to see the frescos painted by Tomaso da Modena in 1353. While "Tomaso da Modena" (Tom from Modena) doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Leonardo da Vinci" (Leo from Vinci) we ditched the idea of buying fresh pasta to take back to Milan for dinner and ran over to see the frescos instead. A ringing endorsement, no?



We had to rush because our train was scheduled to depart exactly one half hour from the moment we learned of the frescos' existence. So we ran to the church where we thought the frescos were. And then we ran to the place where the frescos actually were. And there was no one there so we stood alone in the room and looked hard for the man with the glasses. After we found him we bought some postcards and then made it to our train on time.

I should also mention that there was a cheddar cheese sighting earlier in the day. While you'd never confuse this country with Wisconsin we thought maybe we'd see the stuff sooner. But this was the first time we'd ever seen cheddar cheese in Italy. So for all of those people touring the bel paese with a hankering for the good old orange stuff, Treviso is the place for you.

It's also the place for us. Si mangia bene... and then some.

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Hot chocolate: DolceAMARO cioccolato, 31100 Treviso - Via Inferiore 14 tel. 0422-542815

Cichetti: Hostaria dai Naneti, Vicolo Broli 2, Treviso

Gastronomia: Fermi, Via S. Parisio 15/17 - 31100 Treviso, tel. 0422.540818

Trattoria: TONI del SPIN di Alfredo Sturlese & C., 31100 Treviso, Via Inferiore, 7, Tel. 0422 543 829, www.ristorantetonidelspin.com

Cheddar Cheese sighting: Eredi di Danesin Luigi di Danesin Ferruccio, Corso del Popolo, 28 - 31100 Treviso, tel. 0422.540625, www.danesin.it