We went out for dinner with friends, choosing, for a change, the one place in our town that offers something other than Italian cuisine. Not that we don’t all enjoy the many local options for traditional dishes. From pizza to fine dining it is hard to find anything less than a good meal but Italians, certainly down here in the south, aren’t known for embracing foreign cooking, believing absolutely in the superiority of the cooking of their mother, their grandmothers and all things local and just sometimes we miss the chance to explore other culture’s culinary traditions. So, on this Saturday we went to the restaurant at our local hotel for sushi, the one “foreign” cuisine that has caught on around here.
The restaurant was packed, mainly groups of families and friends but seated next to us was a table for two and seated at it were two boys about eleven years old. One of the things that surprised and impressed me when I first moved here was that it was considered perfectly normal for young people to eat out on their own, often it was groups celebrating a birthday out for pizza, sometimes with a parent who arrived to pay but other times you’d see a small group of friends sorting everything for themselves, always well behaved and always knowledgeable about the food.
Glancing over at the adjacent table, we admired the smooth dexterity with which the boys were navigating the four page online menu and placing their order by phone, something that had so far got us baffled.
During the course of the evening the boys had plate after plate delivered to their table. Each selection was discussed and considered, the boys handling their chopsticks, not a common sight in southern Italy, with ease. At the end of the evening they got up, thanked the waiter and went through to pay at the main reception. They weren’t showing off, neither were they uncomfortable at their surroundings and the process, they were just two lads having a pleasant night out. “Bravi” to them and to their parents.