Needless to say, the service is attentive here, and the clientele most cosmopolitan (meaning that it is best to go there after nine in the evening). They still admit my particular bele noire, the sad-faced street vendor with the mechanical toy jackass who wiggles his ears to nobody's amusement, but that's a mere detail.
II Pappagallo is not expensive at least considering the culinary splendors you receive in one of Italy's best restaurants. Almost all of the specialties are priced at six hundred lire, less than a dollar. There is a cover charge (including a fat basket of Italian bread and grissini) which amounts to the imposing total of twenty-four cents. At the end of the dinner you arc presented with a liqueur on the house, and a pleasant gesture it is.
Only a short distance away, on a narrow sidestrcct called the Via Sampieri, is a wonderful restaurant which takes you, not back to the Middle Ages, but to the gay eighties. You enter the RISTORANTE SAMPIERI through a bar, pass through an immaculate kitchen whose plump feminine cooks are wreathed in smiles, and straight into the Shades of Victoria. The dining salon is unbelievable, set in the spirit of Arsenic and Old Lace. Seven lampshades, covered with orange lace, extend from the walls on gilded iron brackets. The wallpaper is an indefinite grey-yellow-brown, but is almost concealed by a cavalcade of oil paintings in tarnished gilt frames paintings of harem ladies, watermelons, umbrella pines, lobsters on platters. A huge baroque framed-in-gold mirror is placed catty-corner at one end of the room. On the day of our first visit, a small table was reserved for a special client, a very old gentleman with fine flowing chin whiskers and a rakish grey bowler which he kept on his head all during his luncheon. While he dined he read intently from a fat paper-bound book and never looked up, to our total fascination ion. Everyone is well-dressed, talkative and genial in Sampieri. There is a high quota of monocles, and of French travelers, who have the instinctive faculty of choosing the right place in a foreign city. The proprietor of Sampieri is a handsome man with broad shoulders and a ready smile. He was very helpful to a table of our compatriots, who left these Victorian purlieus with enchantment written on their faces. We think that you will react in the same way, for those large capable cooks up front produce some beautiful Bolognese dishes. Prices are more than fair, and the menu embraces everything that is choice in this city of fabulous food. We had a little trouble with our red wine-it was n sparkling one, and not at all to our taste. It might be worthwhile, therefore, to make a note to order a non spumante wine in Bolognese restaurants.
MODENA
Squarely astraddle the Via Emilia, here is another judicious stop for luncheon. Modena is the home of tampons, the celebrated smoked sausage whose casing is made up of the lower skin of a pig's leg, with a delicately sculptured hoof still showing. It's a famous sausage. partly because of the poster which is used to advertise it throughout Italy. This exhibits a highly congenial porker with a wooden leg and a cane, exhorting the public to sample his smoked sacrifice. They serve zampone hot in Modena, usually with lentils, mashed potatoes or sauerkraut, and it is downright delectable.
Modena has more enduring virtues, however. Its cathedral, the purest Romanesque in Emilia, is a thing of subtle beauty, from the slender campanile to the pair of pinkish lions which guard its central portal. For centuries Italian gamins have been playing horsy on these morose crouching creatures, and have worn the marble down to a high polish which would do justice to a Chinese vase. There are also some naughty bits of sculpture on an upper cornice. They get mention in most of the guide books, and draw furtive glances from many a passing schoolgirl.
A visit to the cathedral, an aperitivo in the crowded piazza adjoining it (the city swarms with cadets, since its venerable Ducal Palace is now a military academy) and you are ready for one of the most rewarding lunches in this chapter-a visit to the RISTORANTE FINI. This welcoming place is far from the central hubbub, a cheerful arcade building facing the church of San Francesco on the outer fringes of the city. The name Fini certainly doesn't have the connotation it does in French, for this restaurant is thriving, filled with discriminating diners. The cooking is excellent, and all of (he celebrated Modenese dishes are listed for your pleasure. These include the traditional zampone, spinach soup and veal cutlets, each worth a flowery paragraph of its own. After you have finished luncheon another temptation besets you in the Fini food shop. This is a square basket containing a plump smoked tamp one, flanked on either side by hand-sculptured tortellini and amarelli. But you'll never get that sausage past our customs agents, so we will substitute a couple of topnotch Modenese recipes. Both are easy to achieve in an American kitchen.
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