We ate in the garden, in early October sunlight. The scene was cinematic: at a long table on a leaf-speckled lawn enclosed by the faded pink walls of a 17th-century villa and looking out over rolling green slopes crowned by the dome of the Basilica of Superga, the Baroque masterpiece that is the burial place of the Italian royal family and one of the chief landmarks of Turin. The fall air had the fermented perfume of ripe grapes and figs. We looked each other over, my future in-laws and I, as we nibbled the salatini and sipped spumante, and then switched to local red wines, a Barbaresco and a Barolo, as we went on to the centerpiece of the meal. This was a Turin and Piedmont classic: bagna cauda. Just olive oil, garlic, and crushed anchovies, blended into a smooth creamy sauce to be scooped up with a variety of sliced raw vegetables—peppers, fennel, endive, and that Piedmontese cousin of the artichoke, the cardoon. To follow, my future sister-in-law served agnolotti, the stuffed pasta native to Turin, in sugo d’arrosto—gravy from a roast. The roast itself was soon presented, a tender piece of the Piedmont beef called fassone, considered among the best in Italy. And we finished with another specialty from Peyrano: a rich, dense cake of chocolate with a marzipan and buttercream topping called a savarin, which is kin to the airy French savarin in name only. After coffee and gianduiotti, the men excused themselves to doze in hammocks and lawn chairs while the women told me about Sundays in Turin in the days before Fiat, when people used to stroll for miles through the woods and fields to visit their neighbors after lunch.
I realized that day that my future in Turin would be intimately linked with food. In this I was not alone. Foreign sojourners have, for centuries, praised the province’s gastronomic glories. In the days when the city was a Roman military colony known as Colonia Giulia, Julius Caesar took time out from recording his transalpine conquests to extol the wines of Piedmont’s La Morra district, today known as Barolo. And Rousseau, in his Confessions, wrote of the sensual pleasure he found in simple meals of peasant cheeses and breads. Among them were most likely grissini, the thin breadsticks said to have been invented in 1688 by a royal doctor to help the digestion of an ailing Savoy prince.
When I married and moved to Turin, I also felt inspired to write about gustatory pleasures. In a short story called “About Fog and Cappuccino,” I described finding in Turin the perfect cup of cappuccino after a long quest in the bars of northern Italy. The pleasant research I did for this story—in which coffee is equated with romance—led me to discover the famous cafés of Turin, vestiges of its ducal and royal past. As in Prague, Paris, or Vienna, they have for generations been arenas for aristocratic persiflage, intellectual gossip, even revolutionary ideas. On rainy mornings I would meet girlfriends at elegant shrines like the gilt and marble San Carlo, in the Baroque piazza of the same name, and the tiny Art Nouveau Baratti & Milano, near the Teatro Regio, for cups of coffee that were light, often perfectly mixed, with a sprinkling of cocoa and raw sugar.
At the same time, I discovered another Turinese drink, the famous bicerin, or “little cup,” a small but explosive concoction of concentrated espresso and chocolate topped with freshly whipped cream, that is best at Caffè al Bicerin, near Guarini’s gorgeous Baroque church Il Santuario della Consolata. A favorite of Nietzsche’s and Puccini’s, Al Bicerin is a tiny, low-ceilinged establishment that resembles a tavern from the Harry Potter tales and has been run only by women, formidable ones at that, since it opened, in 1763.
So it was that I began to understand the idiosyncratic charm of Turin. My “new” house—a 600-year-old fortified villa overlooking the city—is filled with echoes of past generations, and I quickly discovered that, as in all provincial cities, life here is peaceful, repetitious, based on tradition.
For me, the first sign of spring is the sight in early February of confetti scattered in the streets by costumed children as part of the carnival season. That, and the fantastic carnival displays of chocolate masks, toys, and animals in the windows of confectioners. So intimately linked are chocolate and carnival in Turin that a figure from traditional Piedmontese carnival masques—an impish 18th-century gentleman called Gianduja, who is also one of the symbols of the city—gave his name to gianduiotti, which are supposed to be the same shape as his tricorn hat.
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