While Tuscans are internationally renowned for their politeness, it is also known that their everyday language is very much peppered with blasphemy. Further south, there are the Romans – who tend to be is as loud as it gets, albeit their mention of deity does not feature much in swearing.
The Marche region, lying right between Rome and Tuscany on the Adriatic side, has inherited both the rowdy behaviour of the Romans as well as the creativity of Tuscan blasphemy.
It does not take much to see that I am completely enamoured by the Marche. Its medieval towns and countryside feel a lot like Tuscany but in place of snotty shopkeepers who overprice their ware to trap American tourists who have watched ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ and feel they know Italy inside out - you will find a people whose attitude is generally visceral yet courteous; violent yet funny; rude yet witty. It is perhaps best described as honest, although the Marche reputation across the other 19 Italian regions may differ to my rose-tinted views. I often base my romantic outlook on Italy by anecdotal evidence.
On a main road in Martinsicuro one day, a Fiat Duna (the station wagon version of the Series 1 Fiat Uno, possibly the ugliest car in the world) was parked bearing a For Sale sign. The notice, signed by a guy named Francesco, advised prospective buyers not to call during lunchtime. A passer-by used a felt-pen to add the words: “Magna tranquillo France`! …e chi te chiama?”  - “Francesco, don’t worry, I doubt anyone would be interested in spoiling your lunch.”
The last time I took a coach trip from Rome to Le Marche, the bus driver was heard talking to his young daughter on the phone while maneouvering his way through the capital’s rush hour traffic. The hoarse-voiced and obese man charmingly promised his little girl a gift from Rome upon his return, while commending her on being good with mummy while he was away. It was so sweet, all until a Fiat Panda blocked his way. He hangs up, pokes a hand gesture out of the window and goes: “Che te possa pija ‘na colecha”, or “May you die of colic.” This time I was on the way to Il Rustichello, my all-time favourite restaurant located in an old farmhouse at the foot of the mountains marking the edge of the seaside town of San Benedetto del Tronto in Ascoli-Piceno. Il Rustichello oozes pure Marche character, and for this reason among others, I love it so much I would gladly take a four-hour trip just to eat there whenever I’m in Rome. Now that would be a statement many Romans would take great offence to.
The character of the typical Marchiggiano is perhaps best understood through the prejudices of neighbouring regions. In the 1982 Cinecitta` classic In Viaggio con Papa, Roman cinema legend Alberto Sordi plays the part of Armando – a well-off businessman who reunites by chance with his son Cristiano on a road trip. Cristiano’s destination was Corsica - where he would rejoin his seagull-worshipping communal sect. Armando’s terminus should have been Genoa – as he planned to elope with his best friend’s 27 year-old daughter to the Cote d’Azur.
At some point on the way, Cristiano - a virgin - admits to his promiscuous father that he was scared of having sexual relations since an advance by the American girlfriend of his sect’s guru had once failed when she made him grab her groin in the middle of the night and he felt what he thought was a penis.
Armando investigates. He joins the sect in Corsica and flirts his way to bed with the guru’s girlfriend – only to discover that Cristiano was wrong since it was in fact the guru who made the advance on him, and not his girlfriend.
While Armando was courting the alleged she-male, it transpired that the shady guru had made her believe that he was of Indian origin, but she soon discovered that he hailed from Ascoli-Piceno. Sordi, who besides interpreting Armando also wrote the screenplay, reacts to the American’s confession in strict Roman dialect: “A voja… Marchiggiano…. Un imbroglione”, which roughly translates into:  “Of course… He comes from the Marche… (and therefore) a crook.”
This is not the first time Sordi pokes fun at the Marche. In the 1981 period comedy Il Marchese del Grillo, Sordi screens a conspiracy between noble Papal guard Marquis del Grillo (played by Sordi himself) and the French to have the former’s sister and brother-in-law exiled to Macerata on grounds that the latter suffered from halitosis. Exile to the Marche marks a tragedy in the del Grillo household.
In the times of the Duchy of Rome, all tax collectors hailed from the Marche. Hence the popular Italian expression “Meglio un morto in casa che un Marchiggiano alla Porta”, meaning: “I prefer the death of a parent to having a Marchiggiano at my doorstep.” The Marchiggiano’s retort could be as bad as: “Che Dio ti accontenti” – “May the Lord grant your wishes.”
And once we broach the subject of the Lord granting my wishes, I return to Il Rustichello – where proprietor Stefano takes the unique character of the Marche and translates it into a no-frill assortment of goodness.
Had Il Rustichello been located in Malta it would be advertised as an old farmhouse that has been expertly converted in the minutest of details. But being the Marche, the property was basically gutted, along with any possible original features, to include one large overly-lit hall with bright yellow walls in which a good 200 patrons may dine in one sitting. Mission accomplished. Il Rustichello is always full.
There is no menu. One of the two servers, off his feet to wait on a full house, comes to our table to gauge how hungry we are and decides for us what to eat. One of my friends at table, a typical Marchiggiano, admits to having ‘la cagatella’ (the runs) to the waiter and asked for “portions less colossal in size than usual”.
No food is discussed, except by the waiter. “OK, I’m starting you off with an antipasto misto for two, since it’s four of you,” he said. “Then a plate of maccheroni to share. Of course Gesuiti and Bauletti followed by a couple of Lombate with sides of Olive Ascolane.”
As he finished jotting down our order, he asks: “rosso?”, implying that we’re obviously going to have red wine.
He leaves before any of us could make an attempt at answering, and while one would expect that he would return with a wine list, he came back in no time to plonk a bottle of house wine on our table. House wine there is not house wine here.
The antipasto was the usual salumi affettati one would start off with at any Italian restaurant in Malta, with the difference that the prosciutto before us must have been ‘stagionato in casa’, loosely translated into ‘homemade’. With the salumi came the cremini – a typical starter of both the Abruzzo and the Marche regions consisting of deep-fried breaded vanilla custard cubes. Starting with sweet items may seem strange at first glance, but that is only because the order of Antipasto, Primo, Secondo and Dolce (designed to segregate savoury from sweet) is a fairly recent phenomenon in the Italian region. Since medieval times, when even the distinction between medicine and food was not yet defined, dieticians professed Galenic theories that date back to the days of ancient Rome. Galen believed that the human stomach was similar to a casserole that had to be kept in the right balance of earth, wind, water and fire elements. The order by which many ate food until a few centuries ago was there to segregate hot, cold, wet and dry. This is why traditional sweet starters like pear and cheese; melon and prosciutto and cremini are still in vogue nowadays.
Then came the maccheroni, which turned out to be spaghetti alla chitarra. No mistake here either. In Malta we think of maccheroni as the short pasta ‘imqarrun’, but we’re technically wrong. Maccheroni refers to any pasta asciutta – including gran’s blessed rigatoni al forno which we call ‘imqarrun’, but not excluding any other pasta type either. The original word for maccheroni was ittriya, as it was the Arabs who actually took it to Italy – way before Marco Polo. In Sicily you still find Trie, and in Malta Tarja – but these have nowadays developed to mean a type of pasta rather than the generic word. Anyway, our maccheroni were in a plain hearty tomato sauce, with a good sprinkle of aged pecorino on top. We scoffed it, hinting that we were now up for a proper pig out.
You will not find Gesuiti and Bauletti anywhere outside San Benedetto del Tronto. Quite frankly, I never found them anywhere outside Il Rustichello – which is why I make it a point to have both of them each time I visit. Basically, gesuiti are pancakes layered with different cheeses including Pecorino and Mozzarella and then baked. Bauletti are large pasta envelopes filled with spinach, covered in tomato sauce and baked. Comfort food at its best.
But the real boner factor comes with the mains. Even if it were from the Chianina breed, which I doubt it was, Stefano would not call his gargantuan T-Bone “Bistecca alla Fiorentina” – not out of respect for Tuscans but out of pride for the Marche.  He stops at calling it lombata, by the name of the cut.
With the steak, came more wine and Olive Ascolane. The Ascoli commune, which includes San Benedetto, boasts of growing the largest olives in Italy. And they are huge. Olive Ascolane are stuffed with pork and beef mince, breaded and fried. Gnam gnam.
We couldn’t make it through desserts. So after eight Fernet Brancas we asked for the bill – amounting to less than Eur20 each. Knowing what costs are entailed in running a restaurant, I was compelled to approach Stefano and ask him to look at what he may have omitted from the bill. Had I served all that food at Sugu and charged that little I would have definitely made a loss.
“Your Fernets were on the house,” he justifies.
But this is how he really does it…
Italians will choose a restaurant on condition that the food tastes better there than their mother’s. And Italian mothers can cook. I will review a Sunday lunch at Matteo’s mum in Abruzzo in one of my next posts. If the food is great, dining rooms will automatically fill-up irrespective of ambience. Maltese restaurateurs sell a different product. Besides the food, there is service and there is ambience – whose costs are taken for granted but are very high. The usual Maltese diner will want a fuller experience even at a medium-range restaurant.
Without wine service or even wine lists, without menus and essentially a zero-frill policy – Stefano manages to run his restaurant using just two waiters for 200 patrons. Most of the chef brigade wears black – not because they are against a whites policy in the kitchen but because they are old widows living in the old part of town (le vecchiette del villaggio) opting to help out with the olives and the cremini rather than waste time attending some boring church function.
Stefano’s payroll is very low. He has not invested big money (if any) in the décor as many local restaurateurs would be inclined in doing to attract customers. All ingredients are sourced locally and from farmers – which further knocks down his food cost. Transferring what he saves into the customer’s bill has filled his place up, and it works out that simply.
If that is not character tell me what is.