Osteria del Teatro

I met Barbara and Carol near Bar Signorelli and we walked around the corner and up the hill to the restaurant where they had made a dinner reservation. We were shown to our table in the back room by a young, dark-haired waiter who left us with both English and wine menus. Another older waiter brought us a tall, while candle which he lit and left on the table. I ordered a rare glass of red wine while my companions each had a small bottle. After placing our order, we relaxed and chatted until we were interrupted by the rough sound of large cardboard boxes being cut down for disposal. Amazed that such a task would be performed in a nice restaurant at dinner time, we turned to discover that the sound was actually that of a woman slicing enormous loaves of the impossibly tough saltless local bread, Pane Toscano, with a large, sharp knife. A basket of this tasteless stuff was later delivered to our table and went largely uneaten. I find I need to douse it with good olive oil and salt to really be able to eat it.

In due time dinner arrived: long, hand-rolled strands of pici pasta coated with the wonderful, rich Tuscan red meat sauce for me; tortellini stuffed with pears and cheese for one of my companions and pasta with lemon and scallops for the other. We all agreed we couldn’t eat the two plus courses most Italians eat so we elected to get a “primo”, first, followed by dessert. The waiter quickly reappeared wielding the biggest pepper grinder I have ever seen. It was at least 3 feet long, constructed made of wood, and we were offered a grinding of “big pepper”. I suppose the purpose of the grinder was so that the waiter could pepper the meals of all diners without actually walking around the table. It’s likely a good thing I am not employed at that restaurant as I am fairly certain that I would leave the dining room in a cloud of pepper and a cacophony of sneezes having dosed every tie, bosom, and crystal goblet of wine with a liberal coating of tiny black specks.

Dessert was a cooked pear served, with stem attached, swimming in a bath of warm, melted, semi-sweet chocolate. Yum! It was so decadent and sensual it should have been consumed in the nude with a partner!

During dinner the ladies and I decided to pool our resources to rent a car the following and drive to San Gimignano which Carol had never seen. We made an online reservation agreeing to a ridiculous amount of money with plans to meet at Piazza Garibaldi to catch the bus to Arezzo at 8:30 the following morning. We quickly ran to the tobacco shop before it closed for the night to purchase our bus tickets and the ladies walked me back to the Mansard for the “grand tour”.