I’m leaving, on a jet plane.

If I had a nickel for every time I said that. But today it’s true. We’re bound for bella Italia once again, our last visit nearly five months ago. This one will be shorter. Short but sweet.

To prepare and to get ready for our departure, for our two week trip, we made the eminently sensible choice of going to New York for a day and a half. Return at 1:00am on the morning of departure to Italy. It’s a new strategy to combat jet lag.

There was a rhyme to our reason, however. We were participating in the first New York International Olive Oil Competition, a soon to be annual event that is one more indication that a real food culture is taking root in this country. Fifty years from now, when America and Americans are known around the world for their abundant tables, exaltation of taste and a true food identity that is based on quality rather than quantity, we will be able to look back and point to olive oil as one of the actors that catalyzed the national imagination and ushered in a respect for taste.

We entered one of the olive oils we import in the competition. With over 700 oils entered and being tasted by a panel of judges using blind tasting techniques and international sensory standards, it would be a real long shot if our entry won. But it is just as true that it could win, as it compares favorably on all measures against the competition.

The Competition includes two full days of seminars highlighting different aspects of olive oil – the production process, types of olives, marketing, olive oil through history and its impact on culture. It is a jewel of an ingredient that resembles a diamond, shimmering and engaging the senses and consciousness while constantly shifting perspective depending upon the occasion. With a thousands of years history it has to be both simple and complex.

And so we await the results of the competition, to be announced tomorrow. Stay tuned.

* * *

If spending a day and a half in New York and racing back home in the wee hours of the night or morning to fly to Italy a little more than 12 hours later is not enough, let’s rewind the video tape a little more. Five weeks ago we boarded our first flight in this cross country marathon, deplaning in Asheville, North Carolina, to drop our son off at a two month residential arts program in Penland, North Carolina. Then off to Napa Valley for four days with our daughter to celebrate her spring break. Four more days in Laguna Beach with her and joining us her younger brother whose spring break followed hers for a week. With her departure we headed north to Seattle for a week, doing some slow travel there and, as was the case in Napa and Laguna, enjoying the occasional meal. And if we’re correct in predicting a leading role for olive oil in the development of an American food culture, it is equally plausible that the west coast – San Francisco, Napa, Portland and Seattle in particularly will be considered its birthplace.

With our son’s spring break finished, we returned to western North Carolina for a week at our vacation home in the mountains south of Asheville. There we were able to visit our other son at Penland and really get to see and appreciate this amazing school. And then to Florida to visit my brothers and to handle some family business affairs. And finally, we returned to Washington some four and a half weeks after leaving (not content with her accrued frequent flyer miles Suzy added on a several day visit to see her mother in Iowa).

But DC was short lived, as business called me to New York for two days, with two days back in DC before returning for the Olive Oil Competition.

I’m leaving, on a jet plane.

* * *

And so Italy is just a few hours ahead of us. And although it will be only two weeks, it is two weeks we are greatly looking forward to. On Saturday we will be joined by a group of six, four of whom are going to participate in our first annual Cucinapalooza cooking tour. More details on this tomorrow, but for now suffice it to say we have organized a to-my-mind unique culinary holiday experience, utilizing our friendships and relationships with a number of the area’s top chefs to impart not just recipes and methods to our aspiring chefs but to share their thoughts and approach to la cucina umbra. We will be getting less into their technique and more into their minds. Less what to do and how to do it and more how to think like an Umbrian. This approach is harder to organize than an academie du cuisine but we think we have lined up the right folks to do it.

And after Cucinapalooza we go exploring. Two days on the island of Ischia, the world famous island off the coast of Naples. And four days exploring Napoli. We’ll see where the wind blows us and will let you know what we find. We might try a slice or two of pizza.

The next two days are for settling in and meeting with colleagues on a couple of business interests we have in Italy. So there won’t be much of interest to report (unless you like business). We’ll stay in touch daily, however, and bring you a more detailed preview of what the weeks have in store. Until then

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

For the past decade and then some, Suzy and I have dedicated ourselves to bringing the best of Italy to America.  And by best, I mean the stuff that really matters – iconic products that capture the style, lifestyle and life of Italy.  Artistic products that hold within them the soul of that country and the passion of their creators.  Passion that you can feel, you can touch, you can taste, smell and see.  “You know it when you see it,” Justice Potter Stewart once said, referring to something completely different, something just as hard to put your finger on.  A coincidence that he was a potter?

Since buying our villa in Umbria, we have turned the tables.  For the past five years we have additionally dedicated ourselves to bringing Americans to Italy.  For the same purposes.  To give our fellow countrymen a chance to experience that passion, that way of life at its source.  It has, for both our guests and for Suzy and me, been the perfect complement to what we do in Bethesda.  Bella Italia yin to Experience Umbria yang.

My father used to tell us a story about the housekeeper his family had when he was growing up.  When a pie was baked or some other treat dispensed, she would say to him and his brother and sister, “half for you, Cork, half for your brother, Linc, and half for Lyman.”  For the past three years we have added another half to our already whole whole.  With our U.S. visits by our Italian friends, associates, suppliers – Simone, Wendy, Gerardo, we have added another dimension to our Italian-American lives where we can truly say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And so, just a couple of months ago we welcomed back to Washington our friend Simone, an Umbrian chef of incomparable skill and a person who seems to love the American experience as much as we enjoy the Italian one.  A month later our friend Wendy, who manages our Italian businesses and who runs our Umbrian villa together with Marco, joined us in Washington, renewing friendships with past villa guests while whetting the appetite of many potential new guests.  And this week, we welcomed back our friend from Deruta, Gerardo, whose beautiful ceramic artwork surrounds us at Bella Italia every day.

They have come here to America to preach the gospel of Italy, to share with us, our friends and our customers a little of that Potterian je ne sais quoi (pardon the mixed language metaphor).  And judging from the attendance at our receptions, workshops, presentations and dinners, there is quite an appetite to chew on and savor all things Italian.  But what has been truly interesting for Suzy and me is the appetite our Italian friends have to chew on all things American.

Italians are generally considered to be somewhat provincial, in a good way.  They like and appreciate their particular way of life and are not as open, perhaps, as Americans are to outside influences.  Walk the streets of Florence and you will not find too many Mexican restaurants.  Or Japanese.  Or French or Spanish for that matter.  It seems like nearly every restaurant is Italian!

There is a reason that the Italians have their own cruise line, the recently notorious Costa cruise line.  Italians, even when they are floating off the coast of a strange land, want to take the familiar with them, sort of like vampires needing to have dirt from their original gravesite in their coffin.  So the Concordia, which lies on its side off the island of Giglio is not so much a floating party boat as it is a floating pasta dispensary.

When our Italian friends come to Washington, however, they do not seem to long for pasta or all things Italian.  They want to experience the melting pot (the culture, not the restaurant) that is America.  Yes, we do frequent Fiola, one of the best Italian restaurants you can find either inside our outside Italy, but our normal routine is to head up Connecticut Avenue from our home and land a table at Buck’s Fishing and Camping.  Buck’s, you see, is quintessential Americana.  Great food, a boisterous rollicking atmosphere, stiff cocktails and friendly, familiar and somewhat cheeky service.

And what do our Italian friends long for when they enter Buck’s?  The iceberg wedge salad.  A massive slice of crispy lettuce that does not exist in Italy.  A relatively tasteless, nutritionally worthless mass of greenness that serves not to satisfy the palate, but rather to act as a vehicle for carrying huge dollops of blue cheese dressing and chunks of crispy bacon to the mouth.  Italian food is a study in simplicity and harmony.  The iceberg wedge is simple for sure, but harmony and understatedness is not its forte.  Nevertheless, invite an Italian to dine and an iceberg wedge is sure to be ordered.

And what do they wash the iceberg wedge down with?  Red wine or white?  How about that quintessentially Italian cocktail – the Manhattan?  Our Italian friends have become such cocktail connoisseurs that they fluently argue the relative merits and demerits of different whiskeys and vermouths.  And when it comes to cocktails, they are all Rogers and Harts (this is literally true for Wendy) – “I’ll take Manhattan.”

And how about a pile of fried oysters?  Si, grazie.  The difference between our Italian friends and their American counterparts not being what is ordered but how much is consumed.  When we order a pile (the technical term is plate, order or portion) of fried oysters, we consume the pile.  Our Italian friends eat enough to taste and enjoy and then stop.  What a strange and interesting culture!

It is always a delight to see our Italians order the steak at Buck’s, a steak so delectable that we tell everyone – Italians and Americans – it is the best ever, without equal.  Watching our Italian friends take their first bite of Buck’s steak, its intense flavor uncontainable by its physical form, the juices practically bursting from the red and pink tinged slices is almost as satisfying as eating it.  Almost, but not quite.

With its long communal table Buck’s may seem a little Italian.  For sure we have often been seated at shared tables in Italy.  Indeed, we were introduced to the concept a couple of decades ago at Piccolo Cibreo, the little brother of Florence’s famous Cibreo restaurant.  There we were fit in to the open seats like a jigsaw puzzle, rubbing elbows with Florentine and American tourist alike.  The difference between the Italian and American communal table, however, is the conversation.  In Italy you may share a few words with your tablemates.  At Buck’s however, you generally intrude into each others’ conversations and the dining experience almost becomes a joint venture.  It is almost surprising that you don’t eat off your newfound friends’ plates.

And at Buck’s you have to expect the unexpected.  We have run across the rich and the famous there – from Mayor Williams to Justice Sottamayor.  Journalists, congressmen, celebrities show up.  We once met Robert Redford there, or rather stalked him there.  But nothing can quite compare with our dinner there last week, the welcome dinner for our ceramicist friend Gerardo Ribigini, who having arrived in the U.S. just hours earlier was looking forward to a steak, a wedge and a Manhattan at his favorite D.C. saloon.  We were seated at the communal table, our other usual corner table behind the curtains occupied by a large group celebrating something or other.  Norudeen, our waiter who secretly runs the restaurant welcomed Gerardo back to DC, cocktails magically appearing without being ordered, then whispered to us that the party in the corner room was a local group celebrating their recent Academy Award win.  And with some creative and slightly uncomfortable neck craning, it was possible to see through the crowd and curtain and catch a glimpse of not one, but two Oscars sitting on the table.  Even Robert Redford didn’t bring his Oscars to Buck’s.

And in the spirit of Buck’s, its communal table camaraderie infecting the atmosphere of the entire restaurant, not too long afterwards the Oscar party had spilled out of its sequestered space and had become one with the rest of us.  And, of course, before too long flashes were popping, just like on the red carpet, as diners were getting their photos taken with directors and documentarians, Oscars clutched by diners and mock acceptance speeches, written decades ago were recited from memory.

Suzy and I like to spread the wonders of the Italian lifestyle, la dolce vita, to our American friends.  But sharing the Buck’s experience – the crazy, unexpected, dynamism that often marks the American experience, together with the genuine warmth, friendliness and openness of the American character – with our Italian friends is every bit as good.  We may not have yet come up with a phrase that fully captures the American experience like la dolce vita does for Italian life, but as our second favorite Potter once said, “I know it when I see it.”