It has been a long, and I mean long, week since I last wrote to you. Easter in fact, when we were soaking in the rain in Duomo square in Florence, shoulder to shoulder with devout Christians and non-believers alike, their common faith in and fascination with the power of explosives being the common theme. Then a train north to Venice followed by a couple of days back in New York before red-eying it back to Rome. That’s 4,530 miles as the crow files. That’s a pretty tired crow.

So after a day in Rome to try to re-orient ourselves we greeted at Fiumicino airport our arriving guests who will be with us for the next week. And with that our first April Food and Wine tour begins.

The day begins with a brief visit to Orvieto, a fascinating Etruscan town roughly along the route from Rome to the villa. The highlight here is always the duomo, or cathedral, in the main square. It is a massive gothic cathedral with a façade of stripes in travertine and basalt, which has led us to nickname it the cathedral in pajamas. It is raining, lightly but steadily, so after a short visit we seek refuge across the square at a local enoteca, to introduce our group to Umbrian salumi, cheeses, porchetta and wines. It is not a bad way to start out the trip. But the real treat, what has kept us going the past week through trains and flights and sinus infections and jetlag is the evening’s program. The Gelso Throwdown finale.

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For those who are not regular readers, I point you to our April 5 posting (“There’s a New Chef in Town”). There we described a memorable dinner at the villa prepared by our friend Paolo as part of a Bobby Flay-type “throwdown,” where Paolo was to match his culinary prowess against that of his friend-cum-competitor, Giuliano. Paolo’s dinner had been a surprise masterpiece, putting the heavily favored and supremely confident Giuliano seemingly a little on the defensive. As the date of Giuliano’s dinner approached, however, he had been unleashing a stream of trash-talking emails that would make an NBA star blush. His swagger was back. He was predicting victory.

And tonight we would see if Giuliano’s walk would match his talk. Whether his bark was bigger than his bite. Whether. Well, you get the point.

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Giuliano arrived at an empty villa late in the afternoon. It was not so much empty as its inhabitants, all of whom, other than Suzy, had flown in from the U.S. that morning or the day before, were sleeping in their rooms, trying to bank a little rest in anticipation of a late evening. It was to prove a wise decision indeed.

Giuliano, who owns a food service business but who is a businessman rather than a chef, was all business. Just outside the kitchen he parked one of his refrigerated delivery trucks into which had been loaded an assortment of fresh seafoods, the evening’s wines and assorted other ingredients for the evening’s meal. When I arose from my power nap I popped my head into the kitchen and Giuliano and his companion Sonia were already hard at it, shelling and cleaning scampi and various other shrimp-like crustaceans for some of the numerous antipasta he had planned as well as his signature risotto with scampi. When Giuliano finally noticed me, a broad grin swept across his face. He had much to show off to me about the evening’s meal, from the ingredients, which were laid out everywhere in the kitchen, to the menu, which he had printed out on special parchment and tied in ribbon. The top of the menu read, in English, “The Gilocchi Show Presents . . .” Tonight’s meal was indeed going to be a production.

Reading through the menu I began to realize just what an evening we were in store for. Ten or twelve dishes, it was impossible to keep track of them all, and each one featuring fishes and shellfishes we hadn’t even heard of. In fact, the kitchen resembled a high end aquarium, every corner filled with strange, unknown species. We have marveled in the past that, like the Eskimos who reputedly have 40 different words for snow, the Italians seem to have dozens of words for shrimp. And tonight Giuliano was planning on giving us a complete vocabulary lesson.

Over the next couple of hours, before our guests began rising from their power naps and the outside guests began to arrive, I would occasionally check in to see how Giuliano and Sonia were doing. Each time Giuliano would smile that broad smile of his and excitedly grab me and lead me into another room where he would show me another ingredient he was now working on. He was particularly proud of the whole fish that were in repose on ice in the dishroom in enormous styrofoam boxes – whole branzino and whole spigola that would be featured in the evening’s secondi.

Around seven o’clock the guests began arriving. The room that serves as the villa’s dining room and living room had been re-arranged to accommodate a larger table for the 20 guests that would be dining that evening. That required furniture to be moved and the living room area compacted, so as the crowd grew they were funneled into a smaller than usual space. But with a roaring fire on one side and an exceptionally beautiful table on the other the room seemed to open up and accommodate everyone comfortably and welcomingly. In contrast to the non-stop activity in the kitchen next door, the living room was a picture of calm comfort.

Closer to eight o’clock the outside guests began arriving – our associates Corrado, Paolo and Luigi, an Italian version of Moe, Larry and Curly, then Giuliano’s associate Fabio with his wife Valentina and Giuliano’s son Francesco. For the next hour or so this mob of Italians and Americans made each others’ acquaintance in front of the fireplace, outside by the outdoor oven and in front of the house sharing a cigarette. English, Italian, Spanish and the occasional French word were floating in the air, as this eclectic group worked to find enough commonality of language to communicate with one another. The effort was seamless and, judging by the smiles and laughter that were coming from all quarters, surprisingly effective.

Meanwhile, Giuliano and Sonia soldiered on, their preparations becoming more grandiose, more complex and more saliva inducing. Everywhere you looked another dish was laid out, ready for cooking, the whole resembling a multicar pileup on the highway, a jam of platters stretching throughout the kitchen and all the way back to the dishroom. Yet unlike a traffic snarl, Giuliano’s kitchen was completely in order, each platter and skillet in perfect readiness, clean, well ordered, cool and collected. Just like Giuliano. He was a general on the eve of battle, confident of his battle plan, liking his chances and confident of victory, a fact he crowed about to anyone walking through the kitchen.

And then, after Fabio ceremonially opened the first of many magnums of prosecco, it began, the “Gilocchi Show.” It began as we stood in front of the fire, continuing our multilingual conversations as a delizia di frittura was passed around. Small cones made from rough paper had been filled with an assortment of bite sized sea creatures, delightfully fried and still hot, crispy, salty and sweet. A small plastic fork was provided but nearly everyone picked the morsels from the cone with their fingers or simply poured them into their mouths. And the cones had been decorated with little American and Italian flags (and an assortment of Norwegian ones as well, perhaps playing up the Nobel angle or perhaps because that’s how they were packaged). Our American guests were overwhelmed by the simplicity and explosion of tastes from this simple appetizer. But so, too, were our Italian guests, whose eyes were wide and who were already buzzing about how special the dinner already was. And we were only through the first dish of a menu that promised at least twelve courses.

Then we were seated, introductions were made and the rules recited. As with the previous dinner, we were using “Modified Iron Chef” rules – up to 20 points could be awarded by the three judges for each of the 3 courses. Five points could be awarded for presentation, five points for originality and up to ten points for taste. Giuliano, in contrast to Paolo who had prepared one dish per course, had decided to offer multiple dishes per course and the rules were interpreted to allow up to 20 points for the course overall, not for each dish. This would prove to be both helpful and a negative for Giuliano, as the best dish in each course was to be weighed down by the lesser dishes.

And then the antipasti course began. It was to be a steady stream of four dishes – cocktail di scampi, insalata di polpo, gratin Royal and soute di vongole – but the stream was more of a rushing river, carrying our appetites downstream, out of control as we gorged on each succulent shrimp, the creamy mayonnaise of the scampi cocktail, each razor clam, mussel, scallop and canocchie until our stomachs crashed on the rocks below. In all, the first course, our antipasti, our “appetizer,” lasted well over an hour and tipped the calorimeter at the thousands. But looking around the table, no one seemed concerned that we would not make it to the finish line which was to occur hours later.

No, a sort of hypnotic state seemed to have taken hold of our group of 20. They were under the spell and the complete control of Giuliano and his cooking, this mago nella cucina. Words were lost, the power of speech was lost, manners were lost. During the gratin Royal, a plate of shellfish and bivalves lightly dusted with breadcrumbs and baked in the oven, mussels were torn from their shells by hand and literally sucked from the shell, scampi heads were sucked clean and the canocchie, little transluscent crustaceans that look like a failed laboratory experiment to crossbreed a shrimp and a centipede, were being eaten every whichway by Italians who cherish them and the Americans who developed for their love for them that night. And don’t get me started regarding the soute di vongole – bowls of tiny clams baked in the most delectable broth. My plate of empty shells tells the story.

But the evening’s menu was just beginning. There was the primi to come. And I use the plural primi rather than primo because, of course, there was more than one plate. Giuliano had prepared two primi, his famous “8 hour risotto,” described on the menu as perle di riso agli scampi and pennette pasta with a spicy sauce and small bits of spigola.

On any other table the pennette would be considered a delight. But matched against Giuliano’s signature perle di riso it seemed overmatched. Here is where the judging, which had already taken place for the antipasti, hurt him. Had he simply served the risotto, an absolutely perfect fusion of the flavors of the rice, scampi and a most subtle flavoring made from the stewed heads of the scampi, he would have no doubt received perfect marks. But Giuliano seemed not interested in just winning the contest, but in proving his culinary fitness. I can tell you that it is beyond reproach.

Then on to the secondo, again two dishes described as “tastings” – one of branzino cooked in parchment with mussels and shrimp, the other of spigola cooked in a salt crust. When Giuliano burst from the kitchen with the branzino on a rolling cart, enormous aluminum foil bags were venting a most delectable steam into the room. With a flourish he opened the bags and showed off the contents, the whole sea bass that he would portion out in the kitchen, leaving a trail of perfume that made us want to eat now. A few moments later another cart slammed through the doorway, this one with two enormous mounds of coarse salt resembling freshly dug graves under which the spigola had baked in their moisture. The salt mounds were flaming and Guiliano toured the cart around the room, eliciting oohs and ahhs and assuring high marks from the judges on the presentation factor.

A final vegetable course (not scored) was presented before Sonia took over the show. After serving a palette cleanser of sorbetto, Sonia took to the cart, with a fantasia di dolce, a selection of homemade sweets including fresh ricotta cheese with honey, cinnamon and pine nuts, fried beignets topped with chocolate sauce that she prepared on the cart and “sugar peach,” an absolutely unique dessert that was a sort of chocolate and cream bun dusted with sugar. And garnishing each plate was a small handmade chocolate in the shape of a sea creature, in keeping with the evening’s seafood theme. It was all so good that it almost made us forget of the fruit salad – one that Suzy remarked was the most beautiful fruit arrangement she had ever seen – that was served to cap off the evening, now approaching one o’clock in the morning.

And so the dinner a multicourse, multihour, multimedia extravaganza had come to an end, save for more wine and after dinner drinks. And it was time for the judges to render their decision. Paolo or Giuliano.

And although it was truly a close contest, in the end Giuliano’s relentlessness – relentlessness in besting Paolo, in designing an incomparable menu and, most of all, in preparing an unforgettable dinner, won him the title of Winner of the First Gelso Throwdown. And with much fanfare, pomp and ceremony, and belts let out a notch and pants quite possibly unbuttoned, Giuliano was awarded the coveted Golden Hot Dog Trophy, a trophy heretofore unknown in either America or Umbria, but which from now and into the future will be sought after by amateur chefs from Foligno to Trevi, from Montefalco to Marsciano. And Giuliano Gilocchi, the business executive and all around good guy and bon vivant from Terni will be able to tell contender and pretender alike, “that is my trophy. I won that trophy on a night they called the Gilocchi Show.”

Jolly good show, Giuliano.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy