Leisurely dining

I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore when I arrived at Ai Cinque Cerchi restaurant at 10 pm on Sunday night and the place was packed.

Italians eat late. Italians eat slow. But they sure make a darn good pizza.

I ordered a pie called the Superbo. I’m still not sure what was on the Superbo, but it was fresh, light, tasty and aptly named.

So on a scale of one to five, this ristorante's food gets 4 ½ stars. But the service? Well, let’s just say that Italian waiters specialize in making you wait. Either that or they are all training to be magicians, because they're experts at disappearing. When you finally catch their attention, inevitably they say, “One moment.”? Trust me. The Italian definition of “one moment”? doesn’t match yours.

Monday morning I ambled 20 feet from our condo building to a place called the Bar Break. When we arrived in Cesana Torinese we received vouchers for a free continental breakfast every day. On this corner of the continent that means a pastry, a cup of coffee and a tiny glass of orange juice. Hey, it’s free. And what you lack in protein and nutrients, you make up for in people watching.

The Bar Break attracted 22 men and three women in the 15 minutes I was there. I don’t think they came to watch the Italy-Great Britain men’s curling match on the TV or to listen to someone who was clearly not Bono mangling a U2 song on the radio. No, they came to talk, take a sip of coffee, talk again, take another sip, then talk and talk and talk some more.

The Italians relish their conversation skills. Maybe that’s why their waiters are so slow.