In this former Italianate province that encompasses the present-day Côte d’Azur, pizza and pasta are king and queen. You might think fish would rank tops – this is the Mediterranean after all – and if you mean by that steamed mussels and frites, then you would be getting warm. After all, most kids don’t choose fish as a meal of choice on vacation, and there are a lot fewer of them swimming around these days (economic law – it means more expensive). Come to think of it, there are a lot fewer everywhere in the world. Even the faux-meat creators are trying to come up with a plant-based substitute fish for when we eat the last natural one. I guess they are too young to have been around when fish sticks were all the rage. It’s been done already, kids, and it didn’t turn out well.
I have written before about this one bistro in Nice, La Taverna Massena. A nice-looking teenage young man stretches the dough, makes the pies, and cuts them down to size. And size is what they are all about. A full pie would cover a twelve-inch dinner plate and overlap by four inches on all sides. I think my arithmetic is right; this makes it twenty inches across. One serving is half a pie. Is it OK to call this a “whole half” or should I stick with “an entire half?” I am going with the latter being a writer and all. I won’t bother to check the Chicago Manual of Style. It just sounds right. Like: “that was a tough road to hoe.” Well, they all are, aren’t they?
Jann and I chose a pizza with luscious roasted eggplant and tomato sauce, liberally sprinkled with mozzarella. It was so yummy I dream about it still. We divided the entire half between us and each half of an entire half more than covered a dinner plate. Try as we did, nibbling on it for two solid hours, we failed. We left behind a half of a half of an entire half.
Our people watching that day yielded an interesting scientific fact. More people walked one direction on this little street than the other. If this continues for a long, long time the world would become unbalanced. Then it might just tip over. Watching all the news from back in the world, I think that is about to happen anyway.
