Lardibutts
Aged Member
BBW, Stuffing, ~XWG - A restaurant owner finds flab, fun and food in the Southern Mediterranean.
[Author's Note: I haven't posted anything for a while - I've been away. I spent a month back on my favourite island in the southern Med and here is a story that fantasises about a brilliant restaurant I found on the cliffs. L]
VITTORIO
il pistone"
by Lardibutts
I cut quite a dash blazing about town in my Alfa Romeo Spyder. A svelte figure of a man at twenty-eight, Id made big money since Id become a celeb chef. I learned my trade in the famed culinary regions of Italy, Emilia Romagna and across the north: Lombardy and Venezia. Famed for my high octane energy in the kitchen, love of fast cars, and high sex drive, I was known as il pistone. I liked getting recognized in the street as a heart throb by a small but doting following always at the more mature end of the TV viewing spectrum.
But it was over a dozen years since Id traveled to the north of Italy to learn my culinary skills and Id grown homesick for the island of my birth. So Id come back now to Pannecottera, a tiny speck in the Southern Mediterranean to start a new venture.
I was about to open a very special restaurant to which Id given my own name da Vittorio. If you drive out of my home town, Panciuto, the capital, you cross La Pancia, a barren dome of hot bleached rock until suddenly after half an hour you are about to fall off the edge of the world. High cliffs drop below the crumbly narrow road into a blindingly bright sea. Id found a disused old Arab style farmhouse tucked down in a narrow leafy cleft of fig trees and plantains below the road. Its little terrace hangs right over the azure Med far below. On a clear day Tunisia can be visible along the horizon.
With the da Vittorio project, my ambition was to re-interpret the islands traditional half Arab, half Italian Panneccottan cuisine to the highest international standards. Id been getting a great buildup in the islands media about my plans. The emphasis would be on healthy eating in contrast to the gross local habits of mountainous helpings (you probably know only one thing about Panneccottans they are famed as the fattest people in the whole of the EU). The watchword was to be minimalism.
Needing a personal assistant, Id hired an enthusiastic young woman.
Catarina came well recommended, straight out of a catering course at the local technical college. Typically dark with tight curls and medium height, she was just twenty, though slim by Panneccottan standards. This was a strictly professional arrangement you understand, for in truth my tastes in girlfriends were very different.
Catarina was, notwithstanding, very personable, and she arrived with blazing passionate eyes prepared to pitch in energetically. She latched on immediately to what I wanted and after chastising the local builder for over restoring, set to with her own hands demonstrating how the old stone barns should be tackled - recreating just the air of a still working farm. There were to be no more than ten tables in the (now air-conditioned) stone vaulted barns, with six out on the terrace.
She was even more obsessive about what we would be cooking. Well before our little kitchen was finished she was chattering endlessly with me comparing our local dishes. Coming from one of the scattered fishing and farming communities further east along the coast, she had very different perspectives on cooking to my townee sensibilities. She brought dishes in for me to sample and wed work on them together in our unfinished kitchen, tasting and arguing noisily. She cooked vigorously, her muscular biceps flexing, her barefoot sinewy body stripped off to just a ragged sleeveless teeshirt over bikini bottoms.
I got to realize I was in competition with her: and she was invariably winning! Moreover Catarinas local knowledge was winning out too when she rode around with me in the Alfa, sourcing the best suppliers and sampling the oppositions menus.
After these trips Id inevitably end up dropping her off where she lived. This was a gaunt straggle of half finished hovels above a dusty steep cement slipway for fishing boats. Waddi Siroq eked out an existence as a stop-off point for day-trippers, selling tacky souvenirs and fish meals. But despite appearances, all the food around her place was excellent. When the men folk came ashore with a good catch, the women would communally prepare great festive meals centred around fish stews served along with mounds of couscous - very North African (fish heads and all!).
Catarinas mum was an enormous balloon of a woman of indeterminate age - typically Panneccottan, just like my mum had been. Whenever we showed up she would flounder around, her great bulbous blubbery body heaving and panting in embarrassment. The dollops of soft fat larger than her head that were her huge drooping upper arms would be wobbling and flailing as she pretended ineffectually to straighten the place up to make us welcome.
Once seated, we would be treated in close up and at eye level to a rear view of a pair of truly immense shimmering hips threatening to blast apart the gaping seams of a miniscule faded cotton print dress (left over from her long lost svelte youth) as she bustled about producing a substantial snack.
Catarina's mum was a good cook, and shed passed it on to her daughter. These impromptu feasts produced at any hour of the day or night would be of several courses pastizzi, bruschetta, vast slabs of cold baked pasta, apple pie. Her set piece, given a three hour advanced warning, was an amazing speciality bouillabaisse, a delicious variant on the communal village stew and couscous theme. She cooked also for the colony of twenty or more feral cats that lived a lazy life procreating noisily under the upturned fishing boats. She had names for them all.
She received all visitors in her kitchen, the main room in the unfinished shell of a house. At the back, behind a curtain a small room opened off, serving as a communal sleeping alcove. The best room in the house was, in typically Panneccottan fashion, all shuttered up and never used - except for storing things like sacks of rice and boxes of soap and toilet paper. The furnishings of this room resembled a chapel of rest, with framed photographs of the deceased sitting on the glass tops of large dark pieces of furniture.
Dad was nowhere in evidence (except in a photo frame in the chapel of rest), there was just a kid sister still at school. Dad, I learned, had discarded Felicia years ago as too skinny. Hed run off to the mainland, with another fishermans sugarplum wife. I discovered later that Catarinas mum, Felicia, was actually still in her thirties, a mere sixteen years older than Catarina herself!
With just one week to go before opening, Catarina and I were stressed to hell. We spent a hectic morning hunting down the source of a very special semi freddo of ricotta sponge cake and marzipan wed sampled. Feeling fraught, I decided that we (no, more truthfully, I) needed a break. So here we were, the wrong end of a particularly large lunch at a new 5-star tourist hotel, relaxing in their poolside loungers after a swim. Very quickly wed found their restaurant offered absolutely no competition to what we were about to open.
Suddenly with a laugh Catarina lunged across to punt me in the midriff.
I was shocked - for shed managed to grab a handful of my spare flesh.
Chortling, she declared I was finally coming home to Panneccotta.
I looked back at her critically and realized shed also stuffed it on. I was pleased to point this out just as emphatically.
In fact I went on to say, If your backside gets any bigger young lady, youll be right out of a job. Then youll have nothing to do all day but sit on it. You might even turn into your lardarse mum!
Driving her back home, thinking to myself, I realized I had been deeply unkind. I hadnt really meant what I had said about her. In fact I was getting to be very dependent on Catarina. But there was absolutely no way I was going to let her know any of this.
What I didnt know was that, at just the same time, Catarina sitting right beside me, was saying to herself the Sad Lying Bastard. I can tell hes really begun to fancy me rotten. Right from the start hes had this thing going about fat girls. Hes just like all Panneccottans! It must be in the blood. Posing around in his fancy car, he is in complete and utter effing denial.
to be continued
[Author's Note: I haven't posted anything for a while - I've been away. I spent a month back on my favourite island in the southern Med and here is a story that fantasises about a brilliant restaurant I found on the cliffs. L]
VITTORIO
il pistone"
by Lardibutts
I cut quite a dash blazing about town in my Alfa Romeo Spyder. A svelte figure of a man at twenty-eight, Id made big money since Id become a celeb chef. I learned my trade in the famed culinary regions of Italy, Emilia Romagna and across the north: Lombardy and Venezia. Famed for my high octane energy in the kitchen, love of fast cars, and high sex drive, I was known as il pistone. I liked getting recognized in the street as a heart throb by a small but doting following always at the more mature end of the TV viewing spectrum.
But it was over a dozen years since Id traveled to the north of Italy to learn my culinary skills and Id grown homesick for the island of my birth. So Id come back now to Pannecottera, a tiny speck in the Southern Mediterranean to start a new venture.
I was about to open a very special restaurant to which Id given my own name da Vittorio. If you drive out of my home town, Panciuto, the capital, you cross La Pancia, a barren dome of hot bleached rock until suddenly after half an hour you are about to fall off the edge of the world. High cliffs drop below the crumbly narrow road into a blindingly bright sea. Id found a disused old Arab style farmhouse tucked down in a narrow leafy cleft of fig trees and plantains below the road. Its little terrace hangs right over the azure Med far below. On a clear day Tunisia can be visible along the horizon.
With the da Vittorio project, my ambition was to re-interpret the islands traditional half Arab, half Italian Panneccottan cuisine to the highest international standards. Id been getting a great buildup in the islands media about my plans. The emphasis would be on healthy eating in contrast to the gross local habits of mountainous helpings (you probably know only one thing about Panneccottans they are famed as the fattest people in the whole of the EU). The watchword was to be minimalism.
Needing a personal assistant, Id hired an enthusiastic young woman.
Catarina came well recommended, straight out of a catering course at the local technical college. Typically dark with tight curls and medium height, she was just twenty, though slim by Panneccottan standards. This was a strictly professional arrangement you understand, for in truth my tastes in girlfriends were very different.
Catarina was, notwithstanding, very personable, and she arrived with blazing passionate eyes prepared to pitch in energetically. She latched on immediately to what I wanted and after chastising the local builder for over restoring, set to with her own hands demonstrating how the old stone barns should be tackled - recreating just the air of a still working farm. There were to be no more than ten tables in the (now air-conditioned) stone vaulted barns, with six out on the terrace.
She was even more obsessive about what we would be cooking. Well before our little kitchen was finished she was chattering endlessly with me comparing our local dishes. Coming from one of the scattered fishing and farming communities further east along the coast, she had very different perspectives on cooking to my townee sensibilities. She brought dishes in for me to sample and wed work on them together in our unfinished kitchen, tasting and arguing noisily. She cooked vigorously, her muscular biceps flexing, her barefoot sinewy body stripped off to just a ragged sleeveless teeshirt over bikini bottoms.
I got to realize I was in competition with her: and she was invariably winning! Moreover Catarinas local knowledge was winning out too when she rode around with me in the Alfa, sourcing the best suppliers and sampling the oppositions menus.
After these trips Id inevitably end up dropping her off where she lived. This was a gaunt straggle of half finished hovels above a dusty steep cement slipway for fishing boats. Waddi Siroq eked out an existence as a stop-off point for day-trippers, selling tacky souvenirs and fish meals. But despite appearances, all the food around her place was excellent. When the men folk came ashore with a good catch, the women would communally prepare great festive meals centred around fish stews served along with mounds of couscous - very North African (fish heads and all!).
Catarinas mum was an enormous balloon of a woman of indeterminate age - typically Panneccottan, just like my mum had been. Whenever we showed up she would flounder around, her great bulbous blubbery body heaving and panting in embarrassment. The dollops of soft fat larger than her head that were her huge drooping upper arms would be wobbling and flailing as she pretended ineffectually to straighten the place up to make us welcome.
Once seated, we would be treated in close up and at eye level to a rear view of a pair of truly immense shimmering hips threatening to blast apart the gaping seams of a miniscule faded cotton print dress (left over from her long lost svelte youth) as she bustled about producing a substantial snack.
Catarina's mum was a good cook, and shed passed it on to her daughter. These impromptu feasts produced at any hour of the day or night would be of several courses pastizzi, bruschetta, vast slabs of cold baked pasta, apple pie. Her set piece, given a three hour advanced warning, was an amazing speciality bouillabaisse, a delicious variant on the communal village stew and couscous theme. She cooked also for the colony of twenty or more feral cats that lived a lazy life procreating noisily under the upturned fishing boats. She had names for them all.
She received all visitors in her kitchen, the main room in the unfinished shell of a house. At the back, behind a curtain a small room opened off, serving as a communal sleeping alcove. The best room in the house was, in typically Panneccottan fashion, all shuttered up and never used - except for storing things like sacks of rice and boxes of soap and toilet paper. The furnishings of this room resembled a chapel of rest, with framed photographs of the deceased sitting on the glass tops of large dark pieces of furniture.
Dad was nowhere in evidence (except in a photo frame in the chapel of rest), there was just a kid sister still at school. Dad, I learned, had discarded Felicia years ago as too skinny. Hed run off to the mainland, with another fishermans sugarplum wife. I discovered later that Catarinas mum, Felicia, was actually still in her thirties, a mere sixteen years older than Catarina herself!
+ +
With just one week to go before opening, Catarina and I were stressed to hell. We spent a hectic morning hunting down the source of a very special semi freddo of ricotta sponge cake and marzipan wed sampled. Feeling fraught, I decided that we (no, more truthfully, I) needed a break. So here we were, the wrong end of a particularly large lunch at a new 5-star tourist hotel, relaxing in their poolside loungers after a swim. Very quickly wed found their restaurant offered absolutely no competition to what we were about to open.
Suddenly with a laugh Catarina lunged across to punt me in the midriff.
I was shocked - for shed managed to grab a handful of my spare flesh.
Chortling, she declared I was finally coming home to Panneccotta.
I looked back at her critically and realized shed also stuffed it on. I was pleased to point this out just as emphatically.
In fact I went on to say, If your backside gets any bigger young lady, youll be right out of a job. Then youll have nothing to do all day but sit on it. You might even turn into your lardarse mum!
Driving her back home, thinking to myself, I realized I had been deeply unkind. I hadnt really meant what I had said about her. In fact I was getting to be very dependent on Catarina. But there was absolutely no way I was going to let her know any of this.
What I didnt know was that, at just the same time, Catarina sitting right beside me, was saying to herself the Sad Lying Bastard. I can tell hes really begun to fancy me rotten. Right from the start hes had this thing going about fat girls. Hes just like all Panneccottans! It must be in the blood. Posing around in his fancy car, he is in complete and utter effing denial.
to be continued
