F = Fritz Haeg
M = Mona Talbott

F: To start up with a general sense of your background in food, what brought you here and the general kind of work that you've been doing here and then to understand maybe the general scope of your perspective on the food in this city. And then also the particulars or the details or anecdotes of what you've experienced here in this particular situation, with food in the city. Can you give a basic overview of your background in food: what brought you to it and the general background before you came to Rome.

M: I grew up in a family where my mother's parents came from Quebec, French Canada. My grandfather was METTI which is half Indian half French. My grandmother was a very small woman who was raised in an orphanage. She was English-Canadian and she married my grandfather at eighteen and they had six children: five boys, all hockey players, big big all of them are six feet tall and my mother who is tall five foot nine. She learned to cook French Canadian food, Quebeqois, which is very hearty for the ...... the loggers. So we grew up, that was the cultural cuisine of out family. My mother dissents herself from that and in the Sixties and Seventies we moved to the States with my father and she liberated herself from cooking with convenience food. In her cookbooks, I remember she had an "I hate to cook" cookbook. It was really a point of history when cooking was drudgery. Whilst my grandmother defined herself through cooking. For her cooking was making bread, making jam, making (2:50), making tortière, all this traditional French food is Habitant cuisine, it's the cuisine of the French-Canadian working people, it's the cuisine my mother grew up on and my mother cooked, so we ate it on Sundays and my family would watch hockey which is religion in Canada on Sunday. We would go to my grandparents' house and I didn't like hockey so I would sit in the kitchen with my grandmother and she would cook and we would talk. But she wouldn't let me cook with her, I could just watch. She had cans of bacon fat, so she fried things in bacon fat and she fried things in duck fat. My grandfather hunted and fished so we always had really wonderful food, an extraordinary garden and I was her namesake. My grandmother was an orphan, she chose her name when she was adopted. They were all Marie in the orphanage and when she was adopted she chose Mona after an actress and I'm her namesake, so I had a special relationship with my grandmother who inspired me to have an interesting cooking. But my mother, because my family is very athletic but I wasn't athletic and I was an overweight child, my mother didn't want me to eat. So I could watch cooking. It was a really strange relationship with food but I always knew it was the powerpoint in the house, it was part of the house and it was really much more interesting than the hockey night in Canada that everybody else was obsessed about. And so I knew there was something special about cooking and that it was really a wonderful thing to be able to do. And my grandmother was a petite, very little woman and she had these enormous sons so she cooked a lot and she loved to feed people so I knew it was an important thing in our family and I didn't really think of cooking as a career, I thought that I wanted to be a journalist or that I wanted to be a teacher. And when I was in college all my friends were going tree planting which is, in British Columbia where I mostly grew up, forestry and natural resources were the biggest industries and in the summer one of the big jobs for young people in college was to go plant trees in the Silver (5:07) Tree District and all my friends were going tree planting and I didn't want to plant trees but there was no ???? bidding for a cook helper and I went up and I loved it. We lived in these camps in the middle of the wilderness, I mean not the wilderness but where there  had been wilderness, in the middle of clear-cuts. And we built these tent cities and it was like being part of the peace corps  and we were three months in these very isolated places, we were all young and we were all full of energy and we had these great times. It was really hard work and I loved it and so I cooked for seventy-five and they are all - we had a reunion lately - very interesting people, they're all into extreme sports, they're really driven, motivated people but extremely active, very physically fit so (6:00) and I loved it, I really really loved it. And I wanted to be a writer and I had incredible writing teachers and I was struggling and then I was throwing dinner parties in college and I really enjoyed that and then the Alice B. Toklas cookbook was reprinted, I don't know if you know it, it's Gertude Stein's partner and they were American expatriates living in Paris, and I had a complete Parisian fantasy and they created incredible salons????. They were contemporaries of Matisse and Picasso and Hemingway and there's so many stories about them. But she wrote a book about finding her place at the table through cooking and I realized that I could be part of that literary world, that salon through cooking. and so I kept going up to the camp but then I dropped out of school and travelled in Europe and I had all these amazing experiences and I finally realized that this was the profession that I wanted to do and I went to cooking school and while I was (7:15) and I loved everything that Alice had written about, her aesthetic was very Cuisine Bonne Femme which is traditional French home cooking in a beautiful, liberal, artistic environment which Berkley is and I went there and I found my tribe and I loved working there and I unlearned all my bad habits and all those horrible things I learned in cooking school and I started to cook in a very different way; a very intelligent, very fully holistic, seasonal, local, organic, all those wonderful things but really serious profound cooking. I learned so much there. So I was a (8:00) and I was ready for more and I decided to go to Brittany which is where most of the French-Canadians emigrated from, I loved the landscape, it's really rough, it was the last part of France to join the French Republic so they have a very unique cuisine and what they don't have is (8:25) never developed an Haute Cuisine, so I was really drawn to that. And so I wrote letters and I got a stage in a restaurant and I went and visited this restaurant and I realized they were not doing beautiful food and it wasn't very interesting so I took the bus to the next town and that was Pont Aven and the have the American School of Painting there and it's where Gauguin did his Breton paintings and I fell in love with the place, it's extremely magical, it's so beautiful! And I found a restaurant that would take me "La Taupinière", the restaurant still had a thatched roof and it's really a dairy cuisine and it's so beautiful, it's (9:20) and cider and there were very few young people, I actually went for the stage in the winter so it was just old people. But when i got back to (9:30) and she said "Where are you going?" and I said "I'm going to Pont Aven" and she screamed because that is the town where she had her food epiphany; in the introduction to her cookbooks you'll see where she had that moment and I just discovered it on my own. And I can see why she would have a food epiphany, it's very magic, it's Celtic, they still speak a lot of Celtic dialects, the women still wear the lace CROIX (10:00), I mean not anymore but I'm sure there's a few old people... And it's a really magical place, it's like Rome, it has a lot of springs and the thing that Gauguin loved about it is it had this very pagan religious kind of thing about it. I mean a pagan cult thing because they were still very traditional and he was there and it's the Impressionists, when they went into the fields and the countryside and it just drew a lot of people at this area because these people were very old-fashioned. So I spent a winter there and loved it, I had always had a love affair with France, I never wanted to leave so I went to Paris, cooked in a few restaurants there and I realized that I was really focusing on fish, I really wanted to focus on fish but in a very Normandy and Breton style which is really simple food, we didn't fillet the fish, we just laid (10:50) it at the table, you cooked everything with the bone and skin on because it protects the flesh...all these things, everything made sense. Like in Rome where you ask someone "Why do you do it that way?" and a lot of times you hear "It's just because we always do it." But if you go back, you realize it really has deep roots and there's absolute reason for everything, they may not be able to explain why but there is a reason. So I ended up living in Paris, working and living on a Paniche (11:25) with some crazy ballet dancers and musicians and having a crazy time and riding my bike all over Paris and working in an incredible fish restaurant called "La Cagouille" which is Normandy patois for the snail and it was a really really fun time in my life, I was completely broke but living in Paris was just magical and I went to New York to get a Visa because I had been offered a job up in not a great restaurant but a paying job, if I got a Visa, so I went to New York and while I was there I worked for Eli(12:00) bar and he, because my friend was opening up a restaurant for him so I went and helped her up in the restaurant and then he offered me an incredible job and I said "I can't do that, I have to go back to Paris".........so I went back to Paris and of course I hated the job there and I just realized it wasn't what I wanted to do, the food wasn't good enough, so  ....and Eli...decided to send her on a tour of eating in Europe so he paid me a salary to be her companion and paid for everything for I don't know how many days, we were traveling for forty days. And in the meantime I was doing private chefing??? and cooking jobs in and around Paris and then Brittany and Bordeaux and connecting with all these people I know and so that was incredible so I went back and I worked for Eli and he was really an incredibly good business man but it was just... I realized I had I had sold my sold, he gave me in incredible salary but it had no 13:29, it wasn't organic, it wasn't really that seasonable, he just really knew how to sell in New York, he knew what New Yorkers wanted to buy and so he did all these projects...he was really a business man, so it was really, really hard to work for him, but it was really a huge education about New York, how things work in New York, but while I was there I catered a bridal shower and then a wedding for his fashion stylist, Lori Goldstein and it was great, it was a wonderful gig ad her wedding was held in (14:00) New York which  was.......estate and so I met Annie, very briefly but it was a beautiful estate. I went back to France and while I was in France working I got a a call from Annie's assistant asking me if I would want to work for Annie and Susan Sontag and for me I was in a place where I didn't really know what I was going to do next and I thought about working for Annie, I thought they were really like Gertrude and Alice and I decided to do it. Susan had cancer but I knew her work and I knew Annie's work and I respected them and so I came to New York and I started working for Annie and Susan and it was an incredible life-changing experience and I was their first cook and it was really wonderful. Susan and Annie treated me like an artist in residence and they had incredible friends and guests and dinner parties and I really had carte blanche to cook whatever I wanted and Susan was writing. There was an article about her this weekend in the Times magazine a style magazine about how insecure and how lonely she was, but I had the same experiences, that  she was so hungry for emotional connection but so defensive and protective at the same time. And so she and I bonded really closely and I cooked for her, she was like my patron and Annie loved making Susan happy and Annie was traveling a lot so I ended up cooking a lot of food for Susan and then catering Annie's photo shoots and so all those big production photo shoots of celebrities and all that...it was fun. But what made me different is that I cooked real food and I made them stop the shoot and sit and eat, which was radical. And I was interested in who I was cooking for, so if somebody like Ann Margaret was being photographed I knew she was Swedish so I would make a meal that was Swedish and of course that was a big seduction, they loved it. And also I cooked for Javier Bardem and Julian Schnabel, and they offered me a job, so I got all those amazing jobs, it really was so unique for catering in New York City to have a cook  who cooked real food and so it was a really exciting time. It was tons of work and the jobs got bigger and bigger and bigger and then they bought a house in Paris so I kept going back and forth with them. It was really wonderful but it was so consuming and I really basically just became too big and I was burned out. Then Susan got really really sick and the summer before she died Annie was pregnant and it was just the three of us up in REINBECK and it was really wonderful because Annie was so calm and not working, and pregnant and really really happy and Susan was really just calm as well and she read me Mrs Dalloway! To me! It was really incredible, I will nevre forget that. It was really idyllic, it was really magical. So I decided it was time to go. Annie gave birth to Sarah who is my goddaughter, I am her godmother they are actually coming in two weeks for a visit and I started working for Bette Midler's Foundation called the New York restoration project. Because I realized what happened and what I didn't want to happen which was that I was cooking for a very small percentage of the population and that I created this learned helplessness, that all of a sudden they were so dependent on me they couldn't make coffee, they couldn't make toast. The relationship just became too intimate, too close and it consumed everything and so I talked to Alice and she said that the most important working food was feeding children and changing this (18:50) and I believed her so I went to work for Bette's foundation and the project was supposed to be designing an after-school cooking program. They are great at restoring gardens but they're not great at programming......And so I cam up with this plan and I worked for them. But in the first month or two that I was there, they fired their executive director, John, and they froze the budget, so there was no future for any new ideas. They let me work out the contract I was working, this book about how to do this...It was like a curriculum for after-school cooking and I came with this idea, the "mobile kitchen" a big mobile kitchen that would go from community garden to community garden with little individual mini kitchens, that would imitate a home kitchen. It never got off the ground but it was an idea that was definitely a need there. So when Alice offered me a job, to come to California and to be the Chef of the new dining COMMENCE  at the edible school yard, it's the model for sustainable dining for the public school system. I moved in November with the plan that I would start working on January, and they had a shut down of the construction, everything was....there were problems with the financing and so they froze that project for a year. And so I was back to private chefing and I was working catering for private clients and then I was working a lot for Ann and Gordon Getty, back to cooking for the wealthiest in the world and just a small percentage and it was demoralizing, it was really really hard for me because I don't want to do that kind of work anymore. But it was temporary and I paid the bills. In the meantime Alice called me up and said "Would you like to go Rome for a three months?" and I was unhappy with my work and I was waiting for this thing to happen at the Edible School Yard and I was at the end of a relationship, a bad breakup, the end of a long-term relationship and I needed something to give me hope so I didn't think it would come through, because Alice gets asked to do a lot of incredible projects but a lot of times the financing doesn't come through and they get downsized or they just don't get to happen. They're had been other really exciting projects that I had been involved in the planning but they never got produced. So I said "Sure I'll go to Rome." and then I started talking to the Academy people in New York and I...........for three months or six months, whatever it takes to get this project started and as you know, three months is nothing, you barely get your foot in the door. So I moved here not knowing a word of Italian. I had only been to Rome once and was not an Italophile I was a complete (utter)Francophile, everything about me is about French cooking, French training, I spoke French, grew up in a French-Canadian family so it really wasn't a part of my world.

F: Can you describe the basic mandate at that point? 

M: Well, first of all I went to New York and I.....the staff and I cooked some meals at a de???? house at her country house or beach house and met some of the Board members and met people and Debora Nevels????? and I started reading it and I got more and more interested in it. So the mandate was to come to Rome, to find the suppliers, to find out the systems and to find staff. In the proposal there was a very loose outline of what they wanted. Nobody really knew...they identified there was a need, the food had to change, people were miserable and the had an idea and Alice had her idea of what needed to be here. The people in NY had their idea and Rome had their own staff the Rome corps team here had their ideas. In  California I was very confident, I've cooked for many groups of people, many groups of artists, I know how to get people excited about food and how the nerve of the food should be. But Alice said "Come to Rome, identify, get to know, find suppliers, write menus and figure it out, basically". It was very loose. They had ideas about budgets but I can't see anything critical because nobody really knew what they were getting to, truly. I didn't think it would take five years, I thought I would be here six months. We didn't even get into the kitchen for the first six months! We weren't allowed to cross the threshold into the kitchen! I went into the kitchen after hours, they were smoking in the kitchen and making food that was prepared and then re-heated for service. The only thing that was cooked over was the pasta and the risotto. Everything else was cooked ahead. I remember walking in one time, it was four o' clock, all the fish was cooked...with breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs out of a bag and the fish was frozen fish, defrosted and cooked. And I ate here for six months! People, what they did was they ate bread, they drank wine and they ate salad. That's what they ate. And sometimes they ate pasta al pomodoro because you can't go too wrong with that. But the meat, the vegetables...And he didn't care. But the workers didn't mind the food so much because they put care into the food for the workers. So there was a misunderstanding about what Americans wanted to eat and what Italians wanted to cook. There was one cook for lunch and one cook for dinner. And so you can't do lot with that, you can't clean a case of artichokes because that's two hours, maybe an hour, but it's lot of prep work. and then to order: we have thirty-five suppliers, they had one! They had a commissary. So the guy at day would order food and the guy at nght would cook dinner.

F: So when you first got here you were doing research for vendors. What were you looking for? 

M: This is really interesting, because I had leads, and the leads that I had were from this food community here of Americans who are experts in Italian food and cooking. So they took my to all the markets: Testaccio, Campo dei Fiori, Monteverde. But the thing that was interesting was I knew I had an Ally. When I arrived it was hot, it was the 28th of August, Carmelo Franklin, the director greeted me, I put my bags down, I went into the garden and we picked figs. Instant seduction! I was completely hooked by Rome immediately. I knew there was something other. And then you go to Campo dei Fiori and you see food from all over the world, you see some local laziale ingredients but you see fruit out of season and packages of zucchini and you are like "Why do you have that?". You see some good things but you see a lot of crap as well. And Testaccio is authentic, it's a real working market for a neighborhood. and there's producers but not everything is good. I don't believe any of those people are farmers anymore. What I was looking for was people who were growing the food and selling it. So these food experts who were living in Rome just couldn't give me the kind of leads I wanted. I wanted to buy past the market. I wanted to develop relationships with the producers which is the shape of this model. To not have the middle man because then you're paying marked up prices and you are not connecting with the person growing the food.

F: Was that surprising challenging?

M: It was hard. Well, first of all the language, I didn't speak a word of Italian, I made everyone crazy. But there was a couple of bio fairs i the Fall, there was one Cooperativa which is a union, the had a fair in Campo dei Fiori and I tasted things and took notes, I kept tasting products. So what I do when I travel is if I find something good, like a butcher shop which I think is good I ask him "Where do you buy your cheese? Where do you buy your bread?" And if there's a bread-maker that's good I ask him "Where do you buy your vegetables?" That's common sense. Or I look for the line-up with the grandmothers. The old ladies the line, they know they are waiting for something good and you know that's a good sign. So I'd go to the market, I'd see that. Then I found this tiny little market, the "Mercatino Bio" in Vicolo della Moretta, near Via Giulia, which is open two Sundays a month. Good produce, very good. And then I saw Bernabei. He is the roots of our kitchen because his produce was different than everybody else. He had so many varieties of broccoli that I had never seen before and it was a bit of a casino and he was talking...and I was overwhelmed but I bought a bit of everything. I first met him in the Fall at the Mercatino Bio. I tasted his produce and it was "Eureka!". And the thing that made his stuff different was that everything tasted incredibly. And it was not beautiful. Brutto ma buono. But it tasted really good. 

F: How was it ugly?

M: He had crappy handwritten signs, things were crammed into these "cassettas". Really hands-off, really natural. The other people had the bundles of things with the tie and everything was stacked up beautifully, had great signage and his was just like scribbled. And they still have the same tin can, the cookie tin can, and they have and they have no calculator, everything is written. The thing that really got me was the eggs, she had the tv guide and the basket of eggs and they'd put two eggs and they would fold them, almost like origami, and you'd get two eggs. And she would say "No no, you can only have four eggs, I only have this much." And when I worked in Bordeaux you'd meet those ladies who came to the market and this one lady I loved who had roses, goat cheese and honey. And you couldn't buy it all. I worked for some wealthy Americans who were like "Buy it all! We are having a party!" And she was like "No! You can have one goat cheese, one rose..." and it was, like, they were there all day, why would you wipe them out? Then they would have to go home, they were bored. And Bernabei was socializing with everybody, he was having a good time, he had secret tomato sauce, secret wine, secret sausage...And it was just a casino and I love the beautiful chaos , it was beautiful chaos, it was really just nature, like the forest floor, really messy and I like that about it. But it was organized, nobody else really knew but he had a system. So I started finding vendors.

F: You visited his farm as well. I visited it in February but I need to find a lot more vendors. That's just one! And he had no idea how to deliver to the Academy, he had no fatture. Basically we said "Just bring it whenever you want as much as you want. And I knew that was the way to deal with him. But other people, we found Biolat, the organic raw milk and he sells us yoghurt, because he is not allowed to sell raw milk to an institution, he was willing to sell to us. We found good cheese vendors. People people would come on the bus with their cheese and sell us there cheese. And we found the lamb... and then I started realizing where the best ingredients were coming from. and if you look at all the agriculture maps they best stuff always came from????? The best strawberries always came from Nemi, the best pecorino came from Rieti, the guanciale came from Norcia...it makes absolute sense. And you're just like "Oh, there's nothing new, I'm not discovering anything new, it's here." And it really made me see that we just have to navigate what's already here. We're not inventing anything yet. It's all here. But what we are doing is trying to get that kind of food inside of an institution, which is unique. Because I don't think there's any institution serving food like this. Maybe a few monasteries, but no, I've visited convents, they're serving processed food because it's labour intensive and it's a hassle, it's a big hassle to have thirty-five vendors, rather than one vendor bring everything you need. So you have to be willing to do all that extra work. 

F: So what is the general submission of what the goal was in terms of the food here.

M: The immediate goal was to serve food that was delicious, that people would come to dinner. How we did it and  our value system of organic, sustainable food...they didn't care about that. They just wanted good food on the table so that people would start coming back to us. 

F: But your agenda and Alice's agenda was local, seasonal. organic. That was your requirement basically.

M: The thing is there's always this balance: are you going to buy the organic that is not very good tasting or are you going to buy the local that's really good, so you have to make these value judgements all the time. Like the Roscioli bakery, because they used to be all organic but they are not organic, only some of the things are organic, but they would deliver to us twice a day, they are a local family, they are easy to work with, their bread is delicious, we constantly have this conversation with them. We hope that they will convert to all-organic. We've talke about that with them a lot. But there was no organic bread in Rome that would deliver to us that was good enough. So there's that. Prosciutto: we have a budget constraint, we've tasted so many organic prosciuttos, none is good. It's not that the meat isn't as good, it's that the people who make it aren't as expertise as other people. So you have to constantly make these value judgements. Is the prosciutto or the anchovies that come from Spain affordable? Or do you buy anchovies from the Amalfi Coast which are really really really expensive. So you have to constantly think about that, because we have to work within a budget that is sustainable. And so you have the people who can take this kind of decisions. You can't just put someone in here who is a good cook. They have to understand the process.

F: So could you talk a little bit about your experiences of preparing meals for a community of Americans who are here, many of them experiencing Rome for the first time and then the community of Italian staff that has been here for a much longer time? What the differences are in preparing food for these two groups, what is different and what is similar. Maybe give us some specific anecdotes. 

M: There's two differences. Italians, the Romans are very opinionated. Americans - we cook for a very sophisticated crowd - some of them are maybe a little more open, academics maybe, they have a very wide palate, they've tried many types of cuisines, they're much more open to trying new things, they are not always grounded to a specific culinary education. They don't have strong opinions but they have ideas and they are open. Romans are much more opinionated and closed. We started cooking the same things, no way! We have to cook much simpler for Romans. Their complaints was that things were too heavy. Chris' training is mostly restaurant cooking, most of my experience is home cooking. Daily food that you eat every day as opposed to food that you eat in a restaurant. And we've tried to create a really good marriage of the two. You don't wanna just serve them raw vegetables or boiled farro and roasted chicken, you want to make it interesting. But you don't want to get into this everyday feasting. And the Romans have traditional ideas about what to eat when. For example you can't do bucatini aglio, olio e peperoncino, that cause a great deal for us. I personally think that for these blue collar workers, the meal is the highlight of their day, and they are babied at home, they are very catered to. I found out that all cooks used to....everybody would have a different dish, like their pasta's sauce a different way and you have to find a balance. How much you care to them, because you are running around in circles or how much do you say "No, this is it, you either you come or you don't". There has to be a dialogue, you can't just cut them off. They have definitive ideas about what days of the week to eat what etc. Valerio actually interned on kitchen and he said it's only about perception. We would cook the exact same thing but if we would hold back some fritti and he said "I made it special for you" and they'd love it. He cooked a pasta and they would say "Oh it's so good", because he was Roman. There is a lot of pride, their pride was wounded. The Italians had to cook things.But I learned a lot of things from them as well, I really simplified a lot and we cook a hundred grams of pasta per head for the workers and fifty for the FELLAS because the FELLAS eat a lot of vegetables and other things, they always have to have primo, secondo, the verdure have to be un-sauced or sauce on the side. The only thing we do now is pasta in bianco, and it's become a drag for us. Because they all want pasta in bianco o riso in bianco. It's become a joke for us cooks because the pasta in bianco for me is like nursery food, it's not dieting because the put tons of olive oil and cheese on the top, it's about not wanting to have variations. It's like Mac Donalds for Americans, they know exactly what it will taste like. 

F: So do you think there's a comfort in that? What does that mean really, that relationship with food? Is it about comfort? Is it about connection to a ritualized activity that is connected to youth in your family?

M: I can't really speak for the Romans because I think it would be unfair but my perception is that they don't want any surprises because for them, they're going to work for their entire lives, they really want no ???? on Thursday because they can count on it, because it's security. It's food security. 

F: I think it's a very interesting situation: you coming from a very different background with no real experience with Italy before and then engaging with it in such a deep way, in this particular culture. What are your particular observations as someone from the outside coming in. I think you have a point of view which is particular.

M: What we have in the Foundation is that we are using local ingredients in season. That's very familiar and grounding. And we are trying to cook very very simply and I think that it's a huge deal to cook for Romans and not be Roman. It's important to respect the tradition. I always differ to Italians but so does evryone. You have to tread lightly, you have to be respectful but also be respectful to yourself and to your experience. 

F: I was curious about your particular observations about what's unique about the food in this city. 

M: My understanding of Roman food is that I think that Romans don't want surprises and they want to know what they are going to have. So every restaurant has really similar menus and I think that.................. If the new dish makes you forget the old dish then it's worth keeping. It's worth becoming a tradition. But if the classic is still in your mind while you're eating this re-invention why bother with the re-invention? And I have a lot of respect ofr that. I love Roman food. I love cicoria and coniglio and matriciana, pasta e fagioli. I'm religious about pasta e fagioli. I really respect that. I think it is the food for every single day of your life. And I think it's nutritious and it's balanced and it's meaningful and I think it's in proper focus too. I think people are obsessed about food but they're not re-inventing. I think it's nice to have these people who are doing new things but really everybody can agree that you can live the rest of your life on twelve different dishes, really. And the other thing focuses on digestion. I think it's the number one thing. My impression and what I've come to understand is that the worst thing you can say to someone about a meal is not that it was cooked poorly or that it was not fresh but that it was indigestible. And people talk about digestion a lot. If you look at Roman books they talk about that a lot. I think it has a lot to do with culture, people were focused on babies and children and I think it's s very maternal relationship to cooking and eating and I think there's a lot to learn from Roman food, I've learned so much about humanity.

L: What do you know about traditional Roman food? Because you've talked about Amatriciana and Coniglio. but actually the tradition is huge. I'm thinking about Coda alla Vaccinara, Trippa. What do you know about this tradition and what do you think could be perception of Americans about this kind of food?

M: I think there is a huge obsession with Roman food. People are looking for tradition. Right now Rome is the big thing in NYC, which starts a lot of food trends. Huge! 

F: That's recent?

M: Yes, this Fall, William Samona, they want to do a whole Rome campaign. It's really big right now.

F: Why do you think that is?

M: I think that in times of economic recession people return to the home, they return to the garden, they look for comfort; they go back to cooking. And Roman food has deep roots. The Coda alla Vaccinara, Rome is an urban space and that's what the people who worked at the Mattatoio ate, so a whole cuisine arose from this urban need, it was essential because that was all they had. It's the same thing with the blacks in the South. All that soul food arose from not eating....theyhad to eat pig ears and.... because that's what they had to use. So Romans had the tail, the belly etc.

F: So there's a modesty and simplicity and also austerity to it.

M: Cucina povera! But you know in the Mediterranean diet, meat has always been something that was expensive, more than beans and grains and greens, so the foundation is these things. Pasta is a way of conserving a grain, pasta is a way of preserving flour as bread is a way of preserving flour. 

F: So what the world, and America in particular,  is now appreciating or learning from Roman food, do you think it's  learning an ability to look at food as a way to sustain yourself not just as a special occasion, to approach food in a way that is integrated with the daily food?

M: It's a trend, United States are really trend-based. Right now it's the moment of Rome. But why people respond to it is it tastes good and it's approachable, it's simple cooking, it's not high technique cooking, like French cuisine where you need tweezers and arranging on platters. It's not Bocuse. It's nonna! You can make these things at home. If you learn to make pasta you learn to make ragù, you learn to make cacio a pepe. But I do think there is trattoria food and there is home food and so there's a huge repertoire, I understand that, but I think you know what people are eating on Sundays, they are having a big family meal and they're having a pasta or maybe some fish or lasagna. It's not like in NYC where people are having Thai food or Chinese or they're having Fried Chicken and all in one city. I think everybody is eating Roman food in Rome. 

F: So now you've become familiar with the city and the food, do you have any particular anecdotes or stories or events you can describe where you had particular revelations, like revelatory moments?

M: Yes! I love cicoria ripassata! I think I could eat it every single day of the rest of my life. As cooks, when you're on your fifteenth hour on your feet we kind of get delirious so we start playing games in the kitchen while you're cooking and you do these desert island games like "What few dishes would you take with you on a deserted island?" or "What would your last meal be?" I think pasta e fagioli is like a Picasso painting. It's SO PERFECT. And it's digestible and it's nutritious and it's so profound and delicious. I think it's very easy to write off Roman food saying it's too simple. It's home cooking. There's many layers to it as there is many opinions, there's so much history to it but I think it's extremely, profoundly important. and it's the origin of so much of modern culture.

F: What were the particular stories you came upon or connections to the past that really touched you, like something that you've learned or you've read that you felt deeply. 

M: There is no disconnection between the city and campagna. People still respect agricultural rhythms and lives and still celebrate the seasons. I remember people telling me "It's your first asparagus! Wait, wait, wait! Make a wish!" It's really significant to celebrate vegetables, which I love. Everybody is eating pecorino and fave, and this is the thing I love in Rome! Everybody is eating it! It's like, it's the time and it becomes a celebration! And you celebrate this food at this time. And then when all the watermelons start, you' re just eating watermelon. And it's like, why fight it? It's the obvious thing to do! And there's so much joy and celebration around it. I love that! At first I was like "oh I want Mexican food, I want Indian food" and now I don't have these cravings. I really feel nourished in a different way here, profoundly nourished.

F: Do you think part of that comes from the sense of social connection or cohesion you have with of being a part of a community that's all eating the same thing?

M: Yes! I actually do! I love that now. I think it's an identity around food, people have an identity, you're Roman you're eating Roman food. If you're eating Sardinian that's something else, if you're eating Sicilian that's different. I didn't understand the originality of Roman food before I came to Rome, I had no idea. I had heard about it but I didn't really understand what that meant. It's even smaller than that: it's your home. And so I think that as much as it seems uniform, it's complex and I think that's really understanding how complex food systems are, and how people's relationships to eating and traditions are very complex and very personal and intimate but also this large community of people who feel the same way, with everybody having Panettone, everybody getting excited about Panettone which I don't even think is from Rome, it's from the North, but it becomes the thing! And it's like you're all eating panettone and then you're done. And then you're into the next thing. I think it's so beautiful, I think it's really, really wonderful. It's something that we've lost, we eat whatever we want whenever we want in the United States. And you can have whatever you want at any one time. It comes from being a wealthy country and a big city, you can buy anything in NY at any time of the year. And in Rome now you can see that more and more, but people are still not like that. And I think there are limitations, like you don't eat asparagus all year long, you eat it when it's the season and you enjoy it from when it's young and it's beginning and when it gets older you cook it differently and then it's done! And it's beautiful! You have had this intense period with it and then it's over and then you wait for it to come back. It's more of our human cycle, it's how we can get in tune with  that. Whereas in the States it's confusing, we' re constantly confused and we just keep layering more and more variety and novelty. But tradition gives you something to feel secure about. I think it's real important, I have deep, deep respect for the Roman food culture. Sometimes it gets frustrating, because as I said they complained about the food to the director and then I said "OK,what do you want us to make?" and they couldn't agree on it. They couldn't make us a list. They couldn't agree, they all had different ideas about what to eat so it's between themselves, I'm sure even in the family around the table, it becomes very personal. 

L: So you think that the relationship between the city and the countryside in Rome is unusual respect to Paris or Ny or other cities in the world?

M: Yes, I think people still know the seasons and they still think the best food comes from the family's garden. The best fagioli or peperoni come from their grandmother's garden and I still think they respect farmers. Although I don't shop in the grocery stores, the supermercato. I do see people buy frozen things and packages of lettuce, but I go to the market. You see all kinds of people at the market. It's all about the connection. I think it's part of our humanity, we need that connection and I think you feel better if you are connected to nature. I think about this a lot because you hear a lot about the brain drain. There was an article on the NY Times last year about that factory south of Rome, close to Naples. They brought in an expert from a car factory, an Italian who worked in the United States and was a big success and he was defeated in this factory which has incredible absentism and they may have to close the plant down because they can't get the production up and it's very close to Giovanni's farm, you can see the lights of the factory from Giovanni's farm and I thought that the rhythm of the factory, based on the industrial revolution, is not the rhythm of the country and these people who live rurally, to go and work in these factories, they're going to take a week off because it's time to kill the pigs. It's not who they are! They are not modern people. And I think Italy as a whole isn't in tune with the modern age, they're still influenced by the agrarian lifestyle. And I think one of the things that make Rome so powerful and reason why it's a place of pilgrimage and the reason why people fall in love with it is the energy of the city. It's so profound, all the water underneath the city...you still feel in campagna in the city, it's so strong. 

F: The connection to time and seasons that are removed or suspended in the industrial system.

M: Yes, absolutely, and the way people eat is not connected to a culture, it's not connected to the seasons, to the agriculture. If you work in a factory you have to eat quickly, you don't want to fall in love with a pear, you just want to eat and go back. Industrial food is for industrial people. But if you're still connected, you come to your senses. It's a sensual thing, eating and being connected to the earth. And that's the thing about Giovanni, it's that he grows in a permaculture style and his plants have deep tap roots, while most plants grow on the top , his plants grow into the mineral soil and so when you eat his misticanza you feel it! You feel this incredible nutrition instantly absorbed. And that's the thing, if you eat really good ingredients you're connected to nature. Rome is very, very powerful. the Vatican is a whole other story. The Vatican I think is really about controlling people. 

F: And having had experiences in cooking in a few very particular places, very much in touch with the local production of food in season, is there something that distinguishes Rome from the others?

M: Walking in Villa Pamphilij I see people looking for mushrooms, you see old people picking pine cones to get the pinoli! You're kidding me! Have you ever taken them? It's so much work! And workers here too, they're watching the kaki for when it's ready to pick| Careful observers. Because they're going slower they are able to see more. If you know, if you're watching the olives, you' re watching the walnuts, you know when you're ready to pick them. And they like that about us, they like thI really would buy a lot of olive oil from the workers. Most people press their own oil. It's really really important.

L: How long have you been living in Rome?

M: Four and a half years.

L: Do you feel something has changed in our culture in relationship with food or not?

M: I started meeting in the last year young Italians who have gone away and come back. And I think they have a renewed entrepreuneural sense that is hard to get excited about but they're excited about Roman food again and they're interested in bringing it to the front again. So someone like Gabriele Bonci who uses organic ingredients, he makes traditional food but he's savvy, he's not doing something that's trying to revisit the past, he's doing it contemporary. But it still has the roots of tradition. So he's being inventive but not being foolish and just playing. So he's doing really amazing things with pizza, he'll do Amatriciana pizza, but his dough and his flour are amazing. He'll make a pizza al taglio but he'll put broccoli romanesco and baccalàs stomach on a pizza, he'll do potato and cotechino and cavolo verza. He's deconstructing. And at Testaccio 01100 they're taking pizza bianca and they're making trapazzini, it's like coda alla vaccinara into pizza, that you can eat, they're not disresepcting the tradition, they're just re-crafting it! And it's a breath of fresh air. But the government and the city aren't help the young people do new things, it's very oppressive and very hard, that's what I hear all the time from my Roman friends, it's hard to do a new business if you don't have your own money. But people are coming back, maybe they've gone to London or NY or even Milan and made some money and they have the energy again to start something new. But this doesn't mean that the traditional things, cucina di nonna, cucina povera is going anywhere, they're just bringing it to the front again and I'm very excited about that, I think it's really wonderful, I think that it can't be romanticized as being tradition, it has to be alive and I think it has everything it needs to be alive. I think it's a Rennaisance, these exciting, young people. And this book will help, I'm sure. Do you have any new chefs in your interviews? 

F: Well I wanted to ask you who you think should be among the thirty? 

MT: I think you should interview Gabriel Bonci. He's I think Roman and now he's also doing cooking courses at Tricolore. Monti. They're teaching cooking. 

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MT: These deconstructive Roman restaurants I haven't been impressed. I have had a few great meals but I haven't been like wow, I haven't found real geniuses who have technique and who understand the ingredients, they're just building on what's already there, not deconstructing them and then rebuilding them, real artisans.

FH: Since this book will be printed in English but will have an Italian translation and it's about asking Romans about Rome but it's for an international audience, what do you think the Roman attitudes towards food can teach people in otehr cities? What do you think people can take from the people's approach to food here? 

MT: I think it's cooking simply. I think food is the centre of everything in Rome, I think it's where it should about, it's talked about, it's a constant subject, it's constantly discussed, it's an abundance and it's constantly discussed. It doesn't mean people are over-eating or bingeing but it's always a topic of conversation so it's the centre of all life, I think it really is. But they understand abundance and this is what I've learned while living in Rome, there's always plenty of food so the symbol of abundance is really hard for Americans to have a healthy relation with eating and a healthy relation with food, there's always going to be plenty of food, we'll always be able to eat, it's just pure abundance and so it's calming, you feel secure so I think food is security and abundance, it's very nurturing and I think Romans in general have a very healthy relation to food, to eating. I don't know about this new generation because of all the groceries stores, it disconnects you from traditional life but I think it is the centre of everything and it's respected for what it is, it's not a copy, it's something that's successful to everybody, you know the same food is being served I think in the wealthiest homes as in the poorest. It's the centre of everything and people accept that, you are not trying to change it, it's just understood and respected.

FH: Do you think that's a unique by-product of a city where people are so connected to where their food is coming from and when it's coming?

MT: I think it's connected to tradition. The security of tradition. So family, home, food, country. And then maybe it's something pre-Christian, connected to the Earth but I think it's connected to family and tradition and then being well-nourished.

FH: It's very strange in a way that food can be such a topic of constant conversation in a place where you are always kind of eating the same things. There's a predictable cycle, there's the traditions. How much is there to discuss?

MT: It's all about the subtleties, the nuances and the layers. That's what I'm saying. It is on fist read - I hear it from the fellows all the time "It's always the same thing in the restaurant! You go to a restaurant and there's always the same seven pasta", you know the trattorie. But you know this certain restaurant makes the best carciofi alla Giudia and this one makes the best cacio e pepe, this one makes the best coniglio alla cacciatora, it's all about the subtleties, and you're just re-shaping these over. And for me it's almost really modern because it's so minimal. 

LMG: I think the key point of our cuisine, its philosophy, it's that simplicity doesn't mean that your food is easier. Simplicity is very complex. I think it's the key point of our cuisine, especially for Romans. They think that simplicity is very complex to reproduce.

MT: It's really hard to it right. So you have a lifetime of making the perfect cacio e pepe.

LMG: You have only three ingredients: pasta, cheese and black pepper, but it's very complex, even for Romans. It's like Modernism! You look at Rothko or Pollock or you look at Henry Moore, I mean it's not Baroque and that's the thing that I think is great, that Italians can go really Baroque really fast in art, in design, in clothes but food has stayed. And when it goes abroad it totally loses it, it loses its connection, I mean when they start staking the pasta or squirting all the foams you're just like "it's not good." It loses something in translation. But when it's perfect cacio e pepe there's nothing better.

MT:My cooking has ben really restrained, French cooking is so different. And Chris' old restaurant, the amount of butter he wanted to use when he first got here! When I hear about people putting butter in tomato sauce, I'm like "Are you kidding me? What are you talking about? It's so stupid!" So I respect Roman food. 

LMG: But for example my grandmother was born in Arezzo, in Tuscany and she used to put little pieces of butter in pomodoro.

MT: Marcella Hazan does it too! She's one of the most important italian cooks, she's Venetian and she's famous for her cooking and she puts butter in her tomato sauce, I have a friend who just opened a restaurant and was nominated for James ???? and she puts butter in her tomato sauce, because when you eat it's so good! But if you eat butter every day in your tomato sauce you're going to be addicted to butter and it doesn't need it. 

FH: It's also fascinating, the point you made about subtlety and cuisine that's quite simple. Perhaps as we eat in NY, if you go for sushi one night, Mexican the next night, Chinese the next night, Indian the next night, when you eat like that maybe you lose touch with that kind of subtlety while when you're eating through the seasons, this food that's so connected to tradition and to place and to time and to seasons, suddenly subtlety and detail opens up for you in a way that would not be possible otherwise. This for me is a revelation, someone who's been so conscious of this so long, I've never eaten like this, so consistently connected to a place before and it's true, suddenly subtle variations between things become much more meaningful, don't they?

MT: I think Americans get this postcard, superficial opinions because they've tried a lot of everything of all these different foods which don't have relationships to each other necessarily, it's very easy to seduce someone through food, because the palate when you're born likes sugar, salt and fat, it's what's in breast milk and so fast food is just made for seducing your palate so you don't develop something for bitter or for sour, the verdura, vegetable taste is really green, some people never develop a taste for that but if you're raised in a cuisine where you learn the subtleties year after year after year you start to have this real palate and you can taste everything! Romans are not interested in trying new things, they want Roman food done very simply and the worst thing to say is that it's indigestible and the best compliment is "it reminds me of something my grandmother made".

FH: Do you get that occasionally?

MT: Occasionally. So I love cooking for the Romans, but sometimes they make my crazy, because they don't share, they're not good at sharing, they become very child-like at the table and they want you to mother them. I don't want to get in that relation with you! This is for the entire group of you, take a little bit of it and then come back and get more. They want to be mothered! And they' re like teenagers, they want to fight back, they don't want to be the one to say what they want to eat, they couldn't decide what they want to it. I think it's really interesting, I've learned so much, our farmers have taught me so much! It's just amazing. Like twelve different kinds of broccoli.

FH: When you leave here at the end of the summer and you go back to the States, what do you think you will miss most about food in Rome.

MT: Well, I think it's the predictability and the security of it, it's very comforting. And I will always cook for myself, so I will go back and I'll keep cooking. I like going to my places that I like and knowing that I will get stracciatella at this place that I really like. And I will miss different tastes, different flavors but it will be fun to eat a wider variety of things but I will really miss Rome. Food should really have terroir, taste of the earth, the ground. So Roman food in NY doesn't taste like Rome, so to do Roman food in NY is fun, it's divertente but it's not traditional food. For your daily diet you should be eating things that grow where you're living, to be rooted by what we eat.

FH: So, inevitably part of leaving Rome is leaving Roman food.

MT: Yes, exactly. But the values, I've learned so much. Also, there's all kinds of habits. I mean I love pasta but not as much as Italians love pasta, I'm not pasta obsessed, I like grains more, cereali.