L'Insalatone (The Big Salad)

I try not to make all of my entries about food and wine while I am traveling through Italy (though it would be easy to do so) but today I had to write about my lunch. For a long time I thought the American restaurant scene finally had something over the Italians: the salad. I don’t mean a little salad that you order with your meal, I mean the BIG SALAD (cue the Seinfeld music). Italian salad always lacked something. Yes, the lettuce was good, the carrots had more flavor than any I had ever tasted in the US and the tomatoes never tasted like cardboard. But in the past Italians would never accept a salad as an entrée and therefore the possibility to have just that rather than a pasta course, a meat course and THEN salad was inconceivable. And certainly, after all the food preceding it, one was never hoping for a big salad. But Italians have finally jumped on the big salad bandwagon and I must say, nobody does it better. Yesterday I had a divine salad with grilled chicken, parmesan shavings, cherry tomatoes and olives. There was no inquiry about whether or not I wanted creamy garlic salsa ranch peppercorn dressing. The dark green local olive oil bottle was plopped on my table along with a bottle of balsamic vinegar and salt. No pepper, that is by special request only. A glass of prosecco, my big salad and a hunk of fresh bread – che buono! Life is good!