Senza Glutine-- Eating Gluten-Free In Tuscany Is Easier Than In The U.S.

Da Delfina terrace with the 1596 Medici pad in the background

I just got back from about a month in Tuscany. Some old friends and I rented a beautiful old villa outside a small town in the Chianti region of northern Tuscany, just southwest of Florence. I ate every day-- and that included a lot of pasta and some pizza-- and never had to worry about gluten, which my doctor told me to avoid.

I have four favorite Italian restaurants here in L.A.-- BellaRiva, Angelini Osteria, Osteria Mozza, all in the Hollywood area, and Piccolo in Venice-- and I wouldn't even think to ask them for gluten-free anything. Although... I'm about to start. It's perfectly natural in Italy, where, apparently, Celiac is a well-understood disease. Health food stores, like the well-stocked NaturaSi in Florence (4 outlets), normal run-of-the-mill grocery stores (like the Coops everywhere) and pharmacies, all carry gluten-free food-- and lots of it. So cooking back at the villa was no problem.

But it's Tuscany. I was there to eat the most refined and deicious cuisine in the world. And I never had a problem with that it. Montespertoli is a tiny town you won't find on many maps. You don't even find the roads that go to it on any maps. But the one of the pizzeria's just off the main square Garby's, with dozens of different kinds of pizza on their menu, was always happy to make a pizza senza glutine. Down the road from the villa in the other direction, there was a big restaurant, Lo Spigo in Montelupo Fiorentino has a page on their menu with gluten-free dishes, but basically they'll make you anything you want in a gluten-free way, including every kind of pasta (except ravioli and lasagne) and every kind of pizza.

When I first got to town I called on a friend of mine who's been living in Tuscany for 8 years, American-born film-maker Frank LaLoggia (Lady In White, Fear No Evil). He suggested we go to a place owned by a friend of his, Paolo, in Lucardo, 10 minutes from Montespertoli and halfway between our villa and his house down a dirt road in San Casiano-- Ristorante C'era Una Volta in Lucardo. Not only did Paolo offer to make me any pasta I wanted senza glutine, he even served me gluten free bread while my friends ate the house bread. I might mention that the food is amazing and the view from the terrace is spectacular and that I ate there half a dozen times afterwards. Just down the road a piece is a turn-off on via Lucignano which leads to a not easy to find farm house that doubles-- if you make a reservation-- as a vegan restaurant, La Fonte. It's not specifically gluten-free-- more organic and macrobiotic-- but they know how to do it and do it well.

And that brings us to the world renowned Tuscan destination restaurants-- and, yes, they take care of their gluten-free guests as well. The first day I arrived in Italy I didn't go to the villa but stayed to see some friends honeymooning in Florence. We had dinner at one of the best restaurants in town, Ristorante Cibrèo. It was my first meal of the trip and I was taken aback when I asked the waiter if he could serve gluten-free pasta. He got all huffy-- but, as it turned out, not over the gluten-free part. In all their long history (Etruscan times?) they have never ever served pasta. OK, once we got over that, I sat back and had a superb meal. The menu, which changes constantly, is scrawled in Italian by hand but the waiter sits down and explains every dish on it to you. There were a dozen things I wanted to order and I barely remember what I wound up picking but everything was delicious and had I ever worked up the courage to brave Florence's bizarre traffic again, I would have certainly gone back again.

The only other restaurant in a city I ate in was Siena's wonderful Osteria le Logge, just off the Campo, the city's famed main square. Everything was delicious and although gluten-free wasn't their thing, they were able to easily accommodate my request. I went with a bunch of friends and we ordered tons of food, all of it delicious, well-prepared and shockingly inexpensive. All the other restaurants were in the countryside and-- warning-- they all require reservations. They also require a car and a lot of directional savvy to locate and get to.


In the small cluster of buildings in the middle of nowhere called Artimino, near a small town called Carmignano just west of Florence is a Tuscan classic, Da Delfina. The terrace overlooks a gorgeous bucolic scene that happens to include an amazing Medici villa built in 1596. As one reviewer put it, "Comfort is the keyword: you come here for an elegant take on mamma's home cooking, served on crisply laid tables by impeccable, bow-tied waiters." I had called ahead and told them I didn't eat gluten and they were prepared. One of the reasons-- there are several-- that I keep going back to RivaBella in L.A. is because of their unqiue take on eggplant parmigiana, which the L.A. Times described as "a luscious eggplant timbale in a light Parmesan cream" and I'm hooked. But wasn't I shocked to find the identical preparation at Delfina, only twice the portion size and a little more... let's say relaxed. I wouldn't call the restaurant inexpensive but it's far from expensive. They don't accept credit cards.

Another restaurant that stands out as especially delicious and also pretty much in the middle of nowhere was La Locanda di Pietracupa on the side of the "main road" into San Donato in Poggio. That's where we had our goodbye dinner when my friends from Amsterdam and Arizona were leaving for home. All send-offs should be that delicious! Again, I called ahead with the senza glutine request and they were solicitous and ready to serve! I had the amazing pasta dish with a light sauce made of beets and gorgonzola. It doesn't sound that good but, man, would I like to be eating there again tonight! They even had gluten-free bread for me!

I should also add that all the restaurants are especially proud of their olive oils and balsamics, and they should be. In fact the only souvenirs I brought home were bottles of local olive oil!

Why Visit Italy's Tremiti Islands?

Rightists through history-- always looking for easy scapegoats for an unpalatable agenda that can't survive without divisiveness-- have been obsessed with homosexuality. This week we saw Florida's Tea Party junior senator, Marco Rubio, shrilly threatening to scuttle his own immigration bill if it includes protections for LGBT families.

While discussing Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) proposed amendment to the immigration bill-- which would grant same-sex couples the same protections as heterosexual couples by making the law recognize “any marriage entered into full compliance with the laws of the State or foreign country within which such marriage was performed”-- Rubio insisted that he could not abide by such a rule.

Halfway round the world-- and two thousand years ago-- a very uptight Emperor Augustus exiled his granddaughter, Julia the Younger, to Isole Tremiti, a tiny archipelago off the coast of southeastern Italy in he Adriatic Sea. She had committed adultery and she died there. Later, in the early 1900s, when Italy embarked on rebuilding an empire, they used the Tremiti Islands as a prison for dissidents from the conquered province of Libya. When Mussolini took over he decided to use one of the islands, San Domino (the only one with a sandy beach and, today something of a tourist mecca) as an internment camp for gays. As obsessed with homosexuality as Rubio or any other right-wing loon, Mussolini claimed Italy had no homosexuals-- "In Italy there are only real men."

Seventy-five years ago in Fascist Italy, a group of gay men were labeled "degenerate," expelled from their homes and interned on an island. They were held under a prison regime-- but some found life in the country's first openly gay community a liberating experience.

...Back in the late 1930s the archipelago played a part in the effort by Benito Mussolini's Fascists to suppress homosexuality.

Gay men undermined the image that the dictator wanted to project of Italian manhood. "Fascism is a virile regime. So the Italians are strong, masculine, and it's impossible that homosexuality can exist in a Fascist regime," says professor of history at the University of Bergamo, Lorenzo Benadusi.

So the strategy was to cover up the issue as much as possible.

No discriminatory laws were passed. But a climate was created in which open manifestations of homosexuality could be vigorously suppressed.

...The whole episode has been largely forgotten.

It's thought that nobody who endured this punishment is still alive today, and there are few detailed accounts of what went on there.

But in their book, The Island and the City, researchers Gianfranco Goretti and Tommaso Giartosi talk of dozens of men, most but not all from Catania, enduring harsh conditions on San Domino.

They would arrive handcuffed, and then be housed in large, spartan dormitories with no electricity or running water.

"We were curious because they were called 'the girls'," says Carmela Santoro, an islander who was just a child when the gay exiles began to arrive.

"We would go and watch them get off the boat... all dressed up in the summer with white pants-- with hats.

"And we would watch in awe-- 'Look at that one, how she moves!' But we had no contact with them."

Another islander, Attilio Carducci, remembers how a bell would ring out at 8pm every day, when the men were no longer allowed outside.

"They would be locked inside the dormitories, and they were under the supervision of the police," he says.

"My father always spoke well of them. He never had anything bad to say about them-- and he was the local Fascist representative."

...[S]ome of the few accounts given by former exiles make clear that life was not all bad on San Domino.

It seems that the day-to-day prison regime was comparatively relaxed.

Unwittingly, the Fascists had created a corner of Italy where you were expected to be openly gay.

For the first time in their lives, the men were in a place where they could be themselves-- free of the stigma that normally surrounded them in devoutly Catholic 1930s Italy.

What this meant to the exiles was explained in a rare interview with a San Domino veteran, named only as Giuseppe B-- published many years ago in the gay magazine, Babilonia-- who said that in a way the men were better off on the island.

"In those days if you were a femminella [a slang Italian word for a gay man] you couldn't even leave your home, or make yourself noticed-- the police would arrest you," he said of his home town near Naples.

"On the island, on the other hand, we would celebrate our Saint's days or the arrival of someone new... We did theatre, and we could dress as women there and no-one would say anything."

And he said that of course, there was romance, and even fights over lovers.

...It is deeply ironic that in the Italy of that time, they could find a degree of freedom only on a prison island.

The party of gay and lesbian rights activists who gathered on the archipelago the other day put down a plaque in memory of the exiles.

It will be a permanent reminder of Mussolini's persecution of homosexuals.

"This is necessary, because nobody speaks of what happened in those years," said one of the activists, Ivan Scalfarotto, a Member of Parliament.

And the suffering hasn't ended for Italy's gay community, he says. They are no longer shackled and shipped off to islands-- but even now they are not regarded as "class A" citizens.

There is still no real social stigma attached to homophobia in Italy, Scalfarotto says, and the state doesn't extend legal rights of any kind to gay or lesbian couples.

Their struggle for equality goes on.

Today San Domino Island has 607 reviews by Trip Advisor users of two dozen hotels. Over 100,000 vacationers descend on the island each summer. People fly into Bari's airport and either take a boat from Manfredonia, Vieste and Peschici, Vasto, Pescara or-- most popular-- from Termoli on the coast of Molise. The fast boat is 45 minutes and the slow boat in almost 2 hours. Prices range between €13 and €18€. If you're feeling flush you can take a 20 minute helicopter ride from Foggia for €50. You can't bring a car to the Tremiti Islands-- and they're small enough to explore by foot.

Conservative Demands For Austerity In Italy Are Destroying Tourism-- Pompeii Crumbles, Rome Taxes Tourists

Berlusconi uses the same image consultants as American right-wingers

It was just a year ago that we spent a few weeks living in Monti, a less-known central Rome neighborhood tucked away behind the touristy Forum, very close, much oddly inaccessible to anyone not looking for it. We rented an apartment, although when we returned to Rome a month later we stayed at the Parco dei Principi down by the Borghese Gardens.

It's been kind of scandalous that Italy's clownish Prime Minister has botched the state's preservation and tourist promotion efforts with his breathtakingly corrupt and right-wing austerity agenda. The solution to a potentially crumbling tourist sector-- a major underpinning of the Italian economy-- is a new tax leveled against (non-voting) tourists. The new tax on accomodations began this week.

Tourists will pay an extra €2 per person per night if staying in hotels up to a three-star rating, and an extra €3 per person per night if they have chosen a four- or five-star hotel.

Even campsites fall within the tax’s remit, with campers paying an added €1 per person per night to sleep under canvas-- although youth hostels are exempt from the charge, while the fee does also not apply to visitors younger than the age of ten.

The tax will be levied on the first ten nights of any hotel stay in the city-- or the first five nights for those staying on a campsite.

Local authorities hope it will raise around €80million (£69million) per annum, which will be used on the maintenance and promotion of a city that attracts some 30 million visitors every year. Rome has some 3,800 hotels, guest houses and bed-and-breakfast options.

Although the fee is theoretically small – for example, a three-night weekend away for a couple in a three-star hotel will equate to an extra cost of €12 (£10) at the end of the break, an amount that will barely pay for two cappuccinos in a central coffee shop-- the tax may cause a certain amount of inconvenience when guests come to pay it.

The fee must be settled on checking out of a hotel at the end of a stay-- and only in cash, meaning that 21st century travellers used to paying for everything with a credit card will need to remember to hold back a little paper money to take care of the extra amount.

Some foresee problems with the charge.

“These increases-- especially tax on accommodation-- will make it more difficult to compete with countries such as Spain and Greece, which have more competitive hotel prices,” Giorgio Sansa, a Rome-based tour operator, told The Scotsman.

“Tourism is our main income and prices in Rome are already high enough, so although it appears only a small increase, for a family on a break in the city it will add more to the final bill and be noticed.”

“I don’t think it will stop people coming to Rome,” Mr Sansa continued, “but I think we will see groups choosing to go to other destinations instead, as we now have to add the charge when we sell tours.”

Nor is the accommodation charge the only new fee that will hit visitors to the Italian capital in the pocket this year. January 1st also saw the adding of a supplementary €1 to the price of museum entry in Rome for non-residents.

Since Berlusconi's rightist, corporate government took power half of Italy's cultural budget has been cut to placate Berlusconi's wealthy, selfish backers who simply do not think they should be taxed. The results have been catastrophic. Look at Pompeii, which draws something like 2.5 million tourists a year. Neglect contributed to the collapse of a 2,000 year old frescoed building used by gladiators after heavy rains weakened the foundations.

It's been just over five weeks since the House of the Gladiators collapsed at Pompeii on November 6. Then, in smaller incidents on November 30 and December 1, two walls also crumbled at the site. Outrage over the historical losses led to calls for the resignation of culture minister Sandro Bondi, but Bondi, a close ally of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has refused to leave his post. How was this disaster allowed to happen, and-- with Berlusconi having just narrowly avoided a vote of no confidence in the Italian parliament today-- how does Italy plan to cope with what has quickly become a matter of worldwide concern?

Heavy rains were said to have been responsible for the collapse of the House of the Gladiators, but underlying issues of drainage and maintenance worsened the structure's ability to weather the storms. As early as 2005, a Naples newspaper reported a commission's findings that almost three-quarters of the site was at risk of collapse, and that 40 percent of its buildings were in severe need of restoration.

Experts have had harsh words for the Berlusconi government's maintenance of the site. An emergency commission was created in 2008 to cut through the red tape and handle Pompeii's many problems. But as journalist and archaeological expert Luigi Necco told NPR, the people in charge of the site have been more concerned with investing in flashy multimedia accessories than archeological preservation.
"This Disneyland here in the center of Pompeii," Necco said of the ill-spent funds, speaks of a "disdain for culture, disdain for the past, disdain for history."

The head of the emergency commission, Marcello Fiori, has specifically been accused of spending too much money on flashy features such as a restaurant and a controversial renovation of the amphitheater, the Art Newspaper reports. Among the changes made at Pompeii, one that came under particularly sharp criticism was a plan to rid the site of stray dogs. After a staggering outlay of €86,000 ($114,000), many dogs still remain. 

...The largest archaeological site in the world, Pompeii is estimated to receive between two and three million visitors annually. Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, an archaeologist who supervised Pompeii for the culture ministry between 1994 and 2009, told the New York Times that it would cost about €260 million ($348 million) to safeguard the excavated city. In an atmosphere of stringent cuts-- the Italian culture budget was reduced by almost 30 percent this year, according to AFP figures, and almost $400 million in cuts to culture are planned for 2011-- there is intense concern that Berlusconi's government will not find the sums of money needed to preserve Pompeii.

Italy's cuts contrast sharply with the approach of France and Germany: this fall, Germany pledged to leave cultural funding unchanged, while France actually increased its culture budget by 2.7 percent. Maurizio Quagliuolo of Herity, an organization that promotes preservation of Italy's cultural heritage, told AFP that "the problem today is that Italy has still not understood that its cultural assets should not be considered a luxury when the economy is in crisis, but rather as a fundamental part of recovery."

UPDATE: More Berlusconi... How Could I Resist?

Looks like Berlusconi has more in common with American conservatives than just image making. The newest investigation is about his romps with underage prostitutes and, of course, the coverup.

Italian prosecutors are investigating accusations that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid a 17-year-old girl for sex and abused the powers of his office by trying to cover up the liaison, officials said Friday.

...The public prosecutor's office in Milan said in a statement that it was investigating allegations that Berlusconi and Lombardy regional councilor Nicole Minetti attempted to conceal encounters between the prime minister and a then-underage Moroccan dancer known by the stage name Ruby Heartbreak. Police searched Minetti's office and home as well as sites tied to unnamed "other people" involved with the case, the prosecutors said.

Berlusconi is also suspected of trying to obtain the girl's release after she was arrested on theft charges in May, with his office reportedly falsely telling police that she was the granddaughter of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and that her detention would cause a diplomatic row.

Is Rome A Safe City To Visit?

That's a bizarre question and the obvious answer is that it's as safe-- or unsafe-- as New York or London or Paris or Chicago or Bangkok or L.A. No doubt if you look hard enough, you can find trouble anywhere. I only even bring it up because in Rick Steves' Rome 2010 he inexplicably seems to dwell on all the misery that can befall a hapless tourist at the hands of Romans determined to ruin everyone's good time. I guess he's just doing his due diligence when he warns his readers that "[w]ith sweet-talking con artists meeting you at the station, well-dressed pickpockets on buses, and thieving gangs of children at the ancient sites, Rome is a gauntlet of rip-offs. While it is nowhere near as bad as it was a few years ago, and pickpockets don't want to hurt you-- they usually just want your money-- green or sloppy tourists will be scammed. Thieves strike when you're distracted. Don't trust kind strangers. Keep nothing important in your pockets. Be most on guard wen boarding and leaving buses and subways. Thieves crowd the door, then stop and turn while others crowd and push from behind. The sneakiest thieves are well-dressed businessmen (generally with something in their hands); lately many are posing as tourists with fanny packs, cameras, and even Rick Steves guidebooks. Scams abound..."

Jesus, he makes it sound like hell, and especially singles out "groups of city-stained children (just 8-10 years old-- too young to be prosecuted, but old enough to rip you off) troll though the tourist crowds around the Colosseum, Forum, Piazza della Republica, and train and Metro stations." Jeepers, that's my neighborhood. In fact, I spent the day walking around the Colosseum, Forum, Victor Emmanuel Monument, Capitoline Hill, conveniently, the smallest of the 7 hills of Rome. Maybe the gangs of trolling 8-10 year olds only come out in summer. Winter is cold in Rome. There were few tourists and no marauding bands of banditos.

I've felt safe from the moment I arrived. I'm staying in a flat in an old palace, Palazzo del Grillo, built in the 1600s. I'm sitting at my desk on my new MacBook Air and right out the window, literally spitting distance, are the fenced in remote ruins at the back of the Forum (Foro di Nerva I believe). It's an amazing juxtaposition. If there are ghosts-- and I'm sure there are-- they are friendly, or at least pacific. The vibe is tranquil and... safe.

The neighborhood, Monti, is slightly off the beaten track-- the other side of the Forum being where all the action is and all the crowds. In ancient days it was a crowded home to thousands of poor people and brothels. Now the cobbled, winding streets have a special charm, slightly removed from the hectic turmoil of the city around it. A couple of nights ago, I went for a walk the other night and ran across a street party, dozens of people in the street in front of what turned out to be a gallery. Someone invited me in and I was astounded by the exhibition: hundreds of mounted photographs that told the history of Monti from the late 1800's to the present. I spent hours marveling at how the area had changed-- and how it hadn't. There were even pictures of Mussolini and his black-shirted cohorts walking the same streets I was on.

If there is any sense of danger at all, it's that the drivers are all-- every single one of them-- talking, sometimes quite animatedly-- on cell phones or texting. The traffic seems deadly, although when I got out in it today, I noticed that everyone takes care not to hit anyone and they do slow down if you walk boldly into a crosswalk and stare at them. As for violence... well Berlusconi got slammed in the face with a statuette in Milano, not Roma-- and everyone knows how much the Milanese hate Rome, the Romans, and the central government.

I found an organic grocery store not far and went shopping and I've mostly been eating in while I kick my jet lag and wait for my lost/supposedly found luggage. But last night when I was making my way around Monti, I dropped in to a restaurant that is supposed to be impossible without reservations, F.I.S.H., Fine International Seafood House. Indicative of the season, it was nearly empty and I'm getting the idea that everything that usually hard to get into, from the forbidding lines at the Vatican to La Pergola on the roof of the Cavalieri Hilton. Anyway, F.I.S.H. was very hip and chic, with groovy music and an interesting seafood menu that mostly tended towards the pan-Asian. I had a cream of zucchini soup that fantastic, followed by a delicately curried tandoor sea bass that I can't get out of my mind 20 hours later!

After the above bravado about how easy it will be to get into La Pergola, I decided to call and make a reservation for about two weeks from now-- fulled booked then... and every day before then! Tomorrow I'll be braving the lines at the Vatican at 8:30AM.

Now, this is when the area wasn't safe at all: