SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,19

me how we are supposed to have dinner at a restaurant? I’m afraid that we will already fail at pushing the door handle.«

We passed by some small and still open grocery stores where thick salamis and gammon were hanging from the ceiling like stalactites in a dripstone cave. And those nom noms in the shop windows! No wonder these people, alongside the French, spent triple the money on eats than the rest of Europe. In piazzas, always decorated with artful fountains, sat people in front of cozy trattorias and had a good bite or gulp, let the comforting twilight from the windows of the time-honored houses around them shine on them, and not seldom one of the stretched hands petted our backs affectionately. Compared with this, my home reminded me of socialist military housing.

»Who said we’d have to push any door handles at all, Francis?« Antonio replied with a malicious smile. »And who said we will use the front door like any average blockhead? Trust me, il mio amico, a restaurant is like a well-filled tummy. But you won’t find the truth by visiting its belly, but its butt!«

Finally we arrived. Through the windows I saw cushioned chairs surrounded by silver and fine wainscot from pre-war times. People in clothes of refined taste pushed all kinds of delicacies into their mouths and toasted each other. Waiters with handlebar mustaches and ankle-length aprons bustled around the mostly southern looking customers. Without a doubt, this was one of the classier locations.

»Follow me«, Antonio said giving me a suggestive look and disappeared in a narrow back alley. I obeyed, and after a few feet we found ourselves at the back of the restaurant, in a small and dark backyard. Just at this moment an assistant inside yanked the door open. The man dragged a hatchless trash bin towards some other bins, which had already formed a group close to the yard wall.

»Leftovers!« Antonio said when we were by ourselves again. »The people ate what the cardinals left over. This is how the Roman cuisine emerged, from leftovers. Pagliata, coratella, trippa, all entrails. You can still find them on the menu of every Roman trattoria. Still it’s not just poor man’s food, it’s more like reduced food with traditional ingredients and without nick-nack.«

He noticed how I frowned in my mind.

»Don’t worry, this is not trash, it’s so fresh it can’t get any fresher. The fine people who eat here are so supersaturated that they leave half of their dishes behind. So the good stuff ends up in the trash. This happens in all fine restaurants.«

Well, in that case ... We lunged at the unwanted like members of a prehistoric clan used to lunge at their foes. Our hind paws vaulted us right on top of the trash bins with their excessive tripes, half eaten and perfectly filleted fish, the lamb bowels consisting of heart, ris, milt and lungs. A side-glance was enough to make sure that Antonio had let gone of his noble table manners just like me and had transformed his snout into some kind of power shovel, which he used to plunge deeply into these paradisiacal dishes without hesitation. I didn’t work with less zeal. But while my tongue tried to celebrate this masterful wonder food, my greedy stomach unceasingly forced me to gulp it down at breakneck-speed. And to be quite honest, I didn’t even care who was going to win this battle. In short, I had never eaten this many delicacies in such a short time.

After about fifteen minutes our bellies had assumed the shape of bellows, which were bursting at the seams. Full and jaded, we sat down next to the trash bins, sucked on one or two bones and let our eyes wander about the by now star-strewn sky. In front of us the dark alley stretched like a never-ending tube with some bypassing people who from the distance looked like a pattern of dark and light to us. Soft Latin guitar sounds mixed with the clinking of glasses. Antonio burped happily. And as this stated my current condition just perfectly, I burped back.

»You saved me from starving, Antonio«, I said. »For that I will feel obliged till the end of my days. I just wonder why the fellows at Largo Argentino don’t take a similar approach and line up in the fine restaurants’ backyards.«

»Why, why – because they’re stupid! Although they live in a mega city where the word »food« is sort of a bad word considering