The chilled martini glass is crying. Crying as it turns from icy to dry. The icy tears fall onto my fingers as I clutch at the glass’ stem.
The buffalo mozzarella has a thin, dry skin. The plump white pieces of cheese sit in a shallow pool of extra virgin olive oil; the pool not as deep as it usually is, for the grassy liquid has evaporated in the heat.
The pieces of salame rustico disintegrate as we pick them up. They flake away like pieces of old crepe paper.
The edges of the cakey focaccia have dried out a little bit too. They’re still their usual soft selves on the inside.
Our fingers are a sticky mix of olive oil and sweat.
The plate of caponata - full of eggplant and courgette, studded with pine nuts and swollen raisins - is served room temperature. That seems right in this heat. Nothing chilled will stay chilled for long. The raisins seem particularly swollen. So do my ankles.
A plate of tomatoes, Italian melon, feta and mint is the weather and the season on a plate. The mint is starting to wilt a little, the feta melting a wee bit. They look like us.
Soft baps full of slices of juicy pork and mustard are a big, hot mess. We eat them with our oily, sweaty hands. They’re now oily, sweaty, porky hands. Food that you eat with your hands feels right for the summertime.
The Romanian white wine seems particularly chilled tonight. It’s good.
It’s a race to eat our small bowls of dark chocolate sorbet and strawberry ice cream. A race to finish each scoop before it melts into oblivion. A race to finish each scoop before we melt into oblivion.