The last days of lockdown and the early summer brings a gradual awakening to the trattoria of Rome, and the welcome return of a favourite dish of seasonal green beans
His hands on his hips, Andrea walked down the middle of the room, counting. It was the day before restaurants and trattorie could, if they adhered to a series of conditions, reopen in Rome. I happened to be walking by and noticed the metal shutters half rolled up, like sleepy eyes after two months of induced coma, so put my head round the door and shouted hello into the cavernous dimness. “That’s 72, 76, 82, plus the tables outside … 108 covers”, Andrea summed, before sitting at a table and signalling for me to join. No doubt he knows the number of covers as well as he knows the arches and velveteen seats of his father’s restaurant, the place he grew up in. He was counting in order to divide the number in two: removing half the tables and carving up the room with space is one of the regional conditions for reopening.
Like his father negotiating with the fishmonger, the vein in Andrea’s neck bulged as he told me of the failure of the furlough system and read me the rest of the conditions. Clean cloths for every table, hand sanitiser at the door and for wiping down plasticised menus, masks and gloves for staff, just masks for customers until the point of eating (at no point are they to be placed on the table), no coats on hooks, no shared condiments or jars of toothpicks, no unnecessary movements or proximity, or wandering children, or lingering near the door. The list, with the exception of the cloths, reads like a roll call against the nature of a Roman family restaurant; the antithesis of everything that makes them what they are. This, he summed, coupled with fear and the fact so many have so little money, meant no one would come.
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