Ristorante “Da Remo” ad Alberese (GR)
1970… We are in a Citroen Dyane car, sand color, stopped under a blinding sun, at a railroad crossing in the middle of nowhere, another time, another place. A little further on there are other cars, other cars whose colors today are improbable and there’s the cross of St. Andrew, then the metal bars striped red and white, semi rusty…
Looking around you see just the plain sunburned in the light of an incredible blinding white, the only colors being the blue sky and a few patches of green grass… Looking further to the shimmer of the train tracks you would expect to see a steam train passing, in the style of those in the Far West…
That it would not be too out of place, as here we are in Maremma, Buffalo Bill got really (or rather, from Maremma cowboys took them, but in Rome …) even 80 years ago … and even today, in 1970 (and besides in 2000’s …) there are i Butteri who are the cowboys of the Maremma (or rather, the cowboy are I Butteri of America …) dressed exactly as before, with the same faces (from hard men, and even “incazzosi” – impossible to translate, just ask to a Tuscan man, but expect a not exactly polite answer…) then,… I see them move around in the fields, on horseback, just beyond the railroad on the other side where winds its way turn a small queue of cars still waiting for the bars to open
There are two small houses in the style if you want to call it “classic” Maremma remediation … there is the tollbooth of the railroad crossing … there is a bar, “Da Remo” a kind of institution, as it could be the saloon or the general store in a village in the Far West … here the distances, even in these years, are hardly measured under the rays of the blinding sun, we are just starting to talk about the Maremma Natural Park, as a project to be invented, long way to come and unpopular with farmers …
Meanwhile, we stop at the bar “Da Remo” where you can eat cherry ice cream, especially where the great Morellino is served fresh from the cellar (perhaps because the refrigerators are still not very common).
Today, that railroad crossing there is no longer … we are in 2000’s and the Natural Park of Maremma is well-established institution, the bars have been replaced by the railroad underpass and no one stops more time at the bar… also because the “Da Remo” bar became the “Da Remo” restaurant… the architecture and perhaps even the furniture (which some customers, in my opinion, ill-suited to the spirit of Maremma, fiercely criticized for being a 70s style …) probably is still original directly in those years…
Over time Remo has left the management of the bar become restaurant to the daughters Nadia and Alessandra, son in law Ermanno and above all to his nephew Simon, a character from a movie, practically the prototype of “chef” … a tall good boy, with his good-natured round big, big face under chef’s hat, with its prominent belly under his apron, simple and practical, a cook for tough men… (read more HERE, Part 2)
Articolo anche in - Article also in: Italian
