Interesting things begin in the most unexpected ways…
I met Rita quite some time ago, she’s from Rome but is now almost Triestine, with a great talent for cooking, so good that I admit that one year I had her prepare loads of delicious things for an Easter Lunch at my house, that I then passed on as my own work! It was an incredible success, even if it was hard to ignore all the guests’ enquiries on how I prepared “the Danube” (a dish I didn’t know the existence of until the day before), it was almost like dodging an entire Champions League Team without knowing how to play football!
And so finally my “secret chef” decided to turn her true passion, cuisine, into a lovely blog with a fun name: SapoRita. A delicious name, just like her dishes! So as we’re chatting and sharing our experiences about blogs and social networks, we start talking about HER: the one everyone keeps hinting to me about by saying: “Who’s this? Copy-cat!” It’s MissMess. Her name is Francesca, and because her blog’s name, logo and contents are so similar to mine, my followers think PLAGIARISM! But I can finally tell you all to not worry, because Francesca has not copied me, It’s just a casualty that our blogs are so similar, so much that we laugh about the name: “MissClaire + MissMess = MissMass”! We definitely have lots in common, like enthusiasm, passion for travelling and food and I also realize, with quite some envy, that Francesca is quite a good writer.
As I said there’s 4 of us, because in the meanwhile Alessandra has joined us, who originally is from Trieste but has been living in Friuli for some time and she shares our passion for blogs. Una casa in campagna (a house in the countryside)! This is the name she chose for her blog, where she shares what she loves, the countryside and everything that surrounds her, a very country blog!
As all four of us love good food, we decided that the best moment to meet was for a light but tasty lunch! And, managing incredibly to work around everyone’s schedules, I decided to take them all to a restaurant in the centre of Trieste where you can taste the flavours of good cuisine without your wallet bleeding out. Personally I’ve always found the food excellent and I’d say it’s on of the top places for a “quick lunch” in the city.
The Antico Panada is a restaurant that has almost “modest” lunches, compared to the wide and full menu of much richer plates it has for dinner.
The lunch menu is full of interesting alternatives, the nettle and potatoe soup with salmon bites, tuna fillet with orange soaked fennel, black taglionini with strips of dentex fish and champignon mushrooms and to end with the salmon fillet in gratin (and much more). Each dish is a fixed 12€ lunch menu.
As we have our tasty and light meal, we sit on the side of the Ponterosso canal, from which we have a lovely view of the Serbian Orthodox church and of the sant’Antonio church. Unfortunately the lovely view was interrupted by unexpected rain, so we had our lovely lunch inside, on the gallery inside the restaurant.
What I can’t tell you is the result of the quick lunch among 4 bloggers. All I need to say is that at 3.30 pm we had to leave because the restaurant was closing! J
One thing I can say: we went in with the rain and left with the sun shining. Might it be a sign?
It was a great honour to organize this last second meeting with people that share the same passion, so I went back to work with a pleasant feeling: if you want to work together, open up to other people, without preconceptions, the result is guaranteed!
After all… even after a rainy day the sun has popped out!
Ph. Andrea Zangrando