By Joe Ray
PALERMO – Mom and Dad are gone and I have Palermo to myself for the morning. I walk behind the Teatro Massimo in the city center, find a bakery where fresh, hot, ricotta-laden pastries come out of the back room just as I enter.
Sold.
Outside, a helicopter whoops mysteriously. I down my coffee and head outside with breakfast to see what the fuss is about.
The theater has moved outdoors.
“You can’t stand there,” says someone who I’ll later realize is a plainclothes policeman.
Twenty-odd mobsters have been rounded up and, one by one, under cover of the helicopter and an impressive line of carabinieri cars, they are escorted out of a special police station, down a set of stairs and into a waiting car.
Wives and grandmothers dissolve into tears and collapse to the sidewalk. News crews and families are pushed around. Tragedy! Comedy! Italians have a particular capacity for making the serious look ridiculous.
Some of the cons come out of the door and pause at the top of the stairs with a look of dread. Newbies. Others grin and give a handcuffed wave with a look that says, ‘Don’t worry honey, I’ll be outta the clink in a couple of days.’
One guy has a plastic bag that looks like it’s stuffed with a three-day supply of pasta and cannoli.
I pop the last bite of pastry, take a nervous picture of the chaos and wander toward my gelato.
Da Carlo is as fantastic as ever. I have scoops of yogurt and cantaloupe gelato in a brioche capped by a beautifully not-too-sweet whipped cream.
Later, I wash it down with a standup coffee at Caffé del Moro where the barista blurs the line between man and machine.
Without looking, he flips a clean espresso cup from the top of machine to his other hand, waiting for it next to the portafilter. Steam rises from the used grounds in the knockbox.
I ask if I can make a photo and while his machine gurgles, he sizes me up with a look that says, ‘Why bother?’ combined with ‘I don’t care.’
“Fa,” comes the response. Do it.
I’ll miss this city.
Caffé del Moro - MAP
Via Giovanni Da Procida, 3
Palermo
Gelateria Da Carlo - MAP
Corso dei Mille, 72
Palermo
Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.
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