Buon Appetito from Milano

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Scott Smoot at the Duomo in Milan, Italy, virtually

 I saw something at a restaurant in Milan that changed my life: fathers waiting tables alongside their grown sons.

That's why I'm revisiting Milan for my world tour of places I've lived or loved. Since October 7, I've biked 537 miles on trails around Atlanta, the equivalent distance to Milan from my last stop in Paris. In the photo, I'm at the Duomo, the only site I recall from touring Milan with Mom and Dad in January 1991: Rome, Venice, and Florence were more memorable. But seeing those fathers and sons gave me second thoughts about a secret ambition.

I'd learned in France a decade before that dining can be so much more than a meal. [See My Spiritual Encounter with French Asparagus (09/2018)]. I thought I might learn to make something besides hamburgers and microwaved enchiladas if I got part-time work in a fine restaurant. But I hesitated a long time.

I explained why to 8th graders in my American History course. When Americans bucked the traditional class system, they took on the pressure of earning their own status.  In Italy, where class is inherited, the son of a waiter can be proud to serve tables the rest of his life. In America, guys in their teens and twenties can be respectable servers and line cooks, but any thirty-something in an apron has failed to "make something" of himself, unless he owns the business. That was my father's perception, and I imbibed it. I confessed to my students that I'd be embarrassed if they or their parents saw me working weekends at a restaurant.

The kids urged me to go for my dream, so I did. For more than two years, I worked weekends and summers at Jackson MS's fashionable BRAVO restaurant. I prepared salads and sandwiches and I plated desserts, supervised by employees younger than me, some half my age. I was proud to earn a place on the hot line after a few months of training.

Dad was down with that. Milano, as he called it, was where he developed an appreciation for fine food, expensive wine, and grappa. He was mentored in that by Alfredo Berato, a Milanese entrepreneur who formed a cross-Atlantic partnership with him. After Dad befriended Alfredo, he said buon appetito as a blessing to every meal.

One result of my side gig at BRAVO was the extra income I saved to pay off my house in Mississippi so I could move back to my family in Atlanta.

Another result was a series of inter-connected stories that I wrote to earn my Master's in Professional Writing. Twenty years before the popular series The Bear, my stories focused on different employees of a single restaurant, their artistry, personal drama, and the intensity of their work. With that degree, I earned enough to -- well, "make something of myself."

And since I learned how to prepare food like a professional, I haven't microwaved any more frozen enchiladas.

PS - On Halloween, I stopped about 370 miles south of Paris at Montpellier, France to see the eponymous castle -- a stop on the town's ghost tour, naturellement.

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the start.