A RECENT trip to Ayrshire to see my poultry-keeping son,
Kim, gave me the chance to investigate the Italian connection in south-west Scotland. It has to do with food, and with a place in the Appennines called Barga. Dumfries claims the young Charles Forte, who is said to have opened his first café in the town soon after arriving from the Abruzzi. Several other Italian families — Nardini, Pieroni, Pierino travelled to the Scottish west coast from the village of Barga, in the hills north of Lucca. Whether they all arrived at the same time is uncertain, but the story goes that some of them thought they were going to America.
In Ayr Pieroni is a fish merchant and Pierino a restaurant, while Nardini can probably lay claim to be the most success- ful, operating from Largs on the north Ayr- shire coast. (Largs faces Rothesay, on the island of Bute, where Signor Zavaroni sells fish and chips, well known thanks to his singer daughter Lena, for whom Opportunity Knocked some years ago on Hughie Green's dreadful television show.) Nardini's is more than just a large restau- rant: it is also a cafeteria, sweet shop, news- paper stall — and purveyor of its own ice- cream. At lunch on Sundays, when parents with children flock to Nardini's, the atmo- sphere is not unlike a restaurant in Italy. But the food is predominantly local. On my first visit a few years back, a 'game dinner' was being offered: game pâté followed by game soup followed by roast pheasant, wild duck and pigeon. High tea is served from 4 to 7 p.m. — £7 for two on weekdays, including spaghetti, sausage, bacon and egg or fresh haddock.
It may be that the daily menus at Nardi- ni's are not unusual — or indeed expensive — enough to qualify for this column, but readers who may be in that part of Scotland (Largs is 25 miles from Glasgow) are urged to look in — if only to buy some ice-cream or tablet fudge.
Another Italian, who came here from Perugia in 1953, is Fausto Volpi. Having run a restaurant in Kirkcudbright for some years, he moved up to Ayr in the mid-1980s and started Fausto's in a basement in the centre of town. The food is described as Tuscan/Umbrian: at our dinner for three the best of the starters proved to be the fish soup, caciucco, popular on the Tuscan coast, which contains a variety of white fish and shellfish and bread soaked in a strong, saffron-flavoured broth. But I felt it could have been more liquid, in the manner of a bouillabaisse, or indeed the brodetto which is found on the Adriatic coast. The mussels steamed in garlic and basil, and the paglia e fieno, were both drenched in a rich tomato sauce.
For many years Fausto has been getting his beef from J.J. Clendinning, a butcher in New Galloway. It is well hung and, when cooked alla griglia, quite excellent. But I made the mistake of ordering a sauce con- sisting of wine, cream, porcini mushrooms, Parma ham and tomatoes, which tasted overwhelmingly of the last ingredient. The involtini (with pork fillet, not veal) was also oversauced — containing, in addition to the list just quoted, pâté, beans and spicy sausage. I am no expert in Italian regional cooking, but surely these tomato-based sauces should accompany Neapolitan rather than Tuscan dishes? I rather fancy that Fausto has compromised to suit what he believes, perhaps quite rightly, to be Scottish taste. My advice would be to get back to northern Italian basics, and do a lit- tle less mucking about with the outstanding raw materials which are available in Scot- land.
However, some excellent puddings soon banished the taste of too much tomato sauce. The tiramisu (`pick-me-up') was a delicious confection of sponge fingers, mas- carpone, eggs, coffee and coffee liqueur; while the zuppa inglese was definitely my kind of trifle — chocolate and sponge soaked in, I think, Drambuie. But I missed the custard which should come with it to justify the zuppa description. No one, according to Marcella Hazan in Classic Ital- ian Cooking, has produced a convincing explanation for the inglese; but I suspect it has something to do with middle-aged ladies in Anglo-Florentine society.
A bottle each of Frascati and a mature Barolo, plus espresso coffee, brought the bill to £95. Still remembering the beef a couple of days later, I called in at Mr Clendinning's and bought a forerib on my way south.
Fausto's, 16 Cathcart Street, Ayr; tel: 0292 268204.
Simon Courtauld
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