Pasta & Cuore has a shopfront where locals can buy handmade pasta and ready-meals. Pic Michael Craig.
That lunch in Orvieto where the elderly, bow-tied and black-aproned waiter grated cricket-ball sized truffle over the pasta. The father-and-son back-alley dive in Venice, when we thought he was offering "mice" but he was saying "maize". The 24-course degustation at Dario Cecchini's trattoria in Tuscany, with the butcher-chef spouting Dante and disembowelling Verdi.
Ah, the memories. But Italian food never tastes the same outside Italy. Is it the ingredients? Is it the cooking? Is it the weather? Is it just that we're not in Cannaregio now, Toto?
WE SHALL begin this trip around several of Auckland's "Italian" restaurants with some Gusto.
"Italian" because, as every TV cooking show/coffee-table cookbook/food bore tells you, there's no such thing as Italian cuisine; there's a road trip of regional recipes.
And Gusto because it was Herself's birthday and I invited her to Sean Connolly's Italian inspired dining-room in the SkyCity Grand. It seemed suitably flash, I thought: marble tabletops, dark wooden furniture and decorative greenery.
The decor is as reminiscent of a Tuscan or Umbrian village trattoria as interior design consultants could contrive inside the lobby of an international hotel.
Connolly gets straight-up, honest food, well-executed, just right, both here and at The Grill next door.
There are no airs, graces, fizzes or deconstructions and few surprises on this menu. Be aware that it's based on sharing plates, and some of those would feed mamma, papa and half a dozen bambini.
WOULD ANYONE get it right? Would anyone bring back that evening in Bologna, underneath the arches of the old city, the poetry of that perfect ragu?
We ordered as many tastes as we thought we could decently manage - an amuse, a pasta, a smaller plate, a main dish each - but even the waiter sighed. The veal cutlet, on its own, was the size of a dinner plate; if we wanted to eat that much, we should have brought the Juventus football squad.
Gusto's food and service was excellent; its wine, pretty good. Problem: it was all but empty on a Saturday night, and if there's one thing that a rustic trattoria in Umbria has, it's plenty of loud and happy people.
WHITE-TILED, black-furnished, shopfront Spacca is not so much a restaurant as a neighbourhood eatery. Another friend and I met up early to swap stories in this cheek-by-jowl place, only a few tables and counter seating, lots of takeaway custom.
I don't quite know how it happened but the family next to us was talking about their imminent trip to Italy and the waiter intervened and the next thing, we were swapping tips about Arezzo and Assisi and why you should never miss Spoleto or Gubbio.
I think the family left confused as to where they should go, other than home to ask TripAdvisor.
Spacca takes its name from Naples' main drag; chef Gaetano Spinosa, once of O'Sarracino, and owner Gino Buonocore come from there, and so does the food. Pizza, of course; pasta and seafood, naturally; just four classic meat dishes.
Spacca's vibe was excellent, tiny and crowded and buzzy; its wine, okay. Problem: my schnitzel dish had too much salt, too little flavour and swam in wine. And if there's one thing that a family-run osteria in Napoli has, it's simple, strong, gutsy flavours.
WOULD ANYONE get it right? Would anyone bring back that evening in Bologna, underneath the arches of the old city, the poetry of that perfect ragu?
A third friend and I agreed on Pasta e Cuore in Mt Eden Village, because we'd meant to eat there and never quite got around to it.
Well, I hadn't. "I've been here three times in the past fortnight," she said as we sat down to a homely table in the upstairs dining room, which feels like someone's grandmother's parlour, especially when someone's grandmother's handwritten recipes are framed and hung on the walls, and reproduced in the little book that passes for a menu.
Especially when that granddaughter is the chef/owner: Stefania Ugolini, taught to cook by her grandmother, worked in a country trattoria (maybe the one where they got the idea for Gusto's decor) and later in Bologna. If you're going to serve this heartland food, it helps to come from the heartland of parmesan, prosciutto, mozzarella and balsamic.
Like Spacca, Pasta & Cuore has a shopfront where locals buy handmade pasta and ready-meals. There's a courtyard out back, which produces the kitchen's herbs and some greens and may get sunny sometime this year, as well as the parlour.
For antipasto, soft cheese on a regional flatbread; pasta for her - tortolloni with butter and sage; for me, spaghetti with an idyllic, creamy gorgonzola sauce, walnuts and rocket. From there we cut straight to the chasers, panna cotta and tiramisu.
Dante imagined nine spheres of paradise. After my road trip around Auckland, I'd settle for this one.
Gusto, 90 Federal St, Auckland City
Spacca, 547 Remuera Rd, Remuera
Pasta e Cuore, 409 Mt Eden Rd, Mt Eden Village