Pulled aside into an empty meeting room by Driven’s editor, Liz Dobson, I thought I was in deep trouble.
You never know what to expect when the boss asks to speak with you privately, and if TV is anything to go by, it is rarely good. Thankfully for me, this wasn’t a TV show, and the reason for the little private chat was pretty exciting. An invitation to represent Driven at the international launch of the Maserati Levante in Italy.
After checking with the boss at home that she would be okay for me to ditch her for a week to fly to the other side of the world I started the usual paperwork for all international travel. Then it hit me. Italy, famous for pasta, pizza, and cheese, isn’t exactly the destination you head to when you are both gluten and dairy intolerant.
Airline travel is usually hit and miss when it comes to catering for my challenging dietary requirements, especially when you’re not the one doing the bookings as is the case for all the trips we do as motoring journalists. This time, with over 30 hours of travel and three different flights just to get to Italy, the usual food worries were laid to rest by my host, Maserati Australia and New Zealand chief operating officer, Glen Sealey who personally made sure my flights included ‘Mat safe’ meals.
One of the benefits of such big trips is we tend to be flown business class for long haul flights. While this turned out to be the biggest bug-bear to my better half, who has never flown in anything more than economy, it proved to be worth the near marital troubles.
With fold flat seats, and decent meals, I managed to finally sleep on a flight. Something that has largely eluded me in my 27 years. This meant that when I finally arrived in Italy some 30+ hours after leaving home I was reasonably rested and ready.
Base camp for the launch of the Maserati Levante was a 12th century castle in Tabiano outside of Parma. With the nearest restaurant being part of the castle this was my first experience of ‘dining’ in Italy.
After sitting down and menus were produced I soon found that there was nothing on the menu apart from antipasti that I could eat. After talking to the owner/chef/waiter, Oscar, and asking if the omelette had any dairy in it the reply was “no, just Parmesan”.
Right….
After ordering the omelette with no cheese what arrived at the table was two fried eggs, and a lot of asparagus. This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the trip, with restauranteurs looking at me quizzically as if I were some kind of bizarre oddity.
Even after learning from a fellow gluten intolerant journo the Italian words to gluten intolerant, glutine intollerante, things barely improved and the weird looks continued. Though I’m not sure whether this was because of the foreign concept or our terrible pronunciation..
On my final night in Parma we dined once again at Oscar’s at the castle. This time I was joined by my gluten intolerant friend and her dairy intolerant colleague who spoke reasonably good Italian. Even my diary intolerant colleague with her language skills was no match for the Italian understanding of what constitutes an intolerance. Upon the arrival of her ‘dairy free’ meal she was greeted with a generous helping of Parmesan cheese atop it.
It was a good thing we had ordered a large platter of antipasti to share between us which as it turns out is the best option if like me you can’t digest gluten or dairy.
If you’re a vegetarian also, sorry, you’re even more screwed in Italy than I was.
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