Small-town Italy’s Taj Mahal

The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta at Cremona in the Lombardy region of northern Italy

One of the benefits of living in Italy is the luxury of travelling to small towns. I had already visited the big cities during my maiden trip in 2018. I'd been to Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice and even Palermo, in Sicily. Moving to Italy in 2020, amid the pandemic meant we had to mostly shelter in place in South Tyrol. By the time the European borders became porous once more, my residence permit had expired. Until the renewal appointment, I could either stay in Italy or return to India. I couldn't roam freely in Europe. This moment coincided with parenthood. Cabin fever felt real. To alleviate the symptoms, my partner suggested we plan weekend trips to neighbouring Italian regions.

Over the last two years, we've made our way to places like Brescia, Verona, Torino, Parma, Modena, Padova, Vicenza, Reggio Emilia, Bologna, Ferrara and Ravenna. Each trip has felt unique because our child has been at a different stage of development. In the beginning, it felt so easy to plan our itinerary around his naps. We could go wherever we wanted to, because we simply had to push a stroller. Now, we have a two-and-a-half-year-old on our hands. While he loves the ‘travel' aspect of our trips, getting to the train station, waiting for the train, then the next, he is not keen on being cooped up inside a museum. He wants to be outdoors, playing football in piazzas, eating ice cream by fountains, and calling for elevators wherever there might be one. He abandoned the stroller months ago and prefers to be on foot. We've had to scale back our trips. Now we pick cities that are so small town, there are not more than two or three things on the to-do list. It lessens our FOMO and allows for a more relaxed itinerary. Last week we decided to go to Piacenza and Cremona.

It goes without saying that the most exhilarating aspect of travelling through small-town Italy is the ability to sample the local fare. I continue to be awed by the exquisite culinary diversity, how each region makes something another region hasn't even heard of. How each region has its own version of ravioli or a simple broth. Because the places we go to are not tourist traps like Venice or Florence, it's not difficult to find a delectable meal for less than 50 Euros for two people and a child. In fact, it is the norm. We love the experience of visiting trattorias and take delight in selecting which one we want to go to. My improved facility with Italian makes ordering also a fun process. I think of all of these aspects of our journeys as part of my immersion into the language.

Our recent trip felt like an anomaly for me, however. Firstly, since our little one no longer believes in daytime naps, we needed to get him to bed by 7 pm. This meant we took turns to go out for dinner. My partner would go out while I did our bedtime rituals, and I would step out when he returned. It was strange, but neither of us complained about the alone time. My partner picked an excellent restaurant in Piacenza where he had a very local version of pasta. I went to the same restaurant but ordered a kind of tortellini in a soup, which was delicious in theory, except, since I am three-months pregnant, triggered my nausea. I'm having a troubled relationship with pasta and rice and nursing a new aversion to bananas too. I returned to our hotel room feeling hungrier than sated but felt unsure I could stomach anything more.

The next evening, I scoured the menus of all the best restaurants in Cremona as my partner was out having his dinner. There were places where the first course was just a range of risottos, which would ordinarily have appealed to me. There were many local delicacies that I couldn't eat because they constituted cured but not cooked meat. The idea of pasta felt not so comforting. I was hungry but craved something familiar. So, I decided to do something I would otherwise be loathe to do in an Italian city. I walked to a restaurant I'd seen near the station called Taj Mahal.

I was the only solo diner there and was seated close to the entrance. All the other parties of five, six, and 13 were ushered to the basement. The menu looked like it didn't cater exclusively to white people. In fact, there were only desis around. I asked the waiter how ‘white' their food was. He gave me a spiel about how they respect everyone's tastebuds and can customise what they make. Should I choose the butter chicken or the Kadhai chicken, I asked him. He said Kadhai chicken, which I ordered with three plain tandoori rotis and a masala chai.

I ate my meal in humbling silence. It was the first time in days that I felt truly sated.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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