Having woken up with a stuffy nose and headache—my second cold of the trip—I spent the entire morning in my apartment at Residence Liberty, organizing maps and schedules for my return trip to Vienna the next week. When it was getting towards lunchtime, I walked to the train station and caught the #20 bus to Muggia. I was looking forward to having a good meal at Taverna Cigui, located on the outskirts of Muggia and known for its local Triestine and Istrian cuisine.
Making a guess as to which would be the closest stop, I got off the bus and hiked uphill for 30 minutes to the hamlet of Santa Barbara. I found the farmhouse at the end of a country road, surrounded by vineyards and olive trees. The front door was locked and all seemed to be deserted, except for a loud noise emanating from around the side of the house. I followed the sound to find a woman vacuuming a rug on the porch. Her back was to me, and she obviously couldn’t hear me over the machine, so I waited patiently for her to finish. Finally she turned around, startled to notice me standing there. To my dismay, I learned that the restaurant was closed while the owners were in Austria and wouldn’t reopen until later that week.
Drenched with sweat, partly from the unusually hot, muggy weather and possibly also from a slight fever, I made my way back downhill to the nearest bus stop to return to Trieste. Given my past difficulties trying to find a restaurant that didn’t close on Mondays, I headed immediately to one that I knew would be open, a place I had been to once before: Ristorante Al Granzo.
When I was there the previous year, I had gotten sick after eating their granzievola alla Triestina. But since this was a dish I planned to include in my cookbook Flavors of Friuli: A Culinary Journey through Northeastern Italy, I wanted to sample it one more time before recreating it at home. Still, it was with some apprehension that I took a seat at my table.
To start, I was served a complimentary antipasto: a mini panna cotta topped with one tiny shrimp and a balsamic reduction. The granzievola alla Triestina was just as I remembered: warm crabmeat mixed with garlic, parsley, and bread crumbs, served in the shell of a spiny spider crab. Next, I had the zuppa di pesce, which I noted in my journal was the worst I had ever eaten. The soup contained two mussels, a couple of razor clams, one extremely tough calamaro (squid) stuffed with crabmeat, a bunch of tiny whole shrimp, and some pieces of fish that had an unpleasantly bitter taste.
Not surprisingly, my stomach was sick again after eating at Al Granzo. Whether due to food poisoning or the cold I was fighting, I was feeling quite chilled by the time I got back to my apartment. I spent the rest of the day curled up in bed under all the blankets I could find. I never did get to eat at Taverna Cigui.
Here is my recipe for granzievola alla Triestina:
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 pound lump crabmeat
1 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the bread crumbs and parsley; cook and stir until the bread crumbs begin to turn golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the crabmeat, water, and lemon juice; cook until the crabmeat is warm, about 4–5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt.
