LIFE/Madeline Merlic: Warm meal with great friends

The cool air licks my face as I walk down Via Raniero Capocci, rain dropping into my eyes. The sting of the air is biting at my exposed ankles, the wet cobblestones glisten in the grey light. As I chat with my friends, Viterbo locals look at us with curious glances. We are making our way to La Spaghetteria di Viterbo for a nice hot lunch on this brisk day.

The bright light coming from the small window of the restaurant lights up the sign advertising the selection of pastas. We quickly walk through the door and breathe a sigh of relief at the warm temperature of the restaurant.

Greeted by the smiling face of the server and a welcoming, “Ciao”, we walk down a couple flights of stairs to a dining room. As we sit down, the server hands us the massive menus, filled with pages and pages of different types of spaghetti, all in alphabetical order.

After five minutes of looking through the menu, visions of tomatoes and prosciutto dancing through my head, I decide upon the spaghetti called Bacio. It has tomatoes, sausage and olive oil. Everyone else gets a different type, each of us excited to try each other’s.

As we wait for our lunch, we crack open the glass bottle filled with water and pour ourselves drinks. We laugh and chat about how our classes went that day and what we have instore for the weekend. After about twenty minutes, our steaming plates of spaghetti are brought over to us

What stood out to me the most was the way the noodles and the redness of the tomatoes stood out against the stark white plate, little pockets in between the noodles releasing steam into the air. The fresh scent of the newly cooked noodles made it’s way up to my nose and I could not wait to dig in.

The room grew quite as we all enjoyed our unique pastas, taking a break now and then to add more parmesan cheese to the spaghetti.

Needless to say, the spaghetti was great and the combination of the simple ingredients made the spaghetti stand out to me and is one that I will want to get again. What made the afternoon fantastic, was being able to enjoy the delicious pasta surrounded by good company.