Once a week we seem to find ourselves eating pizza at I Due Forni, our favorite local spot. Italians own and run this popular neighborhood place and the Italian wait staff is pleasant, busy, and heavily tattooed. Last rainy evening we ate inside. On fair weather weekends, the many tables outside are packed, and the playground on the premises is full of kids.
The interior has a rustic, leftist vibe, with posters of Che Guevara, Raging Against the Machine, and other lefty types of sentiments.
Posters on the walls
Pizza Diavolo was my choice—salami (we would call it peperoni), olives and onions on a thin crust baked in a huge pizza oven.
My Pizza
Richard ordered something completely different—a pizza covered in fresh rucola.
Richard's Pizza
The shredded red meat under the rucola is horse meat.
Eating horse meat is commonplace in many cultures, including Italy and France. According to Wikipedia, the five biggest horse meat consuming countries are China, Mexico, Russia, Italy and Kazakhstan. However, in the US and the UK, as well as some other cultures, eating horsemeat is taboo. This avoidance is relatively modern, but has complex historical roots.
In the eighth century, the Pope banned the eating of horsemeat, mainly because of the association with Germanic pagan ceremonies. Later, when the Icelandic people were reluctant to embrace Christianity because of the papal ban, permission to eat horse meat was granted in perpetuity, although this was later reversed. The entry for Horse meat in Wikipedia is lengthy and full of fascinating history.
Richard said that the horse meat tasted okay, nothing special. I somehow couldn’t bring myself to try it.
Restaurant Scene
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