Come nasce la storia de "Il complotto Toscanini"

The story told in the novel remained locked away for several years in a drawer of my memory, in one of the front rows of shelves of memories, images, stories gradually deposited.

It had impressed me from the very first news, from the story of the protagonists' fame and their story.

It was a gray day at the end of January, cold, damp, with the fog that since morning had created the natural spectacle that Tuscans call galaverna: a domain of ice crystals on olive trees, rows of vines, bushes up to thickened cobwebs bordering the woods.

With my wife I was wandering by car in the lower Val di Chiana. We were roaming freely, aimlessly along winding and deserted roads.

Noon surprised us in the middle of nowhere. The apprehension of finding any possibility to get some food grew kilometer after kilometer.

At a crossroads, the village of Piazze materialized in the mist and a stone mansion: a stiffened banner on the railing of the central balcony indicated “Locanda Toscanini.”

The entrance door and windows were shut. A small sign hanging inside a window read “Ristorante Toscanini open” with a marker drawing of an arrow. We followed it.

The dining room contained only a few tables, arranged and set to perfection: so too the soft lighting, the velvet armchairs and benches, the whiteness of the tablecloths, the colored walls and the bold contemporary paintings, above all a comforting warmth.

Sergio’s welcome was measured and kind. His blue eyes smiled as much as his white mustache.  

We were the only customers that lunchtime.

The menu was tempting, and the promise of a Tuscan-Sicilian culinary combination was unpredictable.

The menu variations were presented in the most refined way I have ever known, with descriptions of delicacies interspersed with my barrage of personal questions.

Sergio is Sicilian, from Palermo, actually from Bagheria, raised with a passion for cooking and inclined to favor taste over any other sense. He has cooked all over the world, alternating gastronomic adventures with piloting, for the national airline, immense airplanes on routes to every continent. What about pasta with sardines prepared on a camping stove in a luxurious hotel overlooking the Taj Mahal? Or the multi-function oven worth tens of thousands of euros won in Paris in a competition among chefs from all over the world?

I bombarded him with questions about the various destinations of his skills as a pilot and cook, my wife no less about his knowledge of traditional recipes, culinary tricks, and techniques of talented grandmothers and aunts.

I spent an entire afternoon watching Sergio’s one-man-show in the roles of maitre, sommelier, cook, waiter, and fine storyteller, all switched with unique promptness and kindness.

Noon turned into late afternoon thanks to an amazing sequence of tastings and a bewitching pairing of wines.

It was while tasting Sergio’s caponatina—a magnificent sweet and sour combination with fried eggplant pieces, celery, onion, capers, olives, tomato, and other secrets—that I asked:

“Why a ‘Locanda Toscanini’ here? In this remote village, a restaurant with the same name? Does it have anything to do with Maestro Arturo Toscanini?”

He looked at me amused, his eyes quick to satisfy the curiosity of my wonder.

“So you don’t know the story of Maestro Toscanini and the doctor from Piazze? The doctor who was killed a stone’s throw from here?”

Sergio sat down and began to tell the story. He stopped for the oven’s ring that called him to take out the dark chocolate flan.

Then he continued the story.

By then, it had grown dark outside.

Since then, I have had lunch many other times with Sergio, even after his restaurant closed.

He has returned to the sea of Bagheria and I have moved to the Rhineland. Even if less often, we still see each other and have lunch together.