to Pier, to Sandrino, to Cristian,
to all my “guardian devils”
now assumed into the Innkeeper’s Heaven

I. THE DOCTOR IS IN

If there’s one word I respect, revere, fear, skip mentioning, protect, study, dream of, and cradle – because, when all is said and done, it has defined almost my whole life – that word is OSTERIA¹.

I never try to misuse it, because the traces of that “Civilization of The Encounter” it once embodied are rare and precious today, if not already extinct – that’s why osterias stand as living examples of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The word oste (innkeeper) itself thereby makes me a little uneasy.

That’s always the way with epithets that get tossed around at random, often with a side of hollow flattery. Plenty of people get called “Maestro,” yet many of these have no interest in teaching anyone anything whatsoever.

And let’s be honest: you don’t become a sensei without years of karate and seven changes of belt colour before the black one and the seventh dan.

You won’t be Pope unless you’ve first been Cardinal, Bishop, and Monsignor – and no one’s going to call you Doctor if you haven’t survived your final exams, even if you later decide to treat your hard-earned diploma as equivalent to toilet paper.

Calling someone oste is like calling them a “shepherd of souls”, a “lay missionary”, a “father confessor”, a “street priest”, or a “country doctor”, a “volunteer paramedic”, a “social care worker” – in short, a multifaceted figure belonging to somewhere between a charity, a confessional in a church, and the fields of Community Service and Personal Care.

Let’s make a distinction and be clear: how many of us wearing the hat of the oste are truly devout to the holy trinity of Wine–Hospitality–Selflessness? How many feel that deep inner loyalty to the ethical side of the trade, our own form of Hippocratic Oath?

More and more, the osteria counter looks like Lucy Van Pelt’s booth (“PSYCHIATRIC HELP – 5¢”), which is why so often you get grumbles and growls instead of answers.

Or else it reminds you of the catwalk for a fashion show of aprons with quick-release buckles for Jean Paul Gaultier sailor boys and tattooed women with mermaids, pin-ups, and Betty Boop across their arms.

And yet, despite the Drifting of Times and Customs, we’re glad to be part of the human family, to offer what is, at heart, an essential, time-honoured neighbourhood service, to be woven into the connective tissue of an entire community, however small.

II. WE WENT THERE FOR EVERYTHING WE NEEDED

We went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired.
We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk.
We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before.
We went there when we didn’t know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us.
We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there.
Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.²

Yes, indeed: there are moments in life when nothing else will do – you just need an osteria table, no other thing can save your soul.

And if the Poets write this, for me it just counts as Revealed Law.

Mi convente ’ne taule d’ostarie;
tal scjafojas dal fun
il sghinglinà des tassis
e voj cul sidin des gravis di zenar,
e sta lì, tal grivi di agris soledàts,
a messedà la vite
tal zouc des cjartis
[…]
Mi convente ’na taule d’ostarìe
par sintimi tal pantan,
duncje par cantà…³

I need a table in an osteria;
in the thick fog of smoke,
the clinking of the glasses,
and eyes that are silent like riverbeds in January,
and to just stay there, in the weight of sour solitudes,
shuffling life
in a game of cards […]
I need a table in an osteria
to feel myself in the mud,
and hence, to sing…

and hence, to sing…

It’s not thirst.
It’s not addiction to wine.
It’s not rootlessness or the urge to let life slip by or let yourself go.
It’s something else, something deeply poetic and humanistic: the need to exist among others, to feel oneself an ingredient – a living cell – in a universal respiratory system, perhaps even off to one side, building a sheltered, privileged corner of one’s own from where to observe the human tragicomedy – which is ours.

To start a conversation with whoever happens to be nearby;
to smile back at the one who’s smiling at you;
to wish everyone well;
to look at the world as if you were God Almighty,
untethered from Time and Space⁴.

Only inside an osteria can such bliss be granted.

And since “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”, as P.B. Shelley once wrote of his own lot, I think the time has finally come to shout it out from the rooftops: in the world of Hospitality (never say “of Catering”– it’s practically a curse word; before any statistical or economical tag, for osterias what matters most is a language that fits), there can be no doubt: the very last Poets à la Verlaine left among us are certain Innkeepers.

III. EN GARDE!!!

Let’s keep it simple.
Because if even the osteria gets too complicated, I’m going to get pissed off.

Just a few clear, and well-laid-out concepts:

– The osteria is, by definition, an anti-conformist space – culturally alternative and, in some ways, revolutionary.
Give us an osteria proper enough and we’ll hold up one whole world.
(Gyro Gearloose)

– In an osteria, efficiencies should stand out less than deficiencies, or “natural limits” that can become virtues.
How high I can reach, I leave a mark.
(Lucio Canestrari)⁵

– More jazz, less classical.
Those who work in an osteria can read the score, but they also know the harmonic part by heart – through studying music and honing their craft, their aim is to become skilled improvisers.
(Charlie Parker)

– Power to the imagination.
There’s a sharp difference between something “precarious” and something “spurious”: the first has got creative drive and potential in itself, the second is mere deception and pretence.
(Herbert Marcuse)

– A strong aptitude for learning by imitation is essential.
In the dining room, better a motivated amateur than a dissatisfied gunslinger.
(Wild Bill Hickok)

– No spitting on the floor, but no mucky faces either.
He who praises himself, soils himself.
(Italian proverb)

– Humility, humility always, and above all, humility.
Always behind the bottle, never before it – whether you buy it or serve it, it’s not your property.
(Vittorio Alfieri)⁶

– Dedication and self-sacrifice, avant toute chose.
Spend yourself. Better ten lines too many than ten too few […] better a gush than a trickle.
(Gianni Mura)⁷

– Easy on those social media, they’re more intoxicating than high sulphur dioxide levels.
There’s nothing to share here that hasn’t already been shared in the very moment we were sharing it.
(Bessie Smith)

– Always keep your guard up against trends and conformism.
When it’s fashion, it’s fashion. When it’s fashion, it’s fashion.
(Giorgio Gaber)⁸

For clarity: in my ideal osteria, blasphemy is allowed, as are pets, thieves, cutthroats, and prostitutes. We’re ready for anything, players from age 0 to 99 can join the game – but the following words are forbidden:

a. The adjectives iconic (misused for “status symbol” – a meaning that doesn’t pertain to the Italian language) and devastating (applied to anything that, upon closer inspection, is not – and doesn’t need such useless emphasis).

b. The cutesy diminutive bombetta, trad. “small bomb” (referring to the same handful of prestigious labels, almost always over €150, and almost always served at the wrong moment – say, twenty minutes before closing – when a bit of self-restraint would be far more welcome).

c. The mythical unicorn used for bottles that are difficult – and often undeservedly so – to source.

d. The word funky, unless you are well-versed in the sound of the Founding Fathers: James Brown, Maceo Parker, Sly & The Family Stone, Isaac Hayes, and George Clinton.

Strictly banned as well: the use of white Uni-Posca⁹ markers.
Because the bottle is a sacred object – its surface is not to be graffitied, neither on the neck nor on the bum. On its glass – clear or frosted, green or transparent — only dust is allowed to settle.

IV.THE UNBEATABLES

I’ve had the good fortune to know these Innkeepers personally, and I want to celebrate the “secret moves” through which – without them ever knowing it – my way of seeing the world and its workings has taken shape.

To them I grant the honour of the capital “I” in “Innkeeper”, to distinguish them from the multitude of those who could scarcely even claim the right to call themselves such, even with the lowercase, myself included.

Marginal note
This final chapter is freely and openly inspired by the book Sancane by Simone Amicucci (Ultra, 2015).

“VIBRUN” AND HIS PROPHECY

Summer 2004

Quoting from memory:
“Diego, I’ll keep trying to talk you out of doing this job. But if you’re truly determined, if you truly want it, then know this: from the first day you open, I’ll be here at your disposal to give you all the advice you want.”

Faced with such an oracle, any further comment is superfluous.

---

MERY’S DESCENT

Second half of the 1990s

The street where the last osteria in Parma lies.

“Lino”.
Miserable wine and good beer.
Plenty of humanity, plenty of drinking, plenty of the sweet air of the past.

Then one day, a little further along, on the right-hand side of the street, the real-life Land of Toys we never expected opened its doors.
Mariella and her husband Guido – proprietors of what was fast becoming the go-to trattoria for wine lovers across half of Italy – joined forces and passions: wine and hi-fi. Together they created, down in the city, an extraordinary corner of Culture and Knowledge.

From the cellar of their Apennine inn, rare and unobtainable bottles rolled down into the valley, merging with countless shipments from the best vignerons in Italy and France.
All this in a setting that looked like a record shop crossed with a showroom for rigorously handcrafted audio systems.

In the two listening rooms – real living rooms, complete with sofas and chaise longues – you could spend entire afternoons. But in the hidden back room stood a small wooden table with three, maybe four, wicker chairs.

It was here, often at five in the afternoon, that rarities were opened. Someone would arrive with a salami, another with a wedge of Comté, then someone else with some liquid or solid surprise, while she held court. And this wasn’t even a public venue, but a shop (keeping in mind that around 7:00 p.m., they’d have to head up to Fragno for dinner service).

Result: if until then, with 22–23 thousand Lire I could buy myself a great CD, from that moment on, the same amount bought me a different kind of treasure – fragrant, wine-soaked, and spiritual. Deadly.

PIER’S SACRIFICE

Spring 2007

Saturday night.
Seventy people in the dining room, minimum.
Small tables, medium tables, large tables.
And in the big hall, a double company of chosen drinkers: twelve on one side, twelve on the other.

Each time Pier went off to choose the right bottle for a table that “wanted more”, he vanished for a quarter of an hour – no one knew where.
People grew restless; some were chewing their nails or the breadsticks, while others’ hands were trembling.
There was tension in the air – what rabbit would he pull out from the bottom of the hat this time?

Here he came at last, all smiles, with a 5-litre bottle (“rehoboam” the manual calls it) of Brunello from Azienda Agricola ICANTREMEBERWHO.
Half went to them, half to us.

The last glass, he kept it for himself, without caring if by the time he raised it to toast with both “dirty, dozens” in astonishment, the first guest he’d served more than five minutes earlier already had an empty one.

The important thing was that the wine could go like this – (straight movement with both hands joined, meaning “verticality”, in silence) – and not like this – (circular movement of the same hands, indicating “roundness”, again without speaking).

Words didn’t come out; they stayed inside.
Pier expressed himself through drinking.
His was a silent mime, steeped in tragic incommunicability, yet eloquent with passion and tormented love.

UŠTILI’S CHECKMATE

December 2002

A young couple arrives.
First time on the border between Central Europe and “Eastern” Europe (the Schengen enlargement wouldn’t happen until 2007).
They seem nice, under thirty; together they barely make fifty.

He puts you in a bind: he’s never had a skin-contact white wine, but he’s heard so much about both Gravner and Radikon.
The curiosity is strong – so are the kilometres (they’ve come from Parma) – but the wallet, not so full.
Most importantly, you are the innkeeper.

The responsibility for the choice rests squarely on your shoulders.
Because they’ve identified you as the Guide.
They haven’t spent twenty minutes buried in the wine list, with her clearly losing patience and him lost in some imaginary monologue, mentally weighing vintages, prices, value, opportunity, and occasion – testing her patience to the limit.

In short: you’ve won them over from the start.

Your duty – to your land, your winemakers, and your role within these four walls – is to help them.
To give them one more chance at that good memory you and your family ancestors have been plating up here since 1870.

So?

Here’s the move, the only possible one. The most unexpected, the most unforgettable, the most sincere:
“How can I tell you which wine to drink between one of Josko’s and one of Stanko’s, these two great names of ours…? Really, I can’t… But let’s do this: I’ll open them both, bring you four glasses, and you drink half of one and half of the other. In the end, you pay for only one. How does that sound?!”

(This move should be copyright-protected, or under UNESCO patronage. Personally, when faced with the embarrassed indecision of a guest, I’ve tried to repeat it more than once. The point isn’t which great names are in the “runoff”; the point – if you sense that, in that very moment, the fate of a life forever won over by Wine and by the Osteria might be at stake – is to make them pay for only one, even if the levels of both bottles end up lower than the agreed half…)

OMAR’S BAYONET

December 2015

Ten years of TABARRO.
Anniversary night.
We’ve made it through a decade.
I feel wound tight like a spring. Satisfied. Happy.

I invite a few of my fellow Innkeepers to join me.
Tonight I’m not working – I’m drinking.
I’ve prepared an apron for each of them.
Each will take my counter for an hour, with my squire Andrea as support.

Many show up.
I’m beaming, the guests are beaming, my crowd is beaming – we’re all beaming.

Omar is the last, with the 10–11 p.m. shift.
The toughest one: the “tired legs” slot.
I introduce him; it’s his turn.

But he flips the script – he doesn’t step behind the counter.
Instead, I see him start moving through the crowd, addressing people one by one.

“You – how long have you been in here today?”
“Since seven? … Give me 20 euros!”
“And you?”
“Since nine-thirty? … Give me 50 euros!”
“And you?”
“Just arrived? … Come on, fork it over!”

In under five minutes, he’s raised a small fortune.
Like pulling a handful of lettuce leaves from the garden, he takes the loot and stuffs it into my shirt pocket – six, seven, eight hundred euros, I can’t remember…

Then he grabs my face in his hands and says:
“And now, dear Innkeeper, GIVE US SOMETHING TO DRINK!!!”

One hundred euros a minute. I’d say “devastating,” but I can’t (see above), I’ve trapped myself…
I head down to the cellar to fetch the ammunition, and no one needs to reach for their wallet again until closing time.

CRI’S ESCAPE

September 2023

What happens to the world after an Innkeeper disappears?
What happens to the walls of his place, the paintings, the crockery, the pots, the salamis, the bread knife, the corkscrews, the turntable, the slicer?

What kind of pain does a village square feel without the custodian of its keys?
What on earth are all those fine bottles thinking down in the cellar, after three days and three services with no one coming down to look at them, touch them, choose them, call them, to give them the chance to fulfil themselves?

And what will become of the refined palates, the tired labourer’s jaws, the pilgrim’s longed-for rest, the salesman’s pit stop, the clinking glasses of lovers, the unfinished business deals that will never be discussed over a hot plate, the life buoy for who knows how many runaways along the Foothills road?

Orphans, all of them.

Silence falls beneath the 15th-century tower where so many times we had played, and sung, and popped bottles in sacred joy.
What remains is a sign.
A closed door.
Chairs turned upside down.
Tartan aprons, ironed and folded in the drawer.
A collection of pachyderms.
A Galway County licence plate.
A tempera portrait.
A slice of panettone, forgotten.

Desert and sadness, the roar of the abyss.

And yet you have to muster a smile.
Because good humour is a cure – for yourself, for others – even if everything were to fall apart.
To move through the dining room or outside as if on roller skates, to offer simplicity in generous doses, to portion out hospitality with ease, to never let the Customer walk over you, to be aware of your worth and of the importance of your role.

To love your craft stubbornly, no matter how toxic or hard.

This was what our Golden Boy could do.
And this, for me, was his enduring example.

Marginal note
The list is, tragically, incomplete, so no Innkeeper should take offence if their name doesn’t appear here. Perhaps I simply haven’t yet had the chance to meet them, but if they’d like to tell me where they are and where they work, I’d be grateful, so that if one day I find myself in the area and am struck by a sudden, acute case of osteritis¹¹ I’ll know where to go and save my life. As for those Maestros whom, for reasons of space, I haven’t been able to include – please don’t take it badly. You’ll be the first to be mentioned in the event of another round-up. In your hearts, you already know that a mention isn’t what matters, because in my heart – and in those of many other disciples – your lessons partake permanent hospitality and an endless sense of gratitude.

1. In Italy, there are several types of eating and drinking establishments, each with its own character and tradition. The main differences between osteria, trattoria, bar, and locanda are rooted in history, menu offerings, and atmosphere. In In short:
   Osteria → wine-focused, food is generally straightforward, local and traditional.
   Trattoria → casual, family-style italian meals, broader menu.
   Bar → coffee, drinks, snacks; social hub.
   Locanda → inn with meals; lodging available.
   ↩︎
2. J. R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar (2005) / tr. it: Il bar delle grandi speranze – Edizioni Piemme (2007). ↩︎
3. Amedeo Giacomini, “IN ÂGRIS RIMIS / Tutte le poesie friulane (1975-1997)”– Ponte del Sale, Rovigo (2016). This poem is written in the Friulian dialect. ↩︎
4. Camillo Sbarbaro, Lettera dall’osteria (in Pianissimo, 1914) ↩︎
5. Inspired Italian winemaker ↩︎
6. Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian poet  considered by many to be the greatest tragic dramatist in the history of Italian literature. ↩︎
7. Gianni Mura was an Italian journalist and writer, known for his work in sports journalism and later in food and wine writing. ↩︎
8. Giorgio Gaber was an Italian singer-songwriter, composer, actor, playwright, and musician renowned for his theatrical performances and songs that combined music with social and political commentary. ↩︎
9. very famous water-based paint markers known for their versatility on multiple surfaces and fast-drying ink ↩︎
10. Master of masters. ↩︎
11. An osteria fever: an irresistible urge to go to an osteria. ↩︎