The best Italian food I've ever had was in a little town called Pescara on Italy's east coast. We were in Italy, my colleagues from the Leicester University Theatre Company and I, on a British Council-sponsored tour of Hamlet. I was playing the part of Polonius - a part my mature years (I was 22 at the time) - obviously fitted me for.
My fondest memory of the tour is of the last performance we gave, in Genoa. We arrived in the city to find huge billboard posters everywhere with our names emblazoned on them. A massive party was thrown for us before the final performance, at which we all got drunk. So when I, in my role as Polonius, was stabbed behind the arras, I collapsed to the floor and promptly fell asleep. My snores were, by all accounts, loud enough to wake the dead.
For something I can't really remember at all, it's certainly stuck in my mind. But the best food of the tour - and, as I say, the best Italian food I've ever tasted - was a pizza I ate in Pescara.
It was one of those wonderful fold-over pizzas - a Calzone - like a giant pizza sandwich, stuffed with melted mozzarella, olives, tomatoes, herbs and some deliciously tangy meat, I haven't a clue what.
Maybe it was just that my youthful tastebuds were still unjaded; perhaps it was the copious quantities of good, strong Italian red wine; it might even simply be that it was all laid on free by the Pescara city government and we were all young and having a great time. But it's lingered in my memory as possibly the best meal I've ever eaten.
Every time I've been to an Italian restaurant since, it's been with the memory of that pizza hovering in my mind.
So when Lili and I turned up at Gianni's, the new Italian joint on Micklegate, I was a bit disappointed to see they didn't have pizza on the menu. My disappointment, though, didn't last long.
Micklegate is probably not the kind of place the discerning eater would want to venture late on a Friday night. But on a cold, wet Tuesday evening just a few days after New Year it was awesomely quiet. Not a teetering party girl in high heels and short skirts in sight. It could almost have been an ordinary city-centre street.
The restaurant itself is tucked away on the northern side of the street, on the opposite side from but nearer the city centre than the Jinnah. Diners are discreetly shielded from the gaze of drinkers reeling past outside by the kind of blinds you often find on Greek or Italian restaurants.
Inside, it's a single long, clean, well-lighted room. Tables are crammed in a bit, and you can hear the sound of staff laughing and joking through the open kitchen door at the back, but it's a cheerful place.
It describes itself carefully as a Mediterranean rather than Italian restaurant and, pizzas apart, the menu's extensive and tempting, with a range of hot and cold starters, main courses, grills, fish and pasta dishes. All have delightful Italian names that roll off the tongue, but the menu usefully has prosaic English translations underneath.
Lili plumped for the costollette di maiale pomodoro e agro (pork spare ribs in sweet and sour sauce to you and me) for her starter, and I opted for funghetti e cajun gratinati al forno (baked mushrooms in a creamy cajun sauce).
Our eyes nearly popped out of our heads when they arrived. The waiter, almost literally staggering under the weight, plumped a huge oval plateful of sizzling ribs in front of Lili. They were, she pronounced, the 'best Western food she had ever eaten' - but there was far too much. "If I'd cooked this, it could have made a dinner for six," she said.
My plate of mushrooms - delicious and with a real fiery tang - was a little more manageable, but by the time I'd finished and eaten half of Lili's ribs as well, I was already almost full.
So to the main course. I opted for escalops of veal topped with eggplant, cheese and mushrooms in a red wine sauce, Lili for whole grilled lemon sole with lemons.
Both were delicious, both, mercifully, were not quite as huge as the starters, and the selection of vegetables - roasted potatoes, grilled cauliflower and carrots - beat anything you'd find in most English restaurants I've been to.
So top marks for the food. The house red wine is deliciously rough and earthy, the coffee divine, and at £47.65 for the lot, it's not exorbitantly expensive.
A great little restaurant, in fact. But please, lads, next time, go a little easier on the starters?
Gianni's Restaurant, 98 Micklegate, York, (01904 633680).
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