From the market to Buonarrivo

I worked as a barista in my neighbourhood in Acerra. I was seven years old and already working in the café, behind the counter from 5:30 in the morning until 9 in the evening. As I grew up, all I wanted was to leave. I heard from my cousin who had bought a place in Tarvisio, so he called me and I left from Naples. As soon as I arrived, it felt a bit sad, because Tarvisio was all grey. Seeing the soldiers dressed like that, all alike, for us who came from down South it made our hearts tighten a little. But I had gone to work with the Amoroso family, and back then it was like being part of a family, you cheered up a bit. There was not much work, there were only 30 or 40 people a day. Then, around the 1980s, business with the soldiers really took off: with the soldiers, the place filled up in the evening. In the restaurants, when it was known that they were leaving for the training grounds, we prepared for their return, because we knew they ate heartily. And so that week we worked well, very well indeed. We lived together with them, we became friends with the carabinieri and the finance police officers, who at the time were all from the South.
Everyone came here; but sometimes I saw them, they suffered and I told them: “Look, do five, six, seven years here, then you will leave, do not worry.”
In this area the cuisine was all meat-based: pasta with ragù, which here they call pastasciutta, lasagne, pork chop. So, we are from the South, what do we introduce? Fish! We began to introduce fried fish, mussels, clams, all those kinds of things. We had large display windows with fish inside. People came in and said: “Give me this, give me that.” We were the only place in Tarvisio. In fact, now almost every place here serves fish.
We make a lovely seafood dish, you prepare the cherry tomatoes, parsley and pepper, and make a garlic and oil base. This lovely spaghetti is lightly stir-fried and the seafood is added. At the end you add four cherry tomatoes, parsley, salt and pepper and enjoy it. Spaghetti sciuè sciuè. That’s what they call it: sciuè sciuè, a Neapolitan word.