The Giant Truffle

I’m in New York, looking out over Central Park from my hotel room, wondering which of the thousand and one restaurants in the city to visit for lunch. For several years my favourite was Giambelli’s on East 50th Street, owned and run by Signor Giambelli, well up in his eighties when I first knew him, together with his sharp-eyed and sometimes sharp-tongued wife Mary, who generally sat at a table in the corner watching the staff at their work, making sure they kept up to the mark. Signor Giambelli, a more benign presence, always debonair in a red velvet jacket that elegantly complemented his silver hair, would visit all the tables getting to know his customers – including me – sharing his wisdom, philosophy, and reflections on the great questions of life.

On one of my visits I chanced to be given a table near Signora Giambelli, and she struck up a conversation with me, one eye on her husband working the tables and out of earshot. ‘My husband’, she confided, ‘I can’t do a thing with him. So, he’s had his ninetieth birthday. I tell him it’s time to retire. I buy the condo in Florida, I take him down there . . . you know what, he complains the sun’s bad for his skin, he’s on the phone the whole time to the restaurant asking how’s business that day, he’s so miserable I have to let him come back.’ Signor Giambelli approaches, she falls silent and I tuck into a plate of Giambelli’s incomparable home-made ravioli.

Back home in England, I chanced to see a newspaper article about an annual online truffle auction. It was a bumper year, with one exceptionally huge truffle that was sold at auction to – Signor Giambelli, the noted New York restauranteur. I cut out the article, kept it with me and took it to Giambelli’s on my next visit there. I handed it to Signor Giambelli, he called to Mary and the head waiter, read it out to them and exclaimed, beaming with pride, ‘See, my ristorante is famous, it’s in the London newspapers!’ My dinner was on the house, and he insisted I have a risotto topped with shavings from the giant truffle. I would like to report that it tasted heavenly, but I guess truffles don’t travel too well, and it was . . . well, a bit rubbery.

On my next visit to New York I was dismayed to find Giambelli’s being demolished to make way for a small power sub-station serving the New York subway, so I enquired at the Italian restaurant across the street. ‘Yes,’ they told me, ‘it was a few months ago now. Signor Giambelli was going around the tables as usual, he told the staff he felt a little tired and he would take a nap upstairs. He never woke up, Mrs G. carried on for a while but her heart wasn’t in it, truth was she missed her husband real bad. She accepted a good offer for the premises, and she’s in Florida now.’

Thus ended a chapter in New York’s restaurant history, but I couldn’t help reflecting that Signor Giambelli was a fortunate man, able to pursue the calling he loved right up to his last day, probably with that press cutting still in his pocket. Like most composers, I hope for the same privilege – and I wouldn’t mind a nice press cutting or two to take with me when I go.