The five Stages of heart break in an Italian market

Love and joy are what I expected to feel, surrounded by the freshest food and a resinous scent of woody herbs in the air, but it was heartbreak instead.

It was instant infatuation. The people milling around as varied as the produce, piled into pyramids along horseshoe-shaped market stalls. This burning affection, the longing for every crunch within my view, quickly turned into heartbreak. At Mercato di sant’ Ambrogio love and joy are what I expected to feel as a food lover surrounded by the freshest food and a sticky scent of woody herbs in the air, but it was heartbreak instead. I know it was heartbreak because within the hour or so I was there, I went through all 5 phases with each corner turned.

Denial

There were piles of artichokes with their lilac and sage colour gradient. I saw salads in four colours before I saw one green leaf. Alluring voices welcomed me to take a look, knowing that their tower of persimmons with tight golden skin would do all the seducing. There were wheels of gorgonzola oozing, golden pastry bubbling in a ripping hot fryer, charcuterie slicing, and sausage stuffing. It all felt too good to be true. Pinch me; I must be in a dream.

There’s no way this could all be real. There’s no way I am actually walking through the paradise I conjure up in my imagination as I walk, disappointed, through the clinical fluorescent lights that flood the “fresh produce” section of my local supermarket.

It was real, and that was all the more heartbreaking. No matter how hard I pinched, how vigorously I rubbed my eyes, it was all still there. It could only be mine on this sunny Saturday morning in Florence.

Anger

I was disoriented and overwhelmed, stumbling through what felt like a mirage. Stepping out of the fresh food desert of the UK, what was in front of me could only be a hazy figment of my desperate mind. I tried to blink away the haze and tripped over myself.

I was quickly frustrated by how everything in touching distance from me felt so inaccessible. I didn’t know how to ask for it. While the folks around me seemed like absolute naturals. They were familiar and chatty, they were at ease. A lifetime of experience made every transaction fit so perfectly in the scene. I felt myself ruining it by clumsily and unsuccessfully trying to buy some bread. Pointing awkwardly and mumbling incoherently, a stark contrast to the enlivened voices and the brisk gestures of the Italians around me. I felt like a starving infant. In a drought of words to express my hunger, I was flushed with panic about how this could limit this very special experience. The beautiful picture painted around me with the colours of glossy greens and ripe red tomatoes turned ugly as my childish inexperience interrupted the coordinated chaos of this Saturday market.

I felt anger, anger because I felt let down by all my experiences until this point. I love food. I know my produce even, the weirder stuff I had seen in my favourite cookbooks, but why was I so unprepared? Anger because I had not had enough of these experiences for it to feel normal and natural like it was for the Florentine people who had been coming here since they were children. The frustration of being so close, yet so far.

Bargaining

A caricature vision of the market in our minds, the cheeky back and forth between punter and stall holder. “You’ll want my limbs next!” I dream of half joking, half complaining, as I hand over £7(yuppie tax) for a loaf of high-status sourdough at my local market. I never do say it. I walk away, desperate that the chunk of tomato which I will slick with olive oil and crust with salt and have on this 98p slice of bread will provide me with half the feeling of enrichment I had within 2 minutes of stepping into Mercato di sant’ Ambrogio.

I stuff a carrier bag full of Cime de rappa, a head of radicchio, a fist full of the irony spinach, a wrinkled ball of beautifully speckled castlefranco and a knot of rocket. The stall holder accidentally entered €300 in the cash register, a funny mistake that we both chuckle lightly at. Heartbreak thuds over me as I realise that all I am paying is €3. I gulp down a sardonic laugh as I realise that’s what I would pay, just the radicchio back home.

At this price, the food becomes way more than the plate adornment in some of my favourite cookbooks or on the grids of smug Instagrammers who write recipes no one can afford to follow. It becomes the daily salad with dinner, each fleshy crunch all the more delicious for its routine presence in my life for the rest of that week.

No need to bargain, no need to swap limbs for branches, no need for negotiating. Excellent, fresh, flavourful, nutrient-dense food will not be a privilege nor a sacrifice for the coming days.

Depression

Knowing that this was probably going to be the first and last Italian market encounter within the next 12-18 months, but moreover, it felt like the flame of love which ignites spontaneously even though you know that it’s just not going to work out. You know that you will miss that love before you’ve even said goodbye.

While a blur of colour overwhelmed my retinas, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I’d be standing dissatisfied in an aisle at Lidl again, with the same old veg, in the same old packaging and the same old extortionate prices. Watching an eccentric stall holder carving an ornate pattern in a bright orange pumpkin, and trays of wild mushrooms rapidly empty and replenish and my nostrils assaulted with the ripe aroma of local sheep’s cheese, I knew it would be back to mass-produced placeless cheese and potatoes within days.

I was inside a kaleidoscopic shopping experience, I knew there was a grey one waiting for me at home.

Acceptance

I got into the swing of things, and my Italian dialled in as I remembered the “question words” I practised with my Italian friend before heading off on holiday. My confidence increased, especially after the salad haul was secured for €3.00. The gleaming bulbs of fennel are like an obvious clue to cooking some delicious meals, and I’m egged on to sniff my way through the market and collect the rest of the ingredients, like a treasure hunt that I couldn’t lose.

I’m reminded of something inspiring I heard from researcher Fatmah Sabet. I was having an embodied food experience, the exact type of experience she recommends all consumers eaters should try to have as often as possible to participate in authentic food systems. There’s something so transparent about being here, the food isn’t covered in packaging trying to convince me to buy it with tales of “health” and dull serving suggestions. The people I’m giving my money to know about what they’re giving me in exchange. I have an immense sense of fulfilling stimulation in a way that makes the brain and the heart smoulder simultaneously. A change to the hollow stimulation and blandness of what’s most commonly on offer.

It was a transformational experience - Since coming home I have made greater efforts to increase the amount of food I am getting directly from producers (a privilege afforded to me as a resident in Cornwall) and I have started cooking more simply and trying to make great produce a staple in my life rather than a rich butter stuffed indulgence.

I have accepted that right now - the food system I participate in is not authentic. Embodied food experiences are few and far between, and a purple orb of radicchio is nowhere to be seen. But it is not resignation. To improve on a problem, we must accept there is one first. I intend to make small improvements through my day-to-day living and the conversations I have with eaters and cooks like me.

Admittedly, my heart is still broken.

Recommended reading: Ravenous by Henry Dimbleby