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The maitre d’ at Ai Cugnia in Dorsoduro greeted us with “Pamela?” and seated us in the cozy front room. While I’m always pleased when a restaurant recognizes our reservation, it made me wonder just how foreign I must look to Italians.

Ah, Venice…the art, the history, the water – the doughnuts! I swear to God, you’ll forget all about Krispy Kreme once you taste a bomba from Tonolo in Dorsoduro. The tender dough, the rich custard, the crunchy sugar, it’s enough to make a girl give up her four-year vow of sugar chastity. Trust me, it’s worth the splurge.

The battle to obtain the elusive but required document “permesso di soggiorno” — permission to stay — began when our landlords’ extended family, including an attorney and an accountant, made four futile attempts to produce a rental contract for our apartment that was acceptable to local authorities. 

It’s a rare occasion that I would return to a restaurant that took 90 minutes to serve me a single piece of food, but Lido Bianco gets the Come-Back Award any way.

Salvo stands 5’8″ and weighs in somewhere north of 250 pounds. Nose tackle material. He is said by one of his neighbors to be a Mafioso capo of the Kalsa, Palermo’s seafront Arab quarter. 

When we were researching the best cities in Puglia, Ostuni regularly rated at the top of the list. Admittedly, it’s small, about 32,000, but holds an impressive advantage being a hill town, a rare thing in the south.

Who would have thought it, but we actually did it – chucked our jobs and lives in Colorado and headed for the gastronomical center of the earth, where we’ve been doing our best to pay homage to the cuisine, if not the language.