In the box: Loading up with the Italian treats provided by Tia Amici.
Inside the fire station, which has been divided into offices, a long table in a foyer is loaded with Italian-themed food. The crowd washes round the buffet table, loading food into their cardboard boxes (R45).
“Guys, if you’re going to overfill your box, you need to buy another one,” warns Anna Montali as she starts to let people in. Some of the customers — the young, hungry ones — do jam their boxes to the top and can hardly close the lid, but those more sedentary are more moderate.
Montali, Malcolm Ryan and Cristina Scola, three friends who always seemed to find themselves cooking at one another’s houses, decided to start serving Italian food at what they call a “pavement lunch”. They only do it once a week and are now serving more than 100 lunches.
There’s no sit-down eating, except for a few chairs on the stoep, but most people lean up against cars or take their boxes back to the office or home for supper.
By way of a disclaimer, they also serve the staff of the Mail & Guardian supper on Wednesday night, when we work late. I’ve forgotten what our first caterer served us, but it was something deeply unpleasant and greasy, accompanied by rubbery mashed potato. We tried another place, which relied on a preponderance of butternut and bread to get by. We’re now spoiled by the Tia Amici (Among Friends), as Montali, Ryan and Scola call themselves. We get trays of lasagne, penne with a tomato and cream sauce, lovely salads and stuffed melanzane.
On the Tuesday I visited the fire station, there was sliced veal tornado with mayonnaise, capers and tuna; a salad of ricotta, roasted zucchini, peppers and mint (which kept getting finished and had to be replenished from the back); and thick slices of melanzane with a yoghurt and pesto dressing. There were slices of mushroom pizza; cold pasta with Gorgonzola, pine nuts, rocket and tomato; and roast pumpkin with sun-dried tomatoes. There was a beef lasagne, and melanzane and mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto. Less successful were the arancini. Risotto rice is formed into rounds the size of golf balls with a piece of mozzarella in the centre. They’re fried and must be served hot. But these were cold and the centre was a tad stodgy.
“There’s nothing fancy. It’s homemade. And it’s very clean,” said Scola, busy in the back, replenishing bowls.
Scola’s daughter, Bianca, is helping out in the back and Ryan’s daughter, Claudia, is collecting the money and handing out boxes in the front. Just like an Italian family.