I found the song discordant, incongruous with everything that preceded it. The outro to Action News, not the familiar “...

Penne: Porta San Francesco (on the far right, you can just make out the entrance to the hardware store) Wait. Crap. What’s the Italian...

Bomb-Bomb Italian Restaurant, 1026 Wolf Street (photo from vrconsierge.com) Our restaurant’s on East Passyunk Avenue, the old business...

Via del Genio, centro storico, Penne We’re buying a house in Abruzzo. No great surprise to anyone who knows us or who, in the last...

I was sitting at our bar, just weeks before the first COVID shutdown, eavesdropping while regulars got into it: issues of the day,...

(My mom, Joyce, with cig, and my sister Suzie) Sometime in October, while I meandered unawares in the hills around Penne, Abruzzo with...

Pass at LV; photo by Kateri Likoudis Connolly (This was written in 2018 as a part of a larger work). There’s a moment during a Mexican...

(The following events happened in 1999 and early 2000. They're recounted to the best of my ability. The hospital San Giacomo in Augusta...

(Castiglione Messer Raimondo, Teramo Province, Abruzzo, my grandfather's birthplace) We’re back from Abruzzo. It was a 28-hour journey...

(Barisano section of the Sassi) Mea culpa. I’ve sins to expiate. The trip has been a good one and it’s been a pleasure to share places we...

Brief observations from Abruzzo… One of our first nights, sitting in the main piazza of Lanciano, a small but vibrant city in Abruzzo’s...

A better version of me emerges in Abruzzo. That’s setting a low bar, but it’s true. He’s a kinder, more peaceful person, less absorbed by...

(Santo Stefano di Sessanio) One of the questions I’m most often asked about Le Virtú is what (“the hell” is often inserted here) I...

Apolinar “Poli” Tlapaya Sanchez, for eleven years our co-worker and Le Virtú’s current Executive Chef, crossed a desert to get to the US....

To own an independent restaurant in the Mid-Atlantic during a global pandemic, in winter’s grip, and not reside in a state of panic...

We're hopeful on this Martin Luther King Jr. day. It might seem bleak these days, but change is now possible. If we put our shoulders to...