The Sagra, or How to Eat Your Way Around an Italian Village
There is a sign by the side of a small road in Umbria, propped against a tree, hand-painted, slightly crooked, and unmistakably municipal. It says: SAGRA DELLA LUMACA — 4, 5, 6 LUGLIO . There is an arrow pointing left, into a village I have not heard of, and underneath, in smaller letters, the helpful clarification: Sagra of the Snail . A sagra of the snail You can drive past this sign. Many people do. Or you can turn left, follow the arrow up a hill, past a vineyard and a small shrine to the Madonna, and arrive, twenty minutes later, in a village of perhaps three hundred people, which has set up trestle tables under the plane trees of its central piazza, strung the bunting between the lamp-posts, hired a four-piece band that will later play Romagna Mia with a kind of grim regional pride, and which is about to feed you, for approximately fourteen euros, a four-course meal in which every single course features the snail. The sagra is the most underrated insti...
