Il Terrazzo | 555 Johnson Street | Victoria

For someone who grew up in a town with a population that was, at the time, predominantly Italian, I know very little about "Il Bel Paese."  For a long time most of what I knew came from the Godfather films and Friday dinner at Tony's Roma and I naturally assumed most Italians were hirsute, husky-voiced men who knew their way around a kitchen and to whom I should avoid owing money.  Even after six years of working in Bocci's, our specialty delicatessen, which at first was aimed toward attracting the town's aging Italian population, I was only able to expand my knowledge of Italy in two areas: cheese, which while invaluable gave me little insight into the country and its people, and finance.  It seemed impossible that anyone could owe money to an Italian since it meant the Italian would have to have parted with it in the first place.  Every Sunday while we sat around a table laden with pasta, sauce and meatballs, my Italian relatives would speak of the old country's verdant, rolling fields and simple way of life in such loving tones that I assumed it to be an Eden filled with olive groves and young men whose refusal to move out of their mother's home was based on devotion and not at all indicative of serious character flaws.