Tonight I went to what I thought was the L'Osteria del Treno that I'd eaten at quite happily a while back. But no, rather than the cosy train pix'd 70 cover joint down the street I found myself in a big huge "House of Railwaymen" with hundreds of tables and seats, admittedly cool iron work, but most uncool loud music coming from an Americanesque band on the band stand.
OK. Deal with it Dude! You're here, you've had a successful panel, life goes on even if you cannot hear.
First comes the Slow Food portion of charcuterie (BTW, isn't it shocking that Milano has only 4 places listed in its Slow Food Guide, only one of which has a snail?) Then we were served the pasta - a paccheri (a sort of very wide open noodle) with tomatoes and salami. It may have been Slow Food but it was so slow its frigidity was outside my Bell-curve. Finally, we got the very thinly sliced veal (fab) with capers and olives and a sort of layered potato thingee (also quite good).
Since I don't do xanthines (such as chocolate coffee tea, etc, after 3 PM) I skipped out on dessert.
The bill, I dunno, it was included in the price of my servitude delivering the most brilliant session of the Congress. The wine and bread BTW were great. Was I happy? With my friends/colleagues American-Italian-Israeli-Greek-French, sure. With the coid pasta - NO! Unacceptable.