Behold the Pestomat!

Behold the Automat of the future!



The Pestomat!

Good news – the future is now! During a whirlwind tour of Liguria (Imperia to Riomaggiore in 4 days, including 14 hours in Genova) I ran across this brilliant invention in Portovenere – a tiny medieval town on the Gulf of Poets, just around the bay from La Spezia. My group was given 25 minutes to explore the town. On the way back to the bus we passed a shop – the Bottega del Pesto – which carries only pesto varieties and accoutrements. The owner was locking the door to close up for the night.

When we protested, he said, I can’t sell you any right now, but if you go down the stairs and turn left you’ll find a “distributore automatica di pesto” – an automated pesto dispenser. Not sure if we were being taken for a ride or not, we went down and sure enough, this machine was wedged between restaurants on the waterfront. For 10 euro (bills only!) you can get a jar of authentic pesto alla Genovese; for another 10, you can get a wedge of pecorino sardo to grate on top.

Who can maintain that an Italian malaise is stifling innovation when entrepreneurial genius like this exists!?

This trip was pretty structured – not much time for independent explorations, but I did end up with a bounty of goodies (unfortunately I didn’t have 10-spot for the Pestomat, so that’ll have to wait for next trip). But if anybody is going to be dashing across Liguria, I can recommend the following food related stops:

1. Octopus salad and spectacular desserts at the Terrazza restaurant in Sestri Levante (part of a suite-hotel dining room).
2. Farinata and foccaccia pretty much anywhere, but especially in Genova.
3. Fried red mullet fillets and troffiette al pesto at the Hotel Doria restaurant in Lerici.
4. A visit to the Emporio dell’Olio in Lerici just off the main Piazza for a spectacular selection of local olive oils and liquors.
5. A pine-nut and cornflour cake with zabaglione and cape gooseberries at the otherwise charmless Castellaro Golf Resort in Castellaro.

Wonderful!

And though not precisely on point, we found this remarkable coffee machine stuck in a little room with other vending machines at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls (San Paolo fuori le Mura) in Rome.



Most amazing to us for the extraordinary variety of coffee beverages available. Sadly, we hadn't the right change so weren't able to find out the quality. And, interestingly (at least to us), we never saw another machine anything like it elsewhere in Rome.

I saw a coffee machine like that in the United Airlines Red Carpet lounge in Frankfurt Airport. There were so many choices I really had to read carefully.

ALL the coffee machines in Flughaven Frankfurt—including that beauty at the United lounge—are tuned once a week by a little old artisan on a bicycle. Really. I followed him around for a couple of hours one afternoon of a delayed flight. He got into the machines with thermometers and tasting spoons and micrometers und so weiter und so weiter.

He said that the only way to keep sophisticated coffee machines producing their finest was to maintain them religously. Which he did.

So that's why you can get a decent cuppa from a machine at Flughaven Frankfurt.

Geo