It is how Italians wish each other luck, and the correct reply is that the wolf should die
Bocca di Lupo holds a 4.6 from three thousand seven hundred and fifty-three people, charges forty to a hundred pounds, and is one of the best Italian restaurants in London.
And the name is half of a superstition.
In bocca al lupo
It is what an Italian says to you before an exam, or a performance, or anything at all that might go wrong.
It means: into the mouth of the wolf.
And the correct reply – and it must be given, and it is bad luck not to – is crepi il lupo. May the wolf die.
It is the Italian equivalent of break a leg, and it works on the same principle: you do not wish somebody good luck directly, because that is asking for trouble, so you wish them something terrible and everybody understands.
Why we do this
Because of the evil eye, essentially, and because every culture on earth has independently arrived at the same anxiety.
The fear is that a stated hope invites its own frustration – that to say a thing out loud is to draw attention to it, and that attention is dangerous.
So the English tell an actor to break a leg. The Germans say hals und beinbruch, neck and leg break. The Russians tell you to go to the devil. Hunters wish each other broken feathers.
And every single one of these is the same manoeuvre: say the worst thing, so that the worst thing does not happen.
The Prat’s superstition desk regards this as the most universal human behaviour it has encountered in five hundred and thirty-four articles and notes that essentially nobody who does it believes in it.
The wolf, defended
There is a gentler reading and it is the one the Italians prefer.
The wolf, in this reading, is not a predator but a mother – and to be in her mouth is to be carried, as a cub is carried, safely, in the only way a wolf knows how to move a thing it loves.
Under that reading, crepi il lupo is the wrong reply, and some people now say viva il lupo instead – long live the wolf.
This is disputed, energetically, by people who feel strongly about it, and the Prat is not going to referee an Italian argument.
The food
Regional Italian, which means the menu tells you which region each dish is from – and that is the entire point of the restaurant.
Because Italian food is not a cuisine. It is about twenty cuisines, which fought each other for a thousand years, and which have almost nothing in common except a suspicion of the next province.
Order across the regions. Order the fritto misto. Sit at the counter, which is always the best seat and which almost nobody takes.
Verdict
Superb. Book. And when they say it, say it back.
The regions, briefly
Because it is the entire proposition of the restaurant and almost nobody in Britain has grasped it.
Italy was not a country until 1861. Before that it was kingdoms, duchies, republics and papal states, which spent centuries fighting each other and being invaded by everybody else.
Which means the food is not national. It is Piedmontese, or Roman, or Sicilian, or Venetian – and a Sicilian dish and a Piedmontese one have about as much in common as a Cornish pasty and a Norwegian stew.
The butter is in the north. The oil is in the south. The tomato arrived in the sixteenth century and took two hundred years to be trusted.
There is no such thing as Italian food, and this restaurant is the only one in five postcodes that says so on the menu.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
