COSENZA The memory costs 150 euros. Your heart may sink when you come across that bald mannequin on social media who greeted the customers of a pizzeria which is now closed – after 25 years of honorable service – and, half hidden among the parked cars, blessed the motorists leaving Cosenza towards Rende.
(Warning: this is a very Cosenza piece. Umbilical but heartfelt.)
A wooden waiter in a reverential pose, stocky, with elfin features and sideburns, red jacket on a pizza chef’s apron. An Ampelmann type brand in Berlin. Disturbing yet good-natured, it will have disturbed the sleep of many little people from Cosenza who have grown up today and perhaps returned after a quarter of a century as customers of the Ventaglio, until the restaurant was opened. Today that street symbol of a rapidly evolving city – certainly more iconic of the controversial statue of Giacomo Mancini – Renato Rascel in front of Piazza dei Bruzi but also of a mannequin similar to this one, on the sides of an outdoor area in Piazza XI Settembre – it is on sale with a warning to repair it to avoid further damage.
The flour district
An era is ending: the pizza chef Nicola Molinaro (destiny in the surname, like the almost homonymous and late Walter), which began with his father-in-law Mario Falbo in the equally historical one Volante pizzeria (Commenda) lowers the shutter of the Ventaglio: his son Alessandro will go to be a chef on cruise ships and therefore the family-run pizzeria will lose an important piece. Hence the decision to close, as Nicola explains with teary eyes at the entrance to the restaurant.
We were thinking of a change of management (the new ownership would perhaps also undertake to treat the mannequin…) but instead it seems that now those premises could be incorporated by Monderaanother legendary sign of the white art of Cosenza which “challenges” – from the opposite side of the elevated road – the most popular “Loaf” (here since 1998 and recently moved and expanded) which also offers a diner room overlooking the corner manned by one of the last street greengrocers in the city. Shortly before, a new entrance (Carotenutoan over ten-year-old bakery which has recently launched two stores in the centre) confirms via Panebianco as a flour district ⎯ on the other hand the toponym already says a lot.
Ruins and skyscrapers
We are at the beginning of “Panijancu”: founding road, the only one in the urban area to exceed 600 house numbers, once the main or rather only access for the (few) road vehicles, the old National Road which crossed Rende and in its section follows the current State Road 19. From here it passed Pope Wojtyla in his visit dating back almost forty years ago (October 1984), touching the large fountain in Piazza Europa which in the conurbation of this old area of fig trees and cabbage fields replaced a marshy and stagnant depression crossed by the Muoio, a torrent mephitic from the name alone.
And today? The two-faced city puts before the eyes of the traveler i ruins with two floors reduced to a refuge dump for the marginal right at the feet of the moderns tower blocks from two thousand euros per square meter; the public housing also overlooked by new buildings (in the central stretch of via Panebianco, within a few metres, one has recently been delivered and another is under construction while just beyond the City of boys stands out the only skyscraper in Cosenza); the Chinese bazaars and proletarian discount stores; the many kebab to undermine perhaps the most loved and certainly the longest-running rotisserie-diner in Cosenza (the mythological Comalpi).
A pizzeria closing is a very private yet public event: we already miss the Ventaglio, just like that strange mannequin that held up the pizza boxes.
