One day, being hungry, I asked to a bar tender if there was something to eat there. He said he had finished the sandwiches, but he suggested me to go to ‘the best restaurant of the city’, where I could have eaten all I wanted.
This restaurant was, according to the directions of the bar tender, ‘in the main square on the city, right building, with a very big door’. ‘Easy to find’, he said.
Once I arrived in the main square, I decrypted his ‘significant silence’. In front of my eyes, there was, in fact, only the building of the local assembly, where the town’s mayor and the local politicians met and legislated. Being involuntarily blocked in the Sicily and with no intention to stay, I preferred not to enter, even for a simple information on the menu available.
I translate for those possibly interested, ‘the code of this underworld‘, as it has been passed to me. First, ‘restaurant’ means ‘a place where you can eat’. Counterintuitive for the most. ‘The best restaurant of the city’ means ‘the best place of the city where you can eat’. Also counterintuitive. After a more careful semantic research, I discovered that ‘local politicians’ are often addressed in a not always friendly way as ‘manciatari’. Literally, this means ‘those who eat’.
For analogy, I realized that the verb ‘to eat’ may also have the meaning of ‘stealing the bread’. I hope I connected all words in the right sequence. To my knowledge, in fact, there was no real restaurant in that building.
Alfio Cerami Blog 