I'm in Ottone, a town north of Genoa on the River Trebbia, in a co-operative shop run by the local commune.
Using my disgusting Italian, I'm trying to buy Coco Pops for the kids, who are back in a house in the mountains. I'm about to give up when a man, who isn't in a white coat like the other shop assistants, emerges from the stockroom. Can I translate, he asks. He's a New Yorker holidaying here, he adds, though why he lurks in the stockroom is unclear at this moment.
He locates Coco Pops, then follows as I carry my booty to the car. He wants to know things, such as where I'm from and what I do. I say Ireland and mention Trinity College, where I've worked. "Ah, my daughter went there, I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she did."
Surely he should know that, I think. Then I have a worse thought. He's lying. He's just trying to impress me. My inner warning light blinks red.
"Been to any good restaurants?" he asks.
"We just eat at home," I say, "my daughter, her son and my own young children."
I name the hamlet where we're staying.
"Go away. You've the greatest restaurant on your doorstep," he says, "in Cerignale, the next village up the mountain from you, Marie-Theresa's. Her food's so good you'll remember it even as you're dying."
I go home and report the conversation and wonder if we can believe this man. Everyone agrees the bloke's probably a flake and we probably can't. However, we decide that one of us might recce Marie-Theresa's, and if it looks good we might go.
My daughter drives up to Cerignale to take a squint at the fabled Marie-Theresa's and comes back saying she found a hotel in the village that had a restaurant attached, she presumed Marie-Theresa's, and it all looked dire. I feel vindicated. My warning system was right. Never trust a man with false boasts about his daughter's college. But my wife, who is nicer than me, thinks otherwise. So we drive up to the hotel in Cerignale and decide it looks so awful it can't be the place. We drive on, to a higher village, and get out, and are menaced by vicious dogs until a helpful villager drives them off.
"Marie-Theresa's?" we ask him.
"Cerignale," he says, pointing down the road we've just driven up, and he explains that, yes, it's tacked on to the hotel. We look again at the hotel, but it still seems grim. No, Marie-Theresa's won't be getting our custom.
My daughter leaves, and now it's just the Gébler nuclear family - wife plus three, augmented, after a couple of days, by the brother-in-law with his wife and son. More time passes until, one morning, I am back in Ottone, in the co-op, buying more Coco Pops when my translator emerges from the stockroom.
"Been to Marie-Theresa's yet?"
"No. It didn't look very appealing."
He riffs about Italian places not looking flash like I'm doubtless used to in Ireland, then opens the door so I can carry my shopping out. As I sally through I meet a twentysomething girl with plaits coming in.
"Oh, this is my daughter, Kelly," says my translator. "Weren't you at Trinity in Dublin, honey?"
"No, Dad, the American College," she says sweetly, and I have a sudden intuition. Trinity was just the first name he could retrieve from his presumably chaotic memory bank. And from her tone I can tell that's how he is, always getting it wrong, but she wouldn't have him any different. My inner red light is now green.
I go home and tell everyone I'd decided to trust the judgment of a man I previously didn't trust because of his daughter. "Forget how it looks. We're going to Marie-Theresa's," I say.
At 8pm, the Saturday following, we enter the Cerignale hotel's alpine-style bar. From here we're brought to an airy room full of Italians (a good sign), and from here we're brought to a private room (an even better sign).
We sit and an old woman appears; Marie-Theresa, we presume. Will we have their prosciutto with pickle, then their home-made pasta with sage butter and then their boar stew? Oh yes, we say.
The food comes and I eat, and when I finish I think about my warning system. Might need an overhaul. What if I'd followed its prompting and missed this? That would have been a calamity. Everyone has to have one meal to savour on his deathbed, and, though I'd nearly missed it, I, praise the gods, now had mine.
Róisín Ingle returns later in the month