Amuse Bouche

Weiss asked some children in pidgin Italian where they could have lunch. The kids led them to a shuttered trattoria, whose owners opened immediately for the GIs and their youthful followers. The conquering heroes sat down to lashings of the first real food that had tasted since they arrived in Italy.  ....they gorged on pasta, meat, fruit and cheese. They also bought lunch for the children, who were hungrier than the soldiers. The Americans finished five courses at one restaurant and proceeded to repeat the experience in another. “Liter after liter of ordinary vino from the nearby slopes, although red and raw, tricked down our throats,” Weiss recalled.

From Deserter by Charles Glass.