My Verona

Horse Sensibility

At Osteria Sgarzarie, a homey white-tablecloth restaurant with modern art prints and a polished old wood bar, the lunch special was Pastisada con Polenta: a stew made with horse meat and served with polenta.

In fact, we found that horse was almost always the special in local restaurants. Polenta and horse are as ubiquitous in Verona as tomatoes and mozzarella are in southern Italy. As a confirmed epicure, I have eaten just about every meat acceptable in the Western world -- except horse. Hippophagy (eating of horseflesh), of course, remains taboo in the United States and the United Kingdom, and, more significantly, with my wife, who can't discuss "Black Beauty" with dry eyes.

This was Verona, however. When in Verona, I reasoned, why not do as the Veronese? Putting that perfectly valid logic aside, I ordered politically correct risotto with mushrooms, washed down with a bottle of the region's signature red wine, Valpolicella.

After lunch we headed out to see what we could. We climbed to the upper tier of the Roman Arena, where we looked over the city to the snow-capped Alps, and walked through the Castelvecchio, a 14th-century fortified castle turned into a museum of art, arms and jewelry on the Adige.

We stopped for pinguini (penguins), delicious homemade ice creams on a stick, then headed back to the plaza around the arena, the Piazza Bra. As evening fell, multitudes of locals turned out for their daily stroll, filling the piazzas and packing the main pedestrian shopping street, Via Giuseppe Mazzini.

Looking Good

Verona is a wealthy city, about as snobby as Italy gets, and it's evident in the parade of locals who turn out in the evening to preen. You quickly realize that in Verona it is not just important to walk but to have killer shoes. And clothes. And sunglasses. It's a place where miniskirted moms push baby strollers while wearing black boots as long as the Italian peninsula.

This is not the Italy of Pliny, Fellini or Mazzini (the 19th-century Italian patriot for whom the shopping street is named) but of Gucci, Prada and Dolce & Gabbana.

We had less than 24 hours left in Verona and wanted to make the most of it. That evening, we crossed the 2,000-year-old brick footbridge, the Ponte Pietra, and ate dinner in a small family-run restaurant in the shadows of Verona's Roman Theater. For that meal, I moved on to polenta and stewed rabbit, accompanied by Valpolicella's more potent red sibling, Amarone di Valpolicella.

The next morning, I awoke early and climbed the Torre dei Lamberti, mounting 25 flights of stairs before I realized there was an elevator that takes you most of the way up. We strolled across the city to Verona's most impressive church, San Zeno Maggiore, a tall, light-filled Romanesque basilica full of marble arcades, overlapping layers of frescoes and an odd statue of a laughing Zeno (an early bishop of Verona who is the city's patron saint).

"I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," my son quipped. It was lunchtime again, and we stopped in at Al Calmiere, a family place and a temple to carnivorism. Venetian-glass chandeliers hung overhead, and polenta and meats cooked over a wood fire. Horse was featured in one of the specials (tartare!), along with platters of carpaccio layered with thin-sliced Parmesan cheese and radicchio.

I thought about it. Then I thought about Mr. Ed, Silver, Seabiscuit. I looked at my wife and felt something like shame.

I went with the beef.

Robert Camuto, a frequent contributor to Travel, is the author of "Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country," to be published this fall.