Eating and Drinking Our Way Through Italy

Flights to Europe always come with a few funny little quirks.

On the way there (departing from Taipei),

the Western-style meal on the plane always sells out fast, because everyone's riding that excited "we're going on a trip!" energy.

(Even though the meal is made by the same Taiwan catering kitchen either way.)

But on the way back (flying home to Taiwan),

after days and days of Western food, everyone's desperately craving Taiwanese food,

so suddenly everyone's ordering the Chinese-style meal instead,

which means the meals often can't stretch to give everyone their first choice — total test of the flight attendants' persuasion skills (lol).

This time, let this kitty walk you through what we ate for our three meals a day in Italy!!

: Wait, isn't this just gelato? Where's the actual meal?

Well, hear me out —

once you're in Italy, there's a daily quest you basically have to grind out.

You all know what I'm talking about, right??

Gelato. Every. Single. Day!!!!

Venice is actually made up of 121 tiny islands, split apart by canals and stitched back together by bridges.

Naturally, the local seafood is famous — and it's SO. FRESH.

The most iconic dishes are the fried seafood and the squid-ink pasta.

Different from Japanese-style fried skewers,

the batter here is super light, letting the natural sweetness of the seafood shine through.

Honestly, it gave me major Kaohsiung vibes XD

As someone who grew up in Kaohsiung, I can confirm:

this is exactly what fried seafood tasted like when I was a kid (chews thoughtfully)

In the video you can spot seafood pasta, fried seafood, lasagna, and squid-ink pasta.

Of all of these, the seafood pasta was my favorite — loaded with toppings and genuinely bursting with flavor.

It legitimately tastes like the ocean.

This next one's from a different day's lunch.

Any guesses what's on the left? Can you tell?

This is from a place that once held a Michelin star.

The right side is, once again, crispy fried seafood.

And the left is — handmade gnocchi.

Yep, Italy has an insane number of pasta shapes,

including a version of what we in Taiwan call "flour dumplings" too.

But the texture is worlds apart from the Taiwanese version.

Taiwanese-style flour dumplings usually have a slightly firm core.

Italian gnocchi, on the other hand, is completely pillowy soft.

You read that right — pillowy soft.

Pretty unique — so I gave it my best flight-attendant customer-service smile and called it a round.

Last up, dessert (gelato again, shocker).

The pistachio gelato was genuinely amazing.

I actually remember telling a coworker on day one:

pistachio and Kolaka chips kind of sound alike, huh? Am I gonna mix those up?

And sure enough, every single day after that, I mixed them up. Dammit!!!!

Kitty: I'm gonna go grab some of that Kolaka jam~

Coworker: ...you mean pistachio, right?

Kitty: Yeah... that one... இдஇ

By the Kitty Shop Manager