Tori’s Table

All Roads Lead to Rome

words by Tori Sharp
photography by Lil Watkin

I look out the window of the train, scanning the vista for houses, thinking to myself, would I want to live there? The criteria are often very generous. If there’s a horse, I definitely want to live there. I can spot a vegetable patch, I’ll pack my things. The sun is shining on the porch with the glow of evening light, I’ll move tomorrow. I have an itch for the countryside, one that I keep suppressing and I don’t know how long this can last.

I’ve lived in Paris for nearly seven years now. Strangely, it's the longest I've lived anywhere, if we count moving abroad as a young child and subsequently living away from home while studying. The city is my chosen home, and I love it immeasurably but, oh, would I like to have a farm with some chickens and goats one day. I fear I’ve prematurely and subconsciously started dressing for this life. Hardy boots, checked shirts, thick woollen jumpers, a wax-proofed hat that I stole from my mum.

It is perhaps a cliché, as I'll turn 30 next year, but I'm beginning to stitch together the patchwork quilt of what I think my life might look like in five, ten or fifteen years' time and this imaginary quilt is becoming increasingly green and brown.

I want to grow the vegetables for the restaurant that the Butcher is going to run, and I want there to be flowers on the table from my cutting garden. The current flaw in this plan is that I don’t know in which countryside I would like to plant my garden: the warm and arid South, the valleyed East, the jagged Northern coast, or the wild South-West?

And that in itself would be limiting myself to France. 

This particular train is returning to Paris from Marseille and so passes through the whole centre, or the “diagonale du vide” as it is charmingly referred to. Marseille has its own spirit and to visit for days at a time, lounging on rocks, drinking Pastis, eating panisse at Café de l’Abbaye, is the perfect long weekend, but I can’t imagine myself living there.

Before giving in to my itch to retire to the countryside at 28, I've decided to try another city first. This autumn, I'm moving to Rome.. A few-months stint which is a possibility now that I’m back in the European passport club. 

Paris has been the only real city I’ve lived in, as I don’t really count my brief 18 months in Exeter, and I wonder if I really love Paris singularly or if another European city will bring me the same joy. I, of course, will be keeping my hands busy by continuing to cook, having organised a residency at Ruma Bottega, a small wine bar with its own buffalo farm. I’m happy to keep this farm connection and equally (hopefully) to learn a new cheesemaking skill. I’ve had a pull towards Italy for the last few years without quite understanding why, sometimes worrying that I have watched Eat, Pray, Love too many times and that this will just be the start of my worldwide self-discovery tour. For that, we will have to wait and see, but first, Rome!