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Our new friend Ari LaVeux, whose Flash in the Pan column is a favorite new read (check out his interview with Obama and this deliciously clever Food Club) is in Turin for Terra Madre. I’m guessing he’s found his way into the Salone by now — he missed it the other night but it sounds like he ate well, anyway. Grazie, Ari!

Turin, Italy. When I finally found my way to the expo center at Lingoto, it was dark and the press office was closed, so I couldn’t pick up my accreditation, couldn’t enter the Salone del Gusto.

“If you want a bite to eat, why don’t you go to ee-taly,” said the woman at the information desk. This was confusing, as I had thought that I already was in Italy.

Apparently not. Italy was down the block, she directed me.

Sure enough, exactly where she sent me I found a big grocery store/restaurant place called Eataly. Outside Eataly there was a man with a large cast-iron roaster selling chestnuts, and hundreds of fancy dressed Italians milling about. In my flannel and jeans I stood out, but nonetheless attempted to casually follow the slow flow of sophisticates into Eataly. Alas, I was stopped at the door by a polite and impeccably dressed guard, who informed me this was a private party.

Walking the dark streets of Turin back towards my apartment, I stopped at a pizzeria that boasted seafood as a specialty. I was seated in the crowded dining room at a table for four with another solitary eater, who acknowledged me politely and then finished his meal as if he were still alone.

Too tired to try and decode the Italian menu, I went with the hand-written three course special, which was scrawled so indecipherably that I couldn’t have read it even if it were in English.

My table companion finished his pizza, and nodding goodbye he got up and left. Moments later a young and beautiful couple was seated at my table for four. They acknowledged me briefly, and then ignored me.

As I tried to ignore the romantic dinner for two that I felt like I was somehow crashing, a plate of penne pasta in tomato sauce with shrimp and mussels and a heavy dusting of fresh parsley, arrived.

Not wanting to appear the crude gringo that I am, I restrained myself from picking apart the mussels with my fingers, and extracted the tiny meats with my knife and fork, which felt like foreign objects in my hands. Then, with knife and fork, I transferred the empty mussel shells to the empty plate provided. My table companions ate their pizzas – he a sausage pizza, she a zucchini pizza – with their knives and forks, chattering away happily. My pasta was delicious.

It was 9:30 pm, and the dining room kept filling up. A table was placed beside our table, laid with a fresh pink tablecloth. Then the table was picked up and moved. A waiter bumped our table and nearly spilled my glass of wine. Didn’t apologize (why should he have, I guess, nothing spilled).

Another plate was set down before me, with pan-fried chunks of three different kinds of fish, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley, and garnished with lemon. I chewed slowly, sipping reflectively on my wine.

Finally, a salad of lettuce, arugula, radicchio, shredded carrots, thin-sliced celery, and tomatoes was set down before me, along with bottles of red wine vinegar and oil. Salad at the end of the meal suits me fine, when your belly is full but you want to keep eating.

The leaves were artfully chopped and incredibly fresh. The tomato, to my surprise, was mediocre. As I ate my salad with the fork and spoon it came with, my table companions, having finished their pizzas, got up and left, nodding goodbye.

Thus, outside the boundaries of the Slow Food pavilion, life in Turin went on more or less as it always has, with the locals seemingly oblivious to the event for which hundreds of thousands of visitors have descended upon their city. It’s lifestyle in which slow food is taken for granted as just how it is – no big deal when you live in slow food central.

And I, enjoying my salad with my two-fisted silverware, had outlasted two sets of table mates. I couldn’t help noting to myself with satisfaction that, on this night at least, I was the slowest of them all.