Commercial Drive bash brings out the Italian in all of us
Swiss nuts, fresh-squeezed lemonade, Slavic dessert rolls and Vietnamese coffee Popsicles are some of the foods that helped underscore a key take-away from Vancouver’s Italian Day on The Drive Sunday: We, evidently, are all Italian.
Between the tacos, curries, Portuguese plates, hamburgers and myriad other international foods sold in tents on Commercial Drive, it’s almost hard to find true Italian fare — pizza, pasta, cannoli and the like.
But look hard enough and you will find an authentic gem, like the schiarch sold by members of the Famiglia Bagnolese Society. Schiarch is a flat piece of dough, fried, topped in sugar — or salt, for those who prefer it — and folded into a take-away bag.
As Tony De Vita explained during Sunday’s celebration, it’s a popular treat from Bagnoli del Trigno, Italy, where “about 99 per cent” of the dozen or so people working in the society’s tent originated from.
When asked what Italian Day — the largest one-day cultural street festival in Vancouver — meant to him, De Vita said “a lot.”
“It brings out a lot of tradition — stuff that keeps the young people involved in the older traditions,” he said, flipping onions and peppers to be served along with sausages.
The society started in 1969 and its members have participated in Italian Day since the event’s return in 2010, De Vita said.
Several blocks south of the Bagnolese tent near the start of the festival was a performance stage where around noon there was a DJ spinning records. Among the tracks he pulled from was Men at Work’s Down Under.
“I come from a land Down Under,” the track boasted, standing in as an oddly appropriate welcome to all the Italians — and Italians for the day — who came to join the party.