When in Rome (or Parma) …

Last month I was on a trip to Italy, and happened upon a bar called Rum Central while walking through the city of Parma. I was headed elsewhere at a goodly clip, but was abruptly sucked through the door by some inexplicable form of liquid magnetism, whereby the dozens of rum bottles on display pulled me inward, a phenomenon I believe related to my uncommonly iron-rich blood.

I felt immediately at home here, despite my lack of ability to communicate with the bartender other than through primitive sign language (point to bottle; insert tip of thumb into mouth; tilt head back sharply). They had a fine selection of rums not commonly found in American bars, including a half-dozen Jamaican sugar cane rums I wasn’t familiar with.

Rum Central also had a cocktail menu, with a full page dedicated to mojitos. My feelings about mojitos generally parallels my feeling about martinis: there is one, and only one, and anyone who asks “what’s your favorite kind of mojito?” needs a corrective lecture. (Although I have been known to make an exception for the ginger mojito, topped with ginger ale rather than soda water.) Rum Central offered a goodly list of mojitos, including a Mojito del Ché, topped off with beer. I do not know of any documentation linking such a drink with Ché, nor could I think of any reason to try one.

But I was tempted by the Mojito al Spritz, a variation topped off with a mix of prosecco and soda water. When in Rome, and all that. This is a variation that I’ve seen in a few restaurants in the United States, and assumed that the front-of-the-tongue mint and back-of-the-throat astringency of the prosecco would not play nice.

But in Parma, I was willing to be proven wrong. And sitting at a table under a colonnaded walkway along a narrow street on sunny spring afternoon with college students bicycling past and yelling unintelligibly at one another, I found this drink uncommonly agreeable.

And in no time I forgot where I was supposed to be headed. Which, of course, is the essential first step in all successful vacations.