God bless the Italians. Our Italian reader and commenter Giuseppe sends this VFYT from Macugnaga, in the Italian Alps, where his family is holed up under the Lombard quarantine. He writes:

A hot infusion of apple, cinnamon and orange peel with a dash of genepy herbal grappa, a view of the Alps, and a good crime novel.

I’m almost in a mood to sing: “these are a few of my favorite things.”

Surly adds (I’ve slightly edited this to preserve privacy):

For those of your readers/commenters who are mocking the Wyoming doctor for being alarmist–we are in the ass end of Washington. You have to work hard to get here. According to my new friend, there are 2 people at St. Mary’s here who are sick enough with COVID 19 to be in hospital. She has every reason to downplay this and no reason to be alarmist–she is all about promoting tourism here.  Two people may not sound like much but we are a small community of 35,000 souls, and there have been no publicly reported cases east of the mountains in Washington.

Tonight my friend and I sat at a bar, not eating huîtres, unfortunately–that was last night’s decadence.  We watched the three bartenders happily mixing drinks, picking up used dishes and glasses, drying glasses with an incredibly dingy bar towel, handling money and credit cards, cutting up fruit, scratching their necks and faces, and no hands were washed. Once my friend fixated on it and pointed it out, I could not look away.  The more we looked and fixated, the more we saw all the ways they casually just did what needs to be done to spread a surface virus around.  I am not reading “The Plague” but from your excerpts I think we are in that city here.  I think I will have to pick up the book and catch up.

I think it is important to use this because go look at Google about  where we are–we are even further from civilization than the site selected by the gubmint to  build nuclear weapons because it was so remote and barren nobody would give a crap if it went sideways.   Sasquatch says Hi!

Here was our appetizer last night from Brasserie Four–sorry it is so dark.   Walla Walla is a lot like Provence.  The oysters were delicious.

UPDATE: Technically it doesn’t fit the VFYT basic criterion (needs to have environment, not just be a photo of the food), but this is a beautiful photo composition, and the deliciousness of it knocked my Lenten socks off. Check this out, from an LA reader who was in NYC with his son:

He writes:

8 course blowout Italian dinner during father/son trip to NYC. They had a black truffle grater for my beef course. Veal, tuna, grilled branzini, bonito flavored spaghetti, pork rigatoni, dessert spread, etc over 3 hours. New Yorkers staying indoors, making tourist activities a breeze, like going to Disneyland on an off day (Angelenos will understand).