GG Russo

Giuseppe Russo cooked in other men's kitchens across Naples for fifteen years before opening his own place near the Spanish Quarter, a twelve-table restaurant where he still works every service himself. Backgammon came from his grandfather, played on a marble table in the courtyard. He is loud for the whole match with one exception. The instant he hits, the cube is over, before the return roll and before anybody has drawn breath, and the instant he misses he goes completely silent for a move or two, which the regulars have learned to read as a weather report. After service he takes the cash tables in a back room off the Quarter, playing for real money because a game with nothing on it, he says, is a rehearsal. Warm underneath the fireworks, he buys a round when he wins and demands a rematch when he loses.