Calvin Trillin on dining in Cuenca

The specific tradition I had in mind was serving fanesca in restaurants for the week before Good Friday. I had assumed that I might have myself a four-fanesca weekend, but the only new fanesca outlet I’d found was at the unlikely venue of Trattoria Novecento, an Italian restaurant whose menu items ran toward mozzarella in carrozza and chicken Milanese. I’d half expected the waiter to come around and adorn my soup with grated Parmesan and extra-virgin olive oil, but the fanesca I got was palpably authentic—proof, I surmised, that the Trattoria Novecento, like so many New York restaurants of whatever ethnicity, had at least one Ecuadoran in the kitchen.