Of the many things I’m missing about Italy, exiled as I am in the UK, apart from a decent café or a Campari at the bar (well, even the Italians have been denied that avenue of pleasure for over four weeks now) or the improved weather, are the fabulous Italian Easter eggs which are exchanged at this festive time.

The common or garden English Easter egg is an absolutely pathetic affair for four main reasons:

1. It is so poorly presented it’s quite unbelievable. It is generally purchased in boring superfluous cardboard packages which inflate its price.

Compare that with the sweet ribbons and shiny paper wrappings used for Italian Easter eggs.

2. The size of the egg. British Easter eggs seem as if they’ve been laid by half-starved hens. Compare them with Italian Easter eggs which can range from the smallest size to some which look as if they’d been laid by some gigantic ancestor of the ostrich.

(An Italian Easter egg suitable for the larger family)

3. The British chocolate used in the eggs’ production, with over 5% of the ingredients being vegetable fat, and with a quite excessive quantity of sugar mixed in has not even been recognized as chocolate by the EU who have called it ‘vegolate’.. Compare that with the really fine dark chocolate used for Italian eggs. Their milk chocolate eggs aren’t half bad too.

4. There is no ‘sorpresa’ or surprise inside the egg. Indeed, all that’s added to the egg carton are a few measly sweeties and usually not inside the hollow egg – absolutely no little Hambros-type toys for children or liqueur chocolates for grown-ups. Sometimes the two halves of the British egg aren’t even melded together.

(What’s the fun of eating an Easter egg if one finds there’s nothing inside it!)

Some of the ghastliest concoctions eaten at a typical UK Easter celebrations are those crème eggs which are so sickly they want to make any chocolate connoisseur vomit.

If I ever manage to get back to Italy this year I shall appreciate even more things like being served a cup of decent coffee, a Campari with soda and lemon with delicious pastries to go with it.

As the Joni Mitchell song goes:

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone

Is there anything positive one can say about the standard or common English Easter egg? Yes, the Easter egg hunt few continentals knew about but which, introduced by resident brits, has become very popular in Italy in recent years. Now those are eggs really worth hunting for in the ‘bel paese’! Roll on next year.

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