BACK TO THE FUTURE.

Lacerba, Monica Trapasso thought when she saw the sign above the pizzeria she had just bought, was a peculiar name for a restaurant. It is not even a word in Italian, although acerbo is an adjective, meaning unripe or sour, applied to fruit. But the space was suitable for the neighborhood trattoria that she wanted to open with her brother Angelo and her boyfriend, Marco Pagano: a few low-ceilinged rooms in a former stable on a short, narrow street in Milan, near a bakery and a glassblower's shop. Trapasso, who is in her mid-thirties, with brown eyes and dark glossy hair that falls in waves to her shoulders, is an architect, but she comes from a restaurant-owning family in ...