In Mozart's Cook, we follow diarist Fabio Malatesta's nearly one thousand miles of adventures in the company of young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his father Leopold as that trio tours Italy in the late 18th century. We travel from his family's houseboat in a Venetian canal to the winter snows of Salzburg and Innsbruck, then down to the cities along the River Adige and on to Mantua and Cremona in the lush Po Valley. We witness the curious melding of German, Austrian, French and Italian political interests in the Lombardy region, as well as the cultural antipathies that so often thwarted the elder Mozart's meticulous plans to garner opera commissions for his genius of a son. But for all its geographical and historical sweep, this narrative is a coming of age story one that dramatizes not only the excitement and dangers of the road but the quieter, more intimate pleasures of food, music, poetry, friendship and romantic love.