Tavern cooking feeds the Italian for a spell (8)
I believe the answer is:
interval
'a spell' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'tavern cooking feeds the italian' is the wordplay.
'cooking' indicates an anagram.
'feeds' is an insertion indicator.
'the italian' becomes 'il' (the in Italian).
'tavern' with letters rearranged gives 'nterva'.
'nterva' put within 'il' is 'INTERVAL'.
'for' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for interval that I've seen before include "Pause, break" , "Break, gap" , "Travel in (anag.)" , "Time to read programme notes, perhaps" , "Gap during performance" .)