Monday, May 31, 2010

Ancora senza Slow

Outside San Gimignano, May 31, 2010 ]—
AGAIN WE EAT without the benefit of Slow Food. There is a restaurant in town that's recommended by Osterie d'Italia, but it was just so damn nice here in this agriturismo out in the country that we didn't feel like driving another six miles back into San G., not to mention the six miles we'd then have to drive back to our bedroom.
#alttext#
A glass of wine before dinner

Besides, Francesco, the nice young man who'd settled us into place when we arrived here, mentioned the possibility of a light supper being served right here, even though there wouldn't be a real dinner. So we decided to stay put, and had a huge plate of antipasto, including the first lardo of the trip — being in Tuscany has its advantages. Then a big platter of spaghetti with fresh tomatoes and basil. Then a fine green salad. What more could you want? Well, a piece of nice home-made jam crostata…
Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Casa dalle Vacche, 2008

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Another change of plans

Via Pietra Porzia, Frascati, May 30, 2010—
WE CAME TO THIS TOWN specifically because of a place listed in Osterie d'Italia: I Googled a hotel on the laptop from an Autogrill on the autostrada, and found a nice place, and at 8:30 or so we drove into the heart of town and took a nice walk around looking for the place. Alas when we found it it turned out to be closed; I don't know why. So we ate just next door, and had Antipasto rustico — the usual assortment of salume, vegetables, cheese (delicious the local tomme-like "Lucifer"), bruschetti, fennel, olives, and so on. I didn't find a pasta on the menu I really wanted, so asked for a spaghetti caccio e pepe, and the waitress really brightened when I did, and brought a huge plate of perfectly cooked spaghetti dusted with lots of pecorino and fresh-ground black pepper.
Frascati (what else?) "La Selvina," 2008
  • Il Grottino di Alfredo, via Regina Margherita 41, Frascati
  • Make the best of it

    Piazza Vanvitelli, Caserta, May 29, 2010—
    OSTERIE D'ITALIA LET US down tonight, alas; perhaps not through its own fault. The restaurant it recommended here, the sole reason we checked into a hotel in this town, was utterly unfindable. We knew it was out of town; I looked it up on Google Maps; we had our GPS in the car to help; but after an hour of driving narrow dark hilly curving streets and talking to drunks, old ladies, teenagers on motorbikes and old toothless men, many of whom had no hesitation in sending us in a particular direction (often the exact opposite of the previously stipulated one), we gave up.

    I felt bad; I'd made a reservation — not in my name, of course; it's too hard to spell here; I use the name "di Carlo" which always works out. I tried repeatedly to call back, first to get directions, then to cancel; their phone never responded.

    So we gave it up and went to the Jolly Hotel where, I reasoned, I might get a viable approach to a Martini, it being Saturday night. Wrong, of course: what arrived was a glass of dry vermouth with a splash of gin and a half lemon slice. Refreshing; good even; not a Martini.

    And, afterward, a nice plain clean risotto, and then a fricandeau of veal, with rosti potatoes. Nice.
    Falanghina, Cantina del Taburno, 2008
  • Hotel Jolly, viale Vittorio Veneto 13, Caserta; tel. +39 0823.354522
  • Saturday, May 29, 2010

    Slow again

    Mileto, Calabria, May 28, 2010 —
    WE DECIDE WHERE TO spend the night, on these long drives, by deciding where to eat, and we decide where to eat, in Italy, by consulting Osterie d'Italia, the Slow Food guide to restaurants specializing in regional, relatively simple, authetic cuisine. So tonight we got off the autostrada, which is being rebuilt and thus restricted to a single lane of traffic, at Mileta, driving several miles through very beautifully farmed rolling countryside to a curious town I won't write about here.

    Instead let's eat. There was no menu, and the Calabrese-accented Italian wasn't easy to keep up with, but consulting the book I realize we had:
  • 'nduja: piquant white soft sausage, very like a boudin blanc, encased together with a thick, peppery tomato sauce in a pastry wrapper, then deep-fried
  • Antipasto: ricotta, fagioli, favoline, salume, formaggio, eggplant, peppers
  • fileja: strozzapreti-like pasta, formed and torn by hand, in (as requested) a simple sauce of onion and fresh tomato with basil
  • Deep-fried baccalà (Lindsey) and
  • Salsiccie in ragù (me): little pork sausage links in a deep, delicous soffritto of onion, shredded carrot (!), peppers, and porcini
  • Lettuce salad; oven-fried potatoes
  • Gelato: chocolate and vanilla, with hazelnuts
    Prosecco from the tap; white and red local wines, very good, in carafe
  • Il Normanno, via Real Badia 37, Mileto; tel. +39 0963.336398
  • Thursday, May 27, 2010

    Fish

    Finale Pollina, May 27, 2010—
    PROBABLY OUR LAST dinner in Sicily this year, one of the cheapest, certainly not the best but perfectly adequate. We settled here out of desperation, having driven across half the island in search of an agriturismo that had eluded telephone calls, e-mail, and internet searches. Oh well: the hotel's adequate and so, as I've already said, was dinner:
  • lettuce and tomato salad
  • grilled daurade
  • testo di turca ("Turk's head"): the one exotic item on the (spoken) menu, a sort of milk gelatin with a thin layer of cake inside and a thick coating of powdered cinnamon on top, strewn, unfortunately I thought, with candy dragees.
  • Glicino (Corvo), 2009
  • Ristorante Cucco, via Libertà 35/37, Finale (PA); tel. +39 0921.426139
  • Ordinary eating

    Piazza Armeria, May 26, 2010 —
    IN FACT NOT Piazza Armeria; outside of town in a country hotel not far from the celebrated Villa Romana — celebrated for its mosaics, alas presently in a state of considerable lavorazione in progress, and not that readily appreciated.

    No matter. After the incredible noise and dirt and crowds of Catania, and an hour or two on the road, we're back in the country, in a pretty good-sized hotel with only two other paying guests, as far as I can tell. We ate in the hotel restaurant. I hardly looked at the menu: when there are only four guests in a restaurant you don't look at a menu, you ask the waiter what he suggests, and you take his advice. We had:
  • Antipasto: what we've always called giardiniera, raw vegetables pickled in brine, with a little salami and cheese
  • Lasagna al forno, with bechamel and bolognese
  • Castrato, lamb cutlets grilled and served with a quarter lemon
  • Insalata verde, simply fresh local lettuces (the whole meal was local) dressed with salt, oil, and lemon; and
  • Melanzana, eggplant slow-cooked in oil.
  • #alttext#
    When I was a boy I never had lamb. My father refused to have it in the house. The result was a morbid fascination for it, which is strange: for the most part I don't eat things I didn't eat as a child, but lamb is an exception. I started eating it as soon as I left home, and it's been a favorite ever since.
    Cheap Nero d'Avola, and I mean very cheap, and local
  • Mosaici Da Battiato, Contrada Paratore, Piazza Armerina; tel. +39 0935 685453

  • Tuesday, May 25, 2010

    Eating Slow

    Catania, May 25, 2010—

    ON THE ROAD today: why not use that guidebook we bought a week or so ago, Osterie d'Italia, the Slow Food guide to restaurants in Italy? So after a long morning in the Archaeological Museum in Siracusa we drove back to Noto, theoretically to see the wonderful Baroque city, in fact to have lunch. And there we had

    Antipasto rustico: the usual plate of eggplant, salami, cheese, olives, fennel, peppers, potato croquette — but oh my these were good: the eggplant dusted with pepper, the croquette soft as a baby's cheek, the salami and fennel unusually piquant, the olive oil deep and flavorful.

    Then Lindsey had spaghetti con vongole and I went on to tunino achipudata, tuna steak cooked a bit too long to my taste, covered with sweated red and yellow peppers, onions, tomatoes.

    Chardonnay, 2008

    THEN IT WAS BACKto Siracusa to see a puppet show; and then we drove to Catania for dinner and to spend the night. Dinner at, why not, another Slow Osteria, where we sat comfortably at a table in the street under a nearly full moon and had a nice slow meal:

    I started with a delicious timbale of sardines, the fillets lining a cup in which tomatoes, onions, and peppers were combined with, I think, some fish paté. Lindsey contented herself with grilled swordfish and a potato salad: simply cut-up potatoes, steamed until done al dente, dressed with oil and vinegar.

    I had the house baccalà, hot hot hot in an individual cassolette, again mixed with peppers, tomatoes, onions, and capers. For dessert, an almond mousse with a very little bit of chocolate sauce, because that was what I stipulated.

    Grillo, Dinare del Duco, 2008

    •Trattoria del Crocifisso da Baglieri, via Principe Umberto 46-48, Noto; tel. 0931 571151

    •Metro, via del Crociferi 76, Catania; tel. 095 322098

    Monday, May 24, 2010

    Something new

    Siracusa, May 24, 2010—

    OUR LANDLORD RECOMMENDED a restaurant in Ostigia, and walking through that beautiful and entrancing old town this morning we looked in and thought it promising. At a table on the terrace overlooking the harbor we shared melon and prosciutto, then spaghetti siracusana (which is very like Palermo's Spaghetti con le sarde, involving fish, raisins, pine nuts, but in this case basil rather than fennel).

    We went on to different secondi, however: Lindsey chose roast squid; I asked for the involtini. These turned out to be really quite wonderful:

    IMG_2568.JPG

     

    dumpling-like pasta shells filled with a paste of ground almonds and swordfish, flavored with who knows what herbs. This bears looking into.

    Afterward, there being no more tiramisu, a little parfait of — almond paste, robed with a beautiful but oddly inedible chocolate sauce that tasted fishy. An error in the kitchen, no doubt about it; errors happen. We scraped it off and gladly ate the parfait. I don't mind almonds with my fish, but I draw the line at fish with my almonds.

    "Bianco Sicilia tipica"

    •Ristorante La Terrazza, via via Picherali 10, Siracusa; tel. 0932 1840 831; www.laterrazzaristorante.com

    Sunday, May 23, 2010

    Sunday lunch

    Siracusa, May 23, 2010—

    WE KNEW OF a place in a country town not far from Modica that was said to be fun on a Sunday, and after half an hour's search, and an hour's wait in a nearby café because you don't eat Sunday lunch until one o'clock at the earliest, we put the place to the test:

    Antipasto: Foccaccias and olives

    Pasta: gnochetti and ricotta ravioli, with tomato sauce, sausage, and knuckle-bones; with fresh ricotta

    Secondo: Braised rabbit with potatoes, carrots, and peppers

    Dolce: melon, oranges, and apples, with lemon gelatin

    Very pleasant room and setting, no menu, set meal, nice linen, good food.

    ordinary white table wine in carafe

    •Ristorante Maria Fidone, via Gianforma 6, Frigintini (Modica); tel. 0932 901 135

    Saturday, May 22, 2010

    Ordinary trattoria

    Ragusa, May 22, 2010—

    WHERE TO EAT today? I'd have liked to return to Quattro Gatti down in Ibla, where we ate last night, but didn't want to pay for another taxi, and didn't feel like driving (these towns and their streets are pretty fierce): why not try a typical little place right up here in Ragusa? We stopped in at a travel agent to buy tickets to tomorrow's play, and asked the pretty young woman at the desk if she had any ideas: Yes, she said, not the ___ di Vita, the next little trattoria behind it, very authentic, just what everyone here eats.

    IMG_2529.JPG

    But I had a little trouble finding it, partly because she didn't remember its name, or what street it was on. So we stopped in at a Tabacco and asked: do you know where the ___ di Vita is?

    Yes, of course, it's around the corner, and two streets down, and not that street but the other. But don't go there; there's a little ordinary place beyond it, go there, I eat there all the time, it's very good.

    And of course it turned out to be the neighborhood trattoria right around the corner from our hotel. So we made a midday meal there:

    Antipasto rustica (salami, dried tomatoes, artichoke, olives, peppers, Ragusa cheese, Pecorino, eggplant, mushrooms, little pieces of foccaccia)

    Manichi ri fauci: chick-peas, favas, little gnochetti, onion, celery, olive oil

    ordinary white table wine in carafe

    Then we went back in the evening for dinner:

    Spezzatura di vitello: pieces of veal stew meat, braised, with potatoes

    Spinach (with the obligatory trace of nutmeg)

    Tomato salad

    ordinary red table wine in carafe

    •Al Bocconcino (trattoria tipica ragusana), Corso Vittorio Veneto 96, Ragusa; tel. 0932.651405

    

    Friday, May 21, 2010

    Asino

     

    Ragusa Ibla, May 21, 2010—

    CONFRONTED WITH THE problem of choosing a restaurant in an unknown town, we turn to Google, and enter "ristorante ragusa", and see what we find. Quite a number of possibilities, actually. But it was Yahoo, of all people, who helped the most: four reviews, I think it was, of Quattro Gatti. So this afternoon, when we strolled past a cheese-shop-and-salumeria that I noticed posted a Slow Food emblem outside, I asked, slyly, Where shall we eat tonight?

    Oh well, signor, there are many restaurants…

    Yes, well, I was thinking of Quattro Gatti…

    Ah, yes, well, there you eat well. And then…

    But well, or well enough?

    Oh, well; there you eat well, signor.

    We strolled past and looked at the menu: nothing fancy, nothing expensive, nothing inessentially cute or touristy. So we took the number eleven bus back to the hotel, rather than walk up 285 steps, and after resting a bit I telephoned to reserve a table. Name? Di Carlo, I said: since "Shere" is simply too difficult a name in Italy.

    And we took the bus back, and this is what we had:

    Mixed antipasto: Eggplant softened in olive oil; olives; salami; Ragusa cheese: with red peppers; with black pepper; ricotta; warm caponata; little french-toasts; bread; tomato-omelet slices.

    Pasta con sarde: bigoli with sardines, fennel, raisins, pine nuts, tomato, onion: as good as we've had, and we've had at least four others.

    Marinated shoulder of donkey with roast potatoes.

    (Lindsey): apple strudel. (Charles): grappa.

    It was I think the best single restaurant meal we've had so far in Sicily, though Al Garage in Palermo is right up there.

    "C'D'C": Cristo di Campobello, 2008

  • Ristorante Quattro Gatti, via Valverde 95, Ragusa Ibla; tel. +39 0932 245612
  • 

    Thursday, May 20, 2010

    Top Rank

    Licati, May 20, 2010—
    NOW AND THEN WE eat at a top-rank restaurant — not a Michelin three-star, of course, but something that requires good clothes, a little thought, probably some research. In December the food writer Faith Willinger thoughtfully ran a series on eating in Sicily in The Atlantic Monthly, and I downloaded the whole thing and printed it out, and read it over once or twice, and brought it with us. She mentioned one restaurant as being the best in Sicily, and you can be sure we took note of that. Tonight we put it to the test.

    It's on an unassuming street in an unassuming city on the south coast of Sicily, an hour's drive east of Agrigento. We booked a room at a hotel, sight unseen, after first phoning the restaurant to be sure they were open and had room. And after killing time with a Cynar at a bar across the street, because we were early, being unsure about the parking possibilities (they were simple: right on the street), we rang the doorbell and were ushered into the restaurant by a smiling, affable host, who took our jackets, showed us to our table, and brought a little hook to hang Lindsey's purse from the table next to her chair.

    It was eight o'clock; only one other couple seated. Room for two more couples at widely spaced tables in one half of the dining room: in the other half a long table was set for eighteen. Hmmm: just like last night in Sciacca.

    Short report: everything was impeccable. We were warned there were no artichokes available; otherwise the menu was completely reliable. From a fairly extensive range of offerings we ordered a single order of baccalà split between us and a secondo — our first meat in what seemed like weeks. Tonight we'll have a bottle of red wine.

    First, though, we were given an amuse-gueule: house-made mozzarella, so light as to seem whipped, floating on a layer of bread and tomato and oil with a little onion. Bread soup, in fact, elevated from the paesano's kitchen to Haute Cuisine. It was wonderful.

    Then the baccalà, also prepared in house, salted and smoked in the pizza oven with pine branches, whipped until airy, served with potatoes whipped similarly, dusted with bottarga. Again, peasant cuisine elevated to the top rank.

    My lamb chops came with potatoes à la vapeur and — what's that, a whole clove of unpeeled roasted garlic! My first garlic in days! Delicious! And Lindsey's beefsteak was tender, fat-free, and dressed with ash-flavored olive oil: fascinating.

    Then another amuse, this time a lemon granita with a soft, subtle little brioche; and then Lindsey ordered a tortina di mele for dessert, which I could hardly imagine sharing.

    This is a fine, resourceful, imaginative restaurant run by a chef who respects the material he works with. The room was comfortable and pleasant; nothing was overbearing about the service. We left very happy to have been there.
    Pithos, Azienda Agricola Cos (60% Nero d'Avola, 40% Frappato, fermented and aged in terra cotta, extremely interesting, complex, fresh, bricky, sound), 2007
  • Ristorante La Madia, Corso F. Re Capriata 22, Licata
  • Wednesday, May 19, 2010

    Osterie Italiane

    Sciacca, May 19, 2010—
    WE ARE NOT foodies, I hope, I hate that term, but I suppose we are Slow Foodies. We've belonged to the organization for a number of years (I hope we've continued to pay our dues, that's not my department); we certainly subscribe to the guiding principles of the outfit (Buono, pulito, giusto: Good; Clean; Just); and when traveling in Italy we generally get hold of a copy of the latest Slow Food Guide to the Osterie Italaliane, the authentically Slow places to eat, as determined by a group of SF people we do not know, whose credentials we do not know, but whom we blindly agree must somehow be Among The Anointed.

    So tonight we settled on Sciacca for a stopover partly because there's a SF osteria here. (Partly, also, because I'm a fan of the writer by that name.) We were lucky to find a B&B right on the Via al Porto, not two blocks (if there only were blocks) from the restaurant. On entering we found a single large room, three or four tables for four on one side, one long table set for twenty-one on the other. Looks like trouble, I thought to myself; better order quick before that group gets here.

    No problem. We started with green olives with salted sarde — I'd have called them anchovies — went on to an order of pasta con sarde, spaghetti with the delicious sardine sauce I discussed here a week or so ago; then we each had a grilled swordfish steak and a green salad. Not the best restaurant dinner we've had in the last couple of weeks, but not bad at all.
    Corvo (bianco), Glicine, 2009
  • Trattoria il Faro, via al Porto 25, Sciacca
  • Tuesday, May 18, 2010

    Agriturismo

    Marsala (perhaps), May 18, 2010—
    PERHAPS, SAY I, because we had a certain amount of time finding this place, recommended by various guidebooks. An agriturismo is a farm-bed-and-breakfast usually offering also dinner if you arrange for it, and the dinner is almost invariably a family-style affair. This place is a perfect example. We're surrounded by grapevines: the Grillo varietal, which makes a fine dry white wine, excellent to accompany fish; and which is also the principal constituent of Marsala, about which more in a moment.

    For dinner we had three simple courses: pasta, fish, dessert. But it was excellent, as good as any dinner we've yet had in Sicily. In the first place, the pasta was revelatory: fusilli in pesto Trapanesi, which we already knew about, but which had never offered anything this interesting, gratifying, and intelligent. The pesto is made of tomatoes, garlic, basil, and almonds; and they are all chopped or, rather, minced, not pounded; and the result is not at all cooked, but mixed into the hot drained pasta.

    And tonight's version was fortified with the addition of, I'd say, for a platter containing enough pasta for two very hearty eaters, the crumbled-up bits of perhaps two, three at the most, local brutto ma buoni, local style: macaroons made not with hazelnuts but with almonds, and sugar of course, and baked quite dark. So the pasta had a sweetness and a crunchiness; the tomatoes and garlic retained their individuality, the basil leaves were so fine and pungent I thought they must have been mirto, that small-leafed myrtle I like so much (but which is local to Sardinia, not Sicily). This was really a fabulous pasta; you can be sure we'll be making it often at home.

    There followed good-sized sardines, each say as big as my hand, marinated in vinegar, breaded, and deep-fried, served with lemon. The point here is to have good-tasting and fresh sardines, good vinegar, and a deft hand at the deep-fryer: all that fell completely into place.

    I don't particularly like strawberries, but it happens there's a race of strawberry local to this part of Sicily, big but not at all woody, red red, sweet, and fragolic, if you know what I mean; we flopped them into the sugar-bowl and ate them gladly.

    Oh and the wine: from the vineyard here, made by the cook's husband, with whom a long conversation about wine, terroir, globalism, industrialization, and what Marsala is supposed to be: closer to a fine Sherry than the sweet fortified stuff we usually think of:
    Grillo, 2009; Marsala (dry)
  • Baglia Vajarassa, Contrada Spagnola 176, Marsala (Spagnola); tel. +39 09239.80264
  • Monday, May 17, 2010

    Cascaretti

    Tràpani, May 17, 2010—
    WE TURN TONIGHT to one of the guidebooks for help choosing a restaurant — it's Monday, the choices are limited. We settle on Ai Lumi because it's inexpensive and local, described in the Cadogan guide as "an old tavern where the locals eat some of Tràpani's best food," and an easy walk from the hotel on the pedestrian-only Corso Vittorio Emanuele.

    It's a very nice-looking restaurant inside — I'm sorry Google isn't allowing me to post any more photos here at the moment. There are a number of families dining, some with kids in strollers. German is spoken at one table, but Italian at most of the others. It's not a tourist joint; the menu's in Italian only. And it features couscous, which Lindsey's been wanting to try.

    We start with a platter of salumi: lardo, prosciutto, cooked ham, salami, bresaola; served with slivered dates and broken-up walnuts and a handful of small leaves of arugula and — orange jam: a sort of marmalade made without any of the orange peel. This is an inspired combination and one we'll have to repeat once home; it makes me want to make some marmalade immediately — too bad oranges will be out of season.

    Lindsey had her platter of couscous, with small red prawns, clams, mussels (delicious smoky ones), and monkfish; I had cascaretti in brodo, ravioli filled with fish paste — all sorts of fish scraps, I suppose, cooked down and mashed together, in a Provençal-style fish soup. It was, in a couple of words, quite tasty.
    Inzolia (dry white), Adragna, 2009
  • Ai Lumi, Corso V. Emanuele 75, tel. +39 09238 72418
  • Sunday, May 16, 2010

    Tràpani

    Tràpani, May 16, 2010—
    WE DINE TONIGHT and indeed sleep tonight on the edge of a sickle, the sickle that gave Sicily its name (as I understand it), the sickle with which Zeus castrated his father. Tràpani is one of the cities I have always most wanted to visit: like Skagen in Denmark, Tarifa in Spain, it's a city on the edge of things.

    We settled into a cheap, clean, pleasant hotel in this windswept, clean, pleasant city; and we chose a restaurant from the Slow Food guide Osterie d'Italia, and we ate reasonably well. We began by sharing bruschetta con bottarga, because after all we're near the home of the tuna mattanza, and tuna roe is specific to the area, and we like tuna roe. Then we went on to pasta con uva di tonno e mandorle, pasta (which looked much like my favorite, strozzapreti) with more tuna roe and ground almonds.

    So far so good. The secondi, however, the "main course," disappointed, as it so often does. Lindsey had a scallopine alla Marsala, since Marsala is the next big town; I had a cotolette alla Palermitana, since Palermo was our last big town. Both seemed tired, undersalted, cooked in oil used too much. Oh well: the restaurant was otherwise very pleasant, crowded, small, you could talk, people-watching was fun, we liked the wine.

    Oh: and the dessert, a parfait of almonds, while a little too heavily chocolate-sauced, was a nice reminder of the texture of the bottarga, and the taste of the pasta's almonds.
    Grillo, Haral, Terre di Shemir (Tràpani), 2008

    Saturday, May 15, 2010

    Another repeat

    Palermo, May 15—
    WE DINED LAST NIGHT the second time in the same restaurant; tonight we returned to the one we found our first night here, only four nights ago — it seems much longer. In the meantime I've finally done some research on Palermo in the Lonely Planet guide to Sicily, and what do you know, our hostess's husband's restaurant, just downstairs from our apartment, is listed there.

    Tonight we ate at 9:30. Perhaps there were earlier diners; no trace was to be seen of them. Two diners showed up a little after we were seated, but one of them was the chef's wife, our hostess in this little apartment. Lonely Planet is mistaken about one thing, by the way: Al Garage has five tables, not four; in a pinch perhaps sixteen diners could be accommodated — but the kitchen has only two small burners, no oven, no walk-in.

    It doesn't need a walk-in, of course; the principal fare is fish, and the fish can be bought fresh as paint in the street-market around the corner. Tonight we had pesce spada, swordfish, very young swordfish, fried in a pan, beautifully done, strewn with herbs, served with a lemon. What more do you need? Mixed salad, of course. It was fresh and copious. What more do you want?
    Trebbiano, Silva (Abruzzo), 2007
  • Al Garage, via San Nicolò all'Albergheria 43; tel. 333.490.63.56
  • Friday, May 14, 2010

    An old restaurant and a new one

    Palermo, May 14—
    AFTER THREE REALLY quite nice meals here it was time for a little disappointment, so for midday meal we went to a place long popular with the publishers of tourist guides. It's been in business since 1834, so it should have things pretty well down by now; it's catered to everyone from priests to gangsters, so it should please anyone; it's in a prime location, so lunch there on the terrazza, gazing at the fine Norman façade of S. Francesco d'Assisi, would be gratifying to at least one sense no matter what.

    The operation confused me at first: on entering, you see a line of steam-table pans, then a sort of soup kitchen. You take a tray, line it with a paper, get yourself some plastic cutlery, and tell the cooks — if they're listening — what you want. Not what I wanted at the moment, so I asked the guy at the cash register if it wasn't possible to order our meal.

    Naturalmente, he responded, waving at the pavilion outside across the street. There we found two equal-sized sections, one with unset tables for those who'd loaded their trays, the other with red tablecloths on white tablecovers, waterglasses, and metal cutlery.

    In the spirit of scientific inquiry I ordered food I'd eaten elsewhere in the last couple of days: caponata, the loose ratatouille-like melange popular here, and bucatini con le sarde, prepared here with saffron as well as the requisite fennel, onion, pine nuts, and sardines.

    Alas neither was up to what we'd had previously. The caponata seemed tired and bland to me, the eggplant overcooked, the flavor lacking spirit. And the bucatini seemed simply thrown together, the fennel and onions tossed at the sardines rather than cooked down with them. Lindsey wasn't as critical as I, but then that's why I travel with her.
    Viognier, Mandrarossa, n.v.
  • Antica Foccacceria San Francesco, via Alessandro Paternostro 58, Palermo; tel. +39 091.320.264

    TONIGHT WE WENT back uptown to last night's restaurant, getting there so early the menu hadn't been printed yet. No problema, I told the waiter, we have our own — showing him the copy we'd taken last night. He smiled, but protested that there were changes. But what I'd wanted to order was available: four dollops of Robiola di capra Girgantino, one of my favorite cheeses, served with steamed chestnuts and honey; and gnochetti Sardi con pistacchi di Bronte, little Sardinian gnocchi in an Alfredo sauce with lots of ground pistachios in it. It was all delicious.
    Catarratto, Girgis, 2007
  • La Dispensa dei Monsù, via Principe di Villa franca 59, Palermo; tel. +39 091.609.0465
  • Thursday, May 13, 2010

    An excellent restaurant in Palermo

    Palermo, May 13, 2010—
    OH WHAT AN EXCELLENT restaurant we found tonight, thank you Faith Willinger for having written about it, thank you Atlantic Monthly for having published her round-up; you can be sure we'll be looking for other ideas from the series of dispatches she ran last December.
    firstcourse.jpg

    Our first course reminded me of one of our first meals in Europe, at the old l'Atre Fleuri in the Chartreuse, back in 1974, when everything was new to us, and we were often excited at the table. Tonight's discovery was a unique kind of caponata, or maybe a Sicilian ratatouille. It involved apples, onions, capers, pine nuts, fennel, maybe some peppers, olive oil and salt, all bound in a light tomato sauce, and it was delicious. With it, grilled eggplant and zucchini and radicchio, and peppers à la grècque.
    secondcourse.jpg

    Next, Tagliatelle al nero d'Avola e Ragusano: pasta that must have been cooked in the red wine, which would then have been reduced and combined with cheese for the sauce — a deep, somber course, beautiful and intelligent.

    Then grilled tuna steaks, served simply with a lemon half and a zucchini cup that held a kind of pesto which I'm sure involved mirto, that small-leafed myrtle I so enjoy.

    Dessert was a return to the apple, served in a sort of rissole-tart and drowned in what was billed as a blanc-mange but seemed to me a thin milk custard, not entirely successful. But oh boy otherwise what a fabulous meal; if we return a few times I may have to nominate this place to the Five Restaurants.
    Catarratto, Girgis, 2007
  • La Dispensa dei Monsù, via Principe di Villa franca 59, Palermo; tel. +39 091.609.0465
  • Wednesday, May 12, 2010

    Forgotten dinner in Atrana

    Atrana, May 8, 2010—
    I SEE I'VE FORGOTTEN to record the dinner we walked to so memorably from our hotel Le Palme in Pogerola to their restaurant Le Palme in Atrana, two towns away. It was a beautiful walk, though we knew we'd pay for it with sore calves next day. (In fact I write this four days later, and it's only today we're almost completely recovered.)

    The restaurant's ordinary, I suppose: but ordinary on the Amalfi coast can be pretty damn good. My first course was a little sketchy, I thought: a waferlike cup made of Parmesan cheese; in it, a salad of tomato and fennel. A way of using up cheese-ends, I suppose: but the vegetables were very nice. Afterward, spaghetti con vongole, ordinary spaghetti cooked with extraordinary clams, tiny tiny ones, very sweet and fresh. Yes, we had a bottle of wine; no, I don't recall now what it was, other than white, a little effervescent, and very local.
  • Ristorante Le Palme, Atrana

    Photos of these places can be seen at http://gallery.me.com/cshere/100239
  • Eating from the sea

    Palermo, May 12—
    WHAT A WONDERFUL PLACE, I said to Lindsey, And the interesting thing is that it's just an ordinary place, and so it is. But it's on the waterfront, almost, across the boulevard from the sea, and it serves, what else, fish. You see the fish laid out on plates, on ice of course, on a table, as you walk to a table — they're all outside — and then you watch as Francesco cooks them on a portable grill out in front of the tables.
    PesceFresco.jpg

    We decided to take our principal meal at midday today, and so I ordered a plate of eggplant alla parmagiana and a primo of bucatini con sarde, a traditional dish here which must consist of sardines, currants, onion, fennel, and pine nuts, all cooked up into a thick sauce. (Some add saffron, but that would be Sard, I think, not Sicilian.)
    Swordfish.jpg

    Afterward we each had a grilled swordfish steak, dressed with oil and lemon and sprinkled with lots of parsley. What more could you want?
    Bianco d'Alcamo, "Vini del Golfo," 2009
  • Trattoria del Pesce Fresco, Foro Italico Umberto, Palermo
  • Slow fish in Palermo

    Palermo, May 11, 2010—
    THE HUSBAND OF OUR hostess here, a Tunisian with whom we must speak only French since we know no Arabic and he's uncomfortable in Italian, runs a little trattoria downstairs below the apartment we've rented for the next few days, so of course on our first night in the Sicilian capital, anniversary or no, we dined there. We were the only ones to dine there, but we didn't feel too alone, as there are only four tables in all. He stood politely ignoring us, watching Tunisian television, while we talked business with his Dutch-born wife, a painter; and then after she left on her own business he continued to ignore us, whether out of politeness or forgetfulness I'm not quite sure, while we finished a bottle of wine.

    Then, after a trip to a little room at the back, I asked him politely what he proposed. Concerning what, exactly, mussieu, he responded. What do you propose about that excellent daurade you mentioned, I said. Ah, would you like that? Yes we would, I answered cleverly, and he stepped into the kitchen, and before long we heard some cooking sounds, and after what seemed a very long time after which I thought the fish would be little more than shoe-leather here he came with a beautiful daurade on a plate for each of us, and for each of us also a fine bowl of mixed salad.

    We're living around the corner from a big daily market that goes on for several blocks, and that's where our fish and our salad came from. The fish-counters smell wonderful, crisp and healthful, and are laden with everything from tiny clams and anchovies to enormous whole tuna. We expect to explore things further.
    Trebbiano, Abruzzo, 2008

    Last meal in Caserta

    Caserta, May 10—
    WE ATE TWICE today, fortifying ourselves for a l-o-n-g train trip to Palermo. First we stopped halfway through a delicious day in Paestum, about which more on The Eastside View; then we took a supper in the restaurant of the Jolly Hotel in Caserta, because it's right next to the train station, and we were schlepping baggage.
    ScallopineAsparagus.jpg

    Signora the proprietess at La Vecchia Quercia had recommended the Ristorante Nettuno, and we were glad she had. It's just outside the archaeological site, conveniently at the opposite end from the entrance: just when you've covered half this magnificent visit and you're hungry you can sit in a comfortable dining room whose huge windows look out on the Temples of Hera and Zeus. Here I had veal scallopini with asparagus, then a plate of grilled eggplant, zucchini, and peppers.
    Cilento bianco, Marini, nv
  • Ristorante Nettuno, zona archeologica Paestum; tel. +39 0828 811028, ristorantenettuno.com


  • In the evening a small, dapper, twinkling-eyed waiter brought us amusess-gueule: squid rings with porcini in olive oil; then I went on to grilled salmon with little potatoes and, why not, a few of the girls' mixed vegetables. And we didn't eat again until Palermo.
    Falanghina, Cantina del Taburno, 2008
  • Jolly Hotel, Caserta

  • Sunday, May 9, 2010

    La Vecchia Quercia

    San Cipriano Picentino, May 9, 2010—


    WE HAPPENED ON THIS place quite by chance: I was checking distances between Naples and Sicily on the ViaMichelin website and a story came up on their home page, a three-day gastronomic tour of Campania. I took note of this one Agriturismo, and I'm glad I did.

    We're in a big room in a detached house quite out in the country: bullfrogs, fireflies, vines, lemon trees. The room's comfortable, and dinner was really very good:

    Amuse-gueules: little ricotta-and-sheep's-cheese tarts with eggplant or red pepper jam; puff-pastry triangles with a tiny bit of cheese filling

    Tagliatelle baskets with cheese, cream, and little peas

    Thin-sliced roast beef with red and yellow peppers with "gatto": potato-and-cheese cake

    Salad for the girls; I'd had a big salad for lunch today

    Moist chocolate-hazelnut cake with orange-flavored tapioca pudding. Fran said: I was just thinking the other day how much I missed tapioca pudding, and I haven't had a cake like this in months, and here they are together.
    Local red wine (Aglianico, Barbera, and Chianti blend, recent vintage
  • Agriturismo "La Vecchia Quercia", Via Montevetrano 4, San Cipriano Picentino (Campania); tel. +39 089 882528, www.lavecchiaquercia.it
  • Friday, May 7, 2010

    Pizza tonight

    Caserta, May 7, 2010—


    INEVITABLY, THIS CLOSE to Naples we dine on pizza — at the little local preferred by Franny's Italian family.




    I ordered the Marinara: tomato, Mozzarella, anchovies (how many of them have I eaten these last few days, I wonder), garlic cloves (I'd have chopped those up a bit), a spoonful of pesto and a basil leaf at the center. Thin crust, sweet flour, nicely cooked. Before them, a delicious deep-fried seaweed beignet.
    cheap local red wine


  • pizza Santa Margarita, viale Abraham Lincoln, Caserta
  • Thursday, May 6, 2010

    Mangiamo in Italia!

    Caserta, Italy, May 6—
    MEAT IN SPAIN, vegetables in Italy: it's far too simplistic to be useful, but it opens a conversation. Oh: and the coffee factor. We breakfasted at the Madrid airport: café con leche, the Spanish version of a caffelatte, with not terribly good coffee pressed out of an espresso machine and milk heated I bet in a microwave, and a non-buttery croissant.

    We lunched in this provincial capital a half-hour or so by train from Naples. We lunched late, after 3, and were warned we couldn't order a pizza as the oven had been shut down. There was a usual menu in addition to pizzas, though: antipasto, pasta, fish, meat, contorni (side dishes), verdure (vegetables.)

    Lindsey ordered linguine; I asked for tagliatelle. It would be simpler, the waitress said, if you all have the same pasts. Okay, I said, we'll all have the linguine. She looked at me and seemed to be conceiving a dim idea of some kind; then: You can't have pasta, she said, because the pasta cooker is shut down.

    They said we could have anything but pizza, I answered. Yes, she said, but what do they know, things change, you can't have pizza, and you can't have pasta.

    Okay, okay, I said, and turned to Lindsey: what would you like? I'll have a scallopine, she said. I'll have the baccalau, I said; I hate to pass up salt cod.

    It would be better, the waitress said, if you all ordered the same plate, and anyway you can't have fish, only meat. Fine, I said, we'll all have scallopine, quick, before we can't have meat either. The waitress seemed not to understand, so I repeated the order but not the subsidiary clause. Oh: and the grilled vegetables.

    The waitress looked dubious, but we pointed out that the grilled vegetables were in hotel pans on ice on display and clearly available.
    verdure.jpg

    They came and were delicious: grilled radicchio, zuucchini, eggplant, and peppers. Even more delicious, though, was dinner en famille at the home of Franny's Italian exchange family: pasta with prawns (anchovies for me) followed by platters of bresaola and prosciutto and alice and a fine lettuce salad and good honest bread.
    Vino nobile di Montepulciano, 2007
  • (lunch:) Angolo Verde, 21, v. Redentore, Caserta, Italy; tel. 0823 442076; www.angoloverderistorante.com
  • Wednesday, May 5, 2010

    An old restaurant

    Madrid, May 5, 2010—


    ALWAYS THE SAME, I told the desk clerk when she asked how dinner had been, And always good. She'd made a reservation for us at one of the Oldest Restaurants in the World, Botin, opened in 1725, when J.S. Bach was forty years old.



    We had:
    Sopa de ajo con huevo: Garlic and bread soup (in pork broth) with a quail egg
    Pimientos con bacalao: Sweet red peppers with salt cod
    Cochinillo asado: Roast suckling pig



    Biscuit con higos y nueces: Nougat glacé with dried figs and walnuts
    Piña al caramelo: Pineapple ring in caramel sauce
    Rioja, Viña Salceda, Crianza, 2006




  • Restaurante Botin, Calle Cuchilleros 17, Madrid; tel. 913 664 217

  • Tapas madrileñas

    Madrid, May 4, 2010—


    JUST ONE OF THE many attractions of this capital: the table. Like Rome, Madrid's a gratifying restaurant town: enough expensive, thoughtful places to satisfy any tourist, and plenty of inexpensive interesting little dives where the locals know how to eat well.



    Today we walked around looking for lunch and pretty much at random stopped in at a little bar-café-eatplace next door to a corner building whose plaque informed us that it was the birthplace of Juan Gris, a favorite painter of ours. We looked at the menu posted by the door: only the Spanish language; only the typical local fare. We walked past the bar into the small back dining room and were given a table: at close to 2 pm, only one other table was occupied. And this is what we had:



    Boquadillos, delicious sweet white anchovies in vinegar, with lots of tasty green olives.
    Padrones, sweet, semi-piquant green chili peppers, scorched with olive oil and garlic and a tiny bit of chopped parsley
    Patatas bravas, potatos cooked to just the right consistency and served with a quite piquant cayenne sauce
    Tortilla, the spanish egg-and-potato omelet, with a small salad on the side
    and the house threw in a small serving of paella, with only one shrimp thankfully, and little cubes of pork, and mushrooms, and rice.



    A slow delicious lunch to punctuate a day of walking about to fend off jet lag. The bill said "Casa fundada en 1864": Juan Gris's father probably ate here.

    Verdejo, Marin Verástegiu "Vendimia Seleccianada," 2009

  • La Farola, Calle Tetuán 20, Madrid; tel. 91 522 30 21

  • Tuesday, May 4, 2010

    En avion

    En route, Miami-Madrid, May 3, 2010—


    DINNER IN THE airplane. There was a time this was pratically guaranteed to be terrible, but something has changed. The food has improved, or my threshhold has lowered, or, most likely, I've grown resigned. We're on Iberian Airlines, and while the lady at the desk in the airport apologized that the food would be American, not Spanish, it seemed somehow Spanish to me. And, by the way, included in the ticket price, including the wine.

    Braised beef, garlic-scented mashed potatos, little green peas, cole slaw (Lindsey relieved me of my shrimp); yellow cake with almond glaze.

    Tempranillo, Canforillos, 2007

    Sunday, May 2, 2010

    On the road again

    SFO, May 2, 2010—




    DiNNER AT THE airport, since we weren't sure tonight's hotel had a kitchen. (It does, of course.) As often happens, we ordered alike: pasta Bolognese; garden salad.

    Martini


  • Firewood Grill, San Francisco International Airport
  • Saturday, May 1, 2010

    Omelet

    Eastside Road, May 1, 2010—
    WELL, THEN, which is it, omelet or omelette? The latter seems dated now, and a little bit (that awful word) pretentious, but that's how I tend to think of it, because that's pretty much how it was spelled when I was learning to spell.
    artichoke.jpg

    When Lindsey suggested I make omelets tonight I immediately thought of the little artichoke I noticed yesterday on one of the artichokes I planted a couple of months ago — a sweet little thing, just big enough to flavor something. I bought a couple of Roma tomatoes in town, and sweated a chopped shallot, then the sliced artichoke and finally the chopped tomatoes — olive oil to start them, then some good dry Vermouth and a little water to keep them moist.

    omelet.jpg


    The omelet was made ma façon: a good quantity of olive oil heated quite hot in the steel omelet pan (used for nothing else, and never washed with soap); four eggs and a hand-rinsing of cold water whisked up; the pan held down in the flames (grate taken off the burner for this operation). Here you see it in the tossing. I turned it out onto our plates and stuffed it with the tomato-artichoke mixture. Delicious.

    Green salad, of course.
    Nero d'Avola