Point Reyes Station, January 22, 2010—
WE HEARD ABOUT a new Italian restaurant out in this West Marin town about a year ago, but hadn't made the trip — we just never seem to make it out to this corner, beautiful though it is. But today we drove out with a couple of friends, through the bucolic dairy country (that's a redundancy, but let it stand) south of Petaluma, skirting the now-filled Lagunitas reservoir, crossing the landmark rainbow-graffiti'd bridge, finally driving into the town made famous thirty years ago by an independent newspaper — a town that's since turned into something of a foodie destination.
Lunch was, not to put too fine a point on it, wonderful. We warmed up with a nettle-and-tomato-sauce pizza, stinging and savory. I had a delicious gratin: cardoons, cream, nutmeg: it took me right back to Piemonte. Then a fine plate of garganelli dressed with a fine home-style ragù: ground-up lamb, rabbit liver, and veal, spiced up with red pepper — from Piemonte to Sicily in the wink of an eye.
We even had dessert, splitting a lemon ice cream sandwich and tasting our friends' complex crisp: late pears, sour cherries, caramel sauce, cardomon cream... hmmm: very enterprising, very skillful, very down-home. And then back the slow way, the countryside even more beautiful under low light and Wagnerian rainbows.
Vernaccio, Castelli dei Jesi, 2007; Nebbiolo, Matteocorreggia (Roero), 2007
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