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