Baccalà again

Healdsburg, August 23, 2016—

LUNCH WITH my daughter in town today, a monthly affair we both enjoy. I'd thought to go to a Yucanateco place we liked a week or two ago, but it's not open Tuesdays, so we sauntered across the main drag to a Portuguese place I've neglected these past few years.

There we split a tasty Salada Portuguesa composed of chopped tender kale, slices of linguiça, corn-bread croutons, local São Jorge cheese, with an anchovy vinaigrettes — a complex, tasty affair — and then went on to, what else, bolinhos de bacalhau. There were a number of attractive items on the menu, but they all seemed to me more like dinner items than lunch fare; I still had some work to do today.

And who can resist salt cod? Not, as Constant Reader knows, me. This version was quite different from yesterdays, though it featured to same two basic ingredients, salt cod and potatoes. Yesterday's was whipped, creamy, sophisticated, ultimately Venetian; this was chopped, browned-crisp, vernacular, certainly Portuguese, garnished with nicely hard-cooked quail eggs and black olives. And, in the final analysis, as sophisticated as the other.

Vinho verde, Ribeira

•Café Lucia, 235 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg, California; 707-431-1113

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SO FOR DINNER nothing needed beyond a nice farmer's omelet: A red onion chopped up and browned in a few small pieces of bacon, half a dozen small potatoes quartered and thrown on top to steam-cook under cover; half a dozen beaten eggs at the last minute. And green salad.

And, for dessert, a red Bartlett pear and a Seckel pear and a pluot from the garden, and a delicious late white peach from Dry Creek.

Rosé, La Ferme Julien

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating:  2016   2015