Confused

 

Hotel Lolli, Sanremo, October 4, 2016--

WHERE TO DINE tonight? On line I found the restaurant least likely to be unsatisfactory and we headed down the street, but it was closed today and tomorrow. No reason given. So we continued, to find a discreet sign directing us to a trattoria "della confusi" down a side street. Confused people: that's us, we agreed, and a small place down a side street is likely to be more rewarding than a four-language tourist-menu restaurant on the main (pedestrian) street.

So in we went. There were maybe eight tables, each capable of seating six, but no one else was eating — or ever did, in the course of the evening. The cook was a big guy with a black head-rag. His wife, I guess, ran the front of the house. Her two kids, about three and eight years old, hung around.

The menu was multilingual after all, though only in Italian, French, and English; no Russian. From it I chose Zuppetta di vongole e cozze, "soup with clams and mussels", first ensuring  no crustacea were involved. When it came I was pleased: big healthy-looking bivalves, all of them open, the mussels a fine orange-pink.

 

Anneke ordered a plate of grilled vegetables after her first course, and I helped her with the very thin-sliced eggplant and delicious julienned pepperoni. And even the dessert was delicious, a house-made custardy cake of some kind. I would go back here any day, and the floor show — the staff, the kids, a couple of hangers-on with vague connection to the place — were endlessly entertaining.

Pigato, per conto Andrea Cento (Finale Liguria), 2015

Osteria dei Confusi, Corso Giacomo Matteotti 104, Sanremo; +39 0184 525323