At home we've been subsisting (and quite well) lately on the usual lunch, these days toast with nagelkaas, raw carrots, and orange juice, with some chocolate for dessert, and (twice) dinners of Franco Dunn's sausage with, lately, panzanella, that delicious and surprisingly light mixture of day-old bread, fresh tomatoes, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.
But the other night we ate out in town, with a granddaughter, and it was something of a celebratory feast. In spite of our respect for the chef we had not been to this restaurant since its opening day, quite a number of years ago — some of us thought it too noisy to visit. But when we stopped in, early, 5:30, because we were going to a play at seven, we were the only ones on the comfortable patio.
Chef greeted us, though he was not in fact in the kitchen that night, and we had a nice conversation. Then we plunged in:
Gazpacho (daily special)Quite a spread. This Butifarra was a paté-like sausage made with a fair amount of pork liver and blood among other things and was not to everyone's taste, a rough, country dish that took me back to my days as a laborer, when liverwurst sandwiches were a favorite lunch. The guacamole was delicious, and the tartare very special, hand-chopped of course and flavored with a smoky chili agent of some kind, topped as you see with a fresh egg yolk and garnished with capers, olives, and portulaca (which I will always know as pigweed).
Preston lamb meatballs with fideos
Beef tartare (of course; see photo above)
Olive oil potatoes
Butifarra
Guacamole
Pork belly
Everything was delicious. We'll return.
🍷Mojitos
•Mateo's Cocina Latina, 214 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 📞707 433-1520
☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016 2015 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment