Another sandwich

Healdsburg, November 14, 2016—

INTO TOWN with a friend for lunch today. A pleasant afternoon on the patio next to the bocce court. The lunch menu included a Cubano, and I was about to order it to compare to the one we had exactly a week ago — but then the waiter mentioned a special, a lamb and pork sandwich with what sounded like some sort of raita involving cumin and chile, on a ciabatta roll from the good old Downtown Bakery and Creamery, so how could I resist? If a Cubano is a Caribbean Reuben, then this sandwich was a Berber Cubano, if a Berber could bring himself to eat a few scraps of pulled pork. The lamb was ground and highly flavored. I wolfed it down. I like this place.

Barbera d'Asti, Marchesi di Gresy, 2013: Very good

•Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707-395-4640

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating:  2016   2015

Unusual eating day

Eastside Road, April 26, 2016—

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL spring day, just right for a drive in the country with a couple of good friends, exploring the wild mountains above Lake Sonoma and visiting a couple of wineries along the way.

Lunch was picnic-style, out of a cooler and paper bags, and delicious: finnocchiona, mortadella, and rousette de Lyon; bread from Downtown Bakery and Creamery and Preston Farms and Winery; guacamole from Big John's; a bottle of Lou Preston's Rosé. You could spend the whole day at Lou's winery, relaxing with the cats and the bottles, but we had a tour to take.

After which, why not stop off in Healdsburg for a supper? I settled for half a dozen oysters on the half shell — only a few more days until May! — and a share of Lindsey's hord-cooked eggs with salsa verde and those marvelous pickled peppers. And, after a day of wine-tasting,

Pilsener

•Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707-395-4640

☛RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating:  2016   2015

Back to Campo Fina

Eastside Road, February 3, 2015—

BROUGHT ONE DAUGHTER here to lunch the other day; seemed only right to bring the other here today. She and the Contessa had small plates: those delicious tuna-stuffed sweet peppers; chick peas; devilled eggs…

I had this sandwich, called a North End: finocchiona, coppa, mortadella, and provolone, with chopped lettuce, pepperoncini, and pickled onions, on ciabatta, with a slice of delicious dill pickle on the side. A serious sandwich, washed down with a glass of red wine:

Zinfandel blend, "Chiarito" (Mendocino), nv

In the evening, to the neighbors down the hill for roast chicken and a gratin involving squash, kale, and potatoes.

Syrah, Preston of Dry Creek

Campo Fina

Eastside Road, February 1, 2016—

LUNCH IN TOWN today with the neighbor down the hill, something we try to do every month. I was hungry, for some reason, and decided on a spot I've come to think of as reliable.

It's a nice place. Even on a cold day, you can sit outside under a pergola with efficient heating. The pizza oven does a good job and the cooks know how to use it.

I started out with sweet red peppers stuffed with tuna, served on a bed of arugula — a very happy alternative to an insalata caprese, keeping the Italian tricolor but adding point and substance.

Next, a daily special: "Stromboli." I don't know if this is a staple or a local invention. It's a little odd, I think, particularly for its texture, but it made a nice lunch. A pair of palm-sized calzone, I guess, stuffed with ricotta, chopped salami, red onion, and spinach; served, again, on a bed of arugula. The ricotta was a little runny, almost like a crème fraîche; the result was an Italian stuffed savory pastry with Alsatian overtones.

No dessert: and tonight, just a plate of store-bought ravioli, a carrot, some celery, and a tangerine…

Pinot bianco

•Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707-395-4640
☛NEW! All Restaurants visited since January 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants, with a simple set of ratings.

Campo Fina

Healdsburg, September 4, 2013—

NO PHOTO AGAIN TONIGHT: I was too busy eating, talking, and having fun. We dined in town with a couple of friends who'd come up for a glass of wine and snacks and then dinner in town. We decided to introduce them to this place — just now I think my favorite eatery in Healdsburg, which isn't exactly lacking for good places.

Campo Fina has a very nice outdoors dining room, and it was a balmy evening, just right for sharing — talk, memories, plans, and "small plates." And this is what we had:

Tuna stuffed peppers
marinated chickpeas with tuna conserve
hard boiled eggs with salsa verde and pickled celery
ciabatta and olive oil
burrata with grilled bread and heirloom tomatoes
soppressata di testa with chili, chopped egg, and salsa verde
escarole salad with pecorino, white anchovy, pine nuts and vinaigrette
pizza Napoletana
gelato: vanilla and pistacchio (which turned out to be walnut, but welcome)

Bardolino, 2010 — but what? Damn: forgot to take note!

AND, OH, SNACKS: we had Franco Dunn's smooth, delicate chicken-liver mousse and two cheeses: Ol Sciur, a creamy blue goat cheese from Bergamo whose rind is rubbed with rose petals and red berries, and Fleur Verte, a goat tomme treated with savory, tarragon, thyme, and pink peppercorns. Both cheeses were delicious, floral, complex, and balanced, and they and the mousse went perfectly with three half-bottles of Auslese, Maximin Grünhäuser, Herrenberg, 2001. Thanks, John!

• Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg, California; 707.395.4640

Sandwich; soup

Eastside Road, March 11, 2013—

LUNCH IN TOWN today, exceptionally, with my brother, even more exceptional. Nothing fancy, just a sandwich, a glass of wine, and good conversation.

There are a lot of interesting and interestingly named sandwiches on the menu at this fine place, but I gravitated to the simplest, christened
The Working Class: prosciutto, pecorino, and arugula on day-old ciabatta. Nice.

Zinfandel

• Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707-395-4640

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And then for dinner at home, a fine bowl of home-made soup: broth, chorizo, potatoes, lots of kale, onion, garlic… soup, lovely soup…

Cheap Barbera d'Asti, Rocco del Olmo, 2010

Back to the Campo

Eastside Road, October 17, 2012—

DINNER OUT AGAIN tonight with friends. I like this restaurant. It's not cheap, and the menu is small and seems not to change much nightly: but it's comfortable; you can take your time; the menu is varied and enticing; the pizzas are well baked; the wine list has some useful inexpensive items.

There were five of us at table, and we ordered quite a few plates:

Ciabatta with very nice olive oil
Green beans with sunflower seeds and sherry vinaigrette
Arugula, radicchio, and endive salad
Pizza with mushrooms, mozzarella, and arugula
Pizza with figs, preserved lemon, mozzarella, bacon, balsamico, and arugula
Soppressata: with chili, hardcooked egg, and salsa verde
Baked polenta alla Sarda

Well, you get the idea. All these but the pizze are "small plates," appetizer-size or less. They're all well seasoned, food tasting of the fire and the ingredients, with plenty of arugula. Some were really quite memorable — the polenta and the soppressata above all, and the fine olive oil served with the ciabatta.

We were two or three hours at table, never rushed, always taken care of. Every dish was delightful. And then came dessert. As an exercise in direct observational comparison, I decided to have this buttermilk panna cotta with raspberries. Yesterday I had the same dessert at another restaurant, admittedly with huckleberry coulis instead of the raspberries. Still, tasting only the custard, not allowing myself to be distracted by the garnish, it should be possible to craw some conclusion.

Comparison is odorous, as Shakespeare says. It's not really fair, or useful either, to put a dish at one table against a similar one at another. But good as tonight's panna cotta was — silky in texture, beautifully placed — it seemed to me it insisted a tad too much on the buttermilk. Yesterday's was subtler and better balanced on the palate, speaking only of flavor. And what's most important in a dessert? Flavor, no?

Grechetto; Nebbiolo. Which ones? The least expensive ones. Sorry; didn't take notes — too busy having fun.

• Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707-395-4640

Offal

Eastside Road, October 11, 2012—

THAT INDISPENSABLE FELLOW the pig made his appearance today both at lunch and at dinner; on both occasions after trips to local salumieri. And we have wonderful salumeficii hereabouts — Healdsburg is soon likely to be as well known (and much visited) for its meat products, I venture to say, as for its wines.

Let's start with dinner, at home: Franco Dunn's "Chorizo Verde" combines pork, spinach, onion, salt, ground-up pumpkin seeds, serrano chilis and oregano to a sophisticated but spicy conclusion. Lindsey broiled four of them — we had a hungry winemaking grandson to dinner — and she cooked up some canned hominy with chopped onion and Habañera pepper to go with them. As you see, sliced local tomatoes on the side; afterward, green salad.

And apple pie. Lindsey's pie crust is the best there is, but she doesn't have to make it any more; we just get a couple of frozen ones from the bakery — after all, it's her recipe, more or less. The apples are ours, though, just now a combination of Calville blancs and Sierra Beauties. With a scoop of Twin Girls ice cream on the side, all you need afterward is a dram or two of slivovitz.

Cheap Pinot grigio; Tempranillo Barrica, Albero, 2009

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WE'D GONE INTO TOWN for lunch, taken there by an old friend we hadn't seen in years until Lindsey ran into him a couple of weeks ago. We were happy to show him a newish restaurant in town, where we've only been once before — a restaurant that knows how to make a sandwich.

I had this "Il Nonno," being a nonno* myself: delicious soppressata, headcheese, with salsa verde, chopped hardboiled egg, arugula, Calabrian chili peppers, and pickled zucchini on ciabatta, a favorite bread of mine. Very spicy; quite delicious.

Il Nonno, garnished with pickle, caper, and arugula, at Campo Fina

Vermentino, Seghesio (Healdsburg), 2011: crisp, sound, refreshing

*nonno: Italian for "grandfather"

• Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707-395-4640

New place in town

Eastside Road, September 12, 2012—

NO IDEA WHY they have a feminine adjective modifying a masculine noun: maybe it's one more subtlety of the Italian that I don't understand. Fino means "fine" in the sense of minute, or keen, or sharp, or (sometimes) even; and when it modifies a feminine noun it ends in -a; but campo is a masculine nount (meaning, in general, "field").

And in any case this restaurant with its odd but pleasant inside-outside configuration isn't really a field, or in a field; but a former wasteland-parkinglot, I suppose. Oh, the hell with it: it's agreeable, with tables big and small under a sort of arbor, a compact bocce court alongside, kitchen areas tucked here and there, the obligatory wood-burning pizza oven, and a menu given to ciccheti, the small-plate nibbles made popular through Venetian restaurants sometime in the last decade.

There were five of us, so we ordered quite a number of these plates, passing them around:

Baccalà croquettes
Charred octopus
Tricolore salad
Panelle
Soppressata
Polenta alla Sarda

and, after playing with these, some of them twice, we ordered the special pizza of the night: piquant sausage, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and kernels of fresh sweet corn.

The croquettes were melt-in-your mouth; the octopus deeply flavorful; the panelle a kind of Italian panisse, perfect chickpea fritters with olives, chopped celery, pear sticks, and anchovy. The soppressata was very thinly sliced, house-made, quite peppery, delicious; strewn with tomato and hard-cooked egg concassées and salsa verde; the polenta was baked with sausage, gratinéed with pecorino, and strewn with basil. The menu is basically Sicilian, Sard, and southern Italian, and the wine list is nicely compatible.

Then came the desserts, which we mostly did not share around, or at least I didn't, because I really do like my cheese, and hadn't known about Latur — how long has this been going on? A delicious triple cream cheese, rather firm but yielding and pungent, served here with toasted almonds and hazelnuts and drizzled with fine local honey. Thanks, Bill.

Aglianico del Vulture, Grifalco, 2008: smooth, deep, rounded, full

• Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg, California; 707.395.4640