Dinner in the country

San Cipriano Picentino, Salerno, 13 May 2015—

HOW DELICIOUS AFTER a week in the city to dine with only one other couple at a comfortable table in a quiet country house on good authentic local cuisine, especially when cooked this well and served this graciously!

We began with little rolls of stewed escarole, capers, raisins, and onions, rolled up in a thin sheet of simple bread dough and baked. Following that, marvelous ravioli stuffed with borage. Then roast chicken with potatoes, artichokes, and peas. And at the end a fine tiramisù and a glass of homemade limoncello.

We stayed in this fine county place five years ago — a very comfortable bed in a spacious room overlooking the garden; old mulberry trees; a lemon grove…

Local white (Trebbiano), rosé, and red in carafe

•La Vecchia Quercia, Via Montevetrano 4, Località Cantina di Campigliano, San Cipriano Picentino (Salerno)

Lindsey's choice

Corte della Pazienza, June 18, 2011—

WE JUST FELL INTO A PLACE for lunch today; it was too soon to step into the Accademia, we'd visited a supermarket on the Fondamente Zattere to buy some bleach — don't ask — and afterward there was a trattoria right there, the dishes were cheap, they took credit cards, so why not. We had just a plate of bresaola, parmigiano, and rucola, the Italian colors: green, white, red. With a squeeze of lemon juice. It was called the Osteria (or perhaps Trattoria, I don't remember at the moment) di Toni, but when I look this up on the Internet I get no satisfaction. Nor does the address on the receipt jibe with anything we saw today. Venice is full of mysteries. Just go to the Billa or the post office at the west end of the Fondamente Zattere, turn the corner, and fall in where an apparently Muslim man is apparently married to an apparently Asian woman, and there's a very pretty baby, and the tables are along the canal (now there's a distinguishing mark), and you'll be there. Get a glass of the house white while you're at it.

LINDSEY'S CHOICE, THOUGH, was our dinner reservation, and what some authorities apparently consider one of Venice's five best restaurants. It's over near the Museum of Natural History, on a quiet street next a quiet bridge over a quiet canal. There I began with the most interesting course of the night, three fresh raw apricot halves filled with caprino, a soft white goat cheese, liberally accompanied with mint, parsley, and radicchio. Afterward came rather an ordinary (but quite well executed) veal stew with peas, rice and salad on the side, and a side dish of spinach with raisins and pine nuts, the most Venetian thing at my place.


Dessert was a very fine panna cotta with too many sliced almonds, just the right amount of delicious honey, and drizzles of irrelevant strawberry and mango syrups. To me they were a Cognitive Dissonance, but the girls sharing my table disagree. Still, I'm the one writing here.

White wine in carafe (Trebbiano from Collio, delicious)

• La Zucca, Sestiere Santa Croce, 1762, Venezia; 041 524 1570

Berkeley Mediterranean

Berkeley, March 4, 2011——

ITALY'S WILL ALWAYS BE my preferred cuisine, I suppose, but any cuisine touching the Mediterranean is fine with us. We love the complexities of flavors and textures, whether separate in an insalata or blended in a brasato. And Berkeley has embraced the Mediterranean kitchen; to look at restaurant names and menus you'd think you were in Nirvana.

I lunched today — yesterday: I write this next day — on pasta Bolognese. Our friend Ann had recommended a new place, not far from where we lived for twenty-five years, with a pleasant patio and a good inexpensive menu. The patio was indeed pleasant: we sat in dappled sunlight in a tranquil almost-garden setting, a lazy bulldog sleepily keeping us company. (On a leash: Berkeley is a law-abiding town.)

The menu promised ribollita, but alas it was not the current menu. Still, spaghetti Bolognese is an excellent substitution on a spring midday (though L. ordered a caramelized-onion pizza instead). A lunchtime Martini was decent, and the mixed salad had all those nice textures. But the pasta arrived on a barely warm plate, and three enormous scoops of cold ricotta lay oddly atop the dish. Ricotta on Bolognese! I said I liked compexities of flavors and textures, but this is cognitive dissonance. I ate all the ricotta as quickly as possible, since there was no place to put it — salad plate had already been whisked away — and then tucked into quite a nice Bolognese, though the spaghetti was a teeny bit overdone.

House red (Sangiovese, Italy)

• Paisan, 2514 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley; 510-649-1031

Dessert was a dish of the best ice cream in town: for me, a scoop of salt-caramel, another of cinnamon bisque. Exemplary flavors and textures this time, from a former Chez Panisse pastry chef and, it must be said, a friend. It would be absurd to visit Berkeley and ignore this magnificent gelateria.
• Ici, 2948 College Avenue, Berkeley; 510.665.6054

WE WERE IN TOWN to see performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, so we dined right in Zellerbach Hall, where the nearby restaurant Adagia caters in light pre-theater suppers. We had lamb couscous, rather good I thought, quite a bit of meat, with raisins, lemon, cumin, and cilantro all lending a hand, and decently steamed couscous, pleasantly served. A civilized way to eat quickly before the show.

“Old Vines Red,” Marietta Cellars, unknown vintage

• Adagia @ Zellerbach, Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Berkeley

Cognitive dissonance

Eastside Road, December 26—

IT COULD BE ANOTHER TAG, I suppose, like the Hundred Pates, or the Five Restaurants. In fact I think it will be henceforth. Tonight's version was a guacamole as the first course — rather an odd one for us: red onion instead of shallot; no jalapeño. Maybe that made the cognition a little less dissonant when the main course arrived: another couple of bowls of that delicious Ibleto minestrone. Thanks for sending it home with us yesterday, Gaye; it was just as good today!

Monastrell, Albero (Jumilla), 200