Culinary Ambassador

Have so enjoyed having a solid Italian restaurant near our home this past year.  I’m laboring to recall who it was that suggested to us that the ho-hum place that had been there for years was under new management.  We piled in suspiciously one night and, as suggested it proved to be wonderful.  Somehow every time we went my daughters and I were reminded of dining in Italy last summer.  We’d always talked about it.  Those meals where you pause after a first bite and necessarily savor what had just entered your mouth. 

The gent whom I believed to be the owner always welcomed us in and gave us room to get settled before announcing the specials and recommending a bottle.  He was from a part of the country up near Genoa where I’ve never traveled but have long been interested in.  In his late fifties I suppose, this was his first time in China and he was clearly doing his best to adjust while missing home dearly.  He loved to look at the map on the back of the menu and talk about one region and then another.

Deflated the other evening as we piled in with our normal ritual with another family only to have him tell us that this restaurant would be closing at the end the of the summer.  The rents were going up and the other place that was jointly run in a nearby mall would still continue on.  And what about our friend?  They didn’t need him at the other restaurant and so he would be returning home, if he couldn’t find another suitable location. 

Matteo Ricci, our culinary ambassador, leaving his disparate converts behind him.  What a shame that the neighborhood couldn’t support this oasis.  We did our part.  I’d so rather not have to schlepp over to that over-built mall miles in the other direction, in order to dine.  Restaurants are temporal environments that don’t really mean much beyond a specific time and place.  Whatever comes next will almost certainly be disappointing.

We offered our friend some halfhearted suggestions:  What about that place?  You should try to open something there?  Surely there must be a way.”  But it was a challenge we were most unlikely to solve.  He offered us grappa on the way out as usual, but we refused this evening.  We weren’t’ feeling very festive.  My daughter and I unlocked our bikes from over by the window and headed off back home.  Others drove.  I thought of his home I’d never seen and the family regularly referred to and his stories he’d have to tell people of his time China as I ran my tongue over the remaining taste of Primitivo on my teeth.