“Wanna go on a date?”
“Sure, depends on what we’re eating.”
“Let’s go to Dopo.”
“Yay, it’s a date then.”
- Dialogue that may or may not have taken place on a particularly humdrum night
So we did dress up, me in heels (a phenomenon comparable to that of good toro meat) and him in a black button-down H&M shirt, and we sauntered on over to Dopo, one of a few quality Italian restaurants on this side of the Bay located just up the street from us on Piedmont Ave. The small restaurant, next to a fabric store and across from a customer-deprived Chinese-American eatery, was humming and buzzing with late-diners and wine drinkers as people waited for tables at 9pm. So we waited, white wine in hand, as we laid our eyes on the token eye candy at the front of the restaurant: a shiny, brand new orange-sorbet Vespa.
“It must be brand new – look at how there are no scuffs on the well-oiled tires,” I said.
“Oh…yea, that’s right, no license plate either,” Elephant replied.
The date talk, after years of practice, began slowly but surely.
Fortunately, the food really warmed up these seasoned interlocutors. After getting a seat at a very cozy window-front corner, we asked for Acme bread and wonderful house-made ciccioli — which is, basically, spreadable pork and lard with the consistency of very soft butter. It was an addictive combination, a guilty pleasure of sourdough, perfect bread crusts and indulgent fat, almost spam-like. We had seconds.
Elephant and I couldn’t decide on what to order. We dreamed about ordering “for 2″ platters of the salume, the antipasti and the verdure – there were Petrale Sole with mint, Arancini with goat cheese, lobster sausage, little gem salads, coppa, just to name a few – but we tried their pasta dishes instead. I had the lasagna napoletana: very crispy on top, it was surrounded by a rich flood of its filling of tomatoes and some sausage meat. The soft, melting pasta sheets looked as if they were either with spinach or squid ink (low lighting makes one wonder) and they tasted almost like baked eggplant. I enjoyed the dish but didn’t find enough of a bite or kick in it – perhaps a sign of overdone cooking or a lack of textural elements like squash and cheese – but I hesitate to hate, as it was a homey dish and I enjoyed its no-nonsense presentation.
Elephant got the hipper dish, in my opinion: a ricotta gnocchi with pork and lemon honey. The gnocchi was superbly done – baby soft and tender, carrying the tang of ricotta but not its flakiness – and the creamy sauce had a pleasant hint of sweetness that really complemented the flavor profile of the dish. Being indulgent gourmands, we swiped up the leftover sauce with Acme bread; that was almost worthy of another blog entry, but not quite!
The restaurant has quieted down now as diners around us began to leave. We looked at the dessert menu. Melon sorbetto? Lemon Zeppetto? Emiliano cheese? We couldn’t turn back now. We settled on sharing an espresso panna cotta, topped with well-whipped cream. Served in a ramekin instead of being popped out of it onto a plate, the texture was more pudding/custard than panna cotta (a slight disappointment) — until I hit the bottom of the ramekin and saw the gelatinized layer of ground espresso. Reassured, I enjoyed this luscious treat, a concoction of milk and coffee that put a sweet note at the end of a satisfying meal (and, dare I say, date).
“I’ll miss eating with you,” I said.
“I’ll miss you too, Hippo,” he replied.
And on that note, I will jet off to Asia and bring back more yummy food notes when I return!
Happy Eating, everyone.
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I’m going to cheat a little. Since I read Hippo’s entry ahead of time, and since it’s way better than anything I could write about Italian spam butter…I’ll steer clear of food description and, being the good academic I purport to and sometimes just pretend to be, I’ll talk a bit *about* food description. Yes, that means I’ll describe food description…which is like, so over your head. Besides, Hippo and I fought over how I’m so demanding of her about this blog and I act as if I care more about it, so I just want to make sure that I come off as a hypocrite by not writing as much as her, so that she can say, “I told you so.” See? That’s love.
Actually, I really just want to point out that I don’t get Italian food. This subject was part of what Hippo calls our “date conversation.” She must be a pretty special lady to count this as date conversation, but hey…I sure ain’t complaining.
Anyway, here’s my super deep reason for not “getting” Italian food: I can’t remember all the names. Seriously. I don’t know what the deal is! I mean, despite having an inability to learn languages better than, say, your average amoeba, I can at least remember escargot and coq au vin and boeuf bourguignon, but I can’t remember…you know…the Italian ones.
So I told Hippo that this must be because the Italian food I’ve had isn’t meat-forward. And I must at least unconsciously think that a cuisine that isn’t meat-forward isn’t a cuisine that’s worth remembering! I think that must explain the difference between easier-to-remember French stuff and harder-to-remember Italian stuff – it’s hard for me to forget a big slab of wine-drenched chicken in front of me, but it’s easy for me to forget what kind of gnocci I had, and what the gnocci was dressed with and what it was mixed with – honestly, I don’t remember any of it, except that it was pretty good.
What is this stuff, anyway?
It doesn’t help that there are 20 million kinds of pastas. This is definitely a Hippo Tofu and Noodle Monster kind of cuisine, and less of a “Would you like meat with that salad?” Elephant kind of cuisine.
This is terrible!
What was even in Hippo’s lasagne? Is “lasagne” even spelled that way? No way. What color was it?!
And what about this white wine I had? I think it was from the Piemonte region. Wait, is that how you spell that? Wait, was it from there? Wait, what year was it? God, I have no clue!
Alas, I do remember the orange Vespa in front of the resto. It didn’t have a license plate…
Sigh.
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