Goodbye to the man whose playful vision, and entrepreneurial savvy once defined — the Cooper House — the atmosphere of downtown Santa Cruz. Many will miss him, just as they miss those wild days when Cher used to hold down a bar stool at the original Catalyst.
A few weeks ago I joined two vivacious residents of Rome (one from the US, the other originally from Canada) for a meal of stellar regional cuisine and old-fashioned, unapologetically attentive service at Zeffirino, a celebrated Genoa dining room since 1939. Utterly non-designer in decor, busily adorned with candelabra and quaint genre paintings, and complete with waiters in dark suits who expertly arrange each serving at the table, Zeffirino lived up to its advance hype as providing definitive Mediterranean seafood. This appetizer of paper-thin lasagne, sauced with saffron-tinged pesto, with scallops in their shells, asparagus and a few prawns, was a knock-out.
It was all beautiful to look at and prepared with restraint. Giant prawns, gamberoni, lightly inflected with saffron, and topped alla Cinqueterre, with thin ribbons of candied lemon peel, were sweet and tender. Another deeply satisfying entree involved fresh lobster, removed 
from its shell, brilliantly spiced in salsa diavola, and then returned to to the shell, to form a gorgeous terracotta creation. Two regional house wines easily paced the clear flavors of the meal, which began with a stupendous primo of Genoa’s gift to the culinary world — triofie al pesto. (see post below). Here the pesto is made from infant leaves of Genovese basil, which preserves a minty sparkle rather than the rather strident, licoricey tendencies of “mature” basil. “This is what pesto should be!,” pronounced one of my companions, a Rome correspondent for Newsweek. She and my other dining partner spent a good part of the next hour strategizing about where they could find such amazing basil in Rome. (more…)
Since we all have access to any number of fabulous farmers markets, is there really any excuse for us to even consider buying produce that has been shipped across the country? No, of course not.
Okay. Now my question is to our local grocery stores. Why would YOU even consider offering produce to your customers that had been shipped across the country? We all congratulate ourselves in the Santa Cruz area about how environmentally astute we are for buying and eating seasonal, local produce — but then I looked at the fine print on a little box of organic cherry tomatoes this week (at a store that shall remain nameless) and found the word “Florida” on it. OMG!!!
Give me a break! If produce buyers can’t find local, in-season produce they should just wait until they can. But actually offering stuff that has been shipped across the entire country…why? It sure can’t be for the flavor, or the “tiny” carbon footprint…..
Caveat emptor: read the labels!!
It’s been over a week since I left the jungles of Heathrow for the sanctuary of San Francisco. And I still find myself thinking about the ease of dining on the Italian Riviera. Genoa might not register much more than a blip on the world culinary radar, but it easily provided a week’s worth of interesting dining, impeccably maintained palaces and atmospheric walking tours on extreme cobblestones.
On the right, is a typical, yet astonishing, pizza and focaccia shop whose secret weapon just might be this charming young proprietor, named Andrea.
Each day in Genoa, I made my way up Via Garibaldi — lined with world heritage palazzi and museums — to a day of conference papers at the University. Via Garibaldi is exclusively for pedestrians these days, though in Christopher Columbus’ time it was one of the main routes through town, linked to the busy 
harbor by a twisted warren of alleys called caruggi. (more…)
The glassy silver sea at the top of my homepage this week was glimpsed just beyond my favorite sandstone cliffs. Nests of the beautiful cepphus colomba are now stocked with aerobatic babies there. Smell the salt air?
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.