The Best Meal I’ve Ever Had

Driving north on A1A, before Interstate-95 was built, out of Miami in ’64 in our brand new Mustang, we slowed through Daytona Beach looking for a lunch spot. It was almost Noon and we were famished.

Daytona then was not the heart of auto racing in America and hive of activity that it is today. It was a soulful stretch of sand that made you wonder if there were any permanent residents and if so, why?

We did pass a huge establishment bedecked with red, white and green flags that marked it, unmistakably, as an Italian restaurant. The menu at this kind of place always destroyed any pretense of serving “authentic’ Italian food and locked into the Italian-American culinary lexicon forever such “classics” as spaghetti and meatballs, (served as only Americans would, on the same plate,) chicken parm’ and fried squid.

We were so hungry at this point that we would have happily devoured all of the gustatory cliches without complaint. Coming home with virtually no money, we needed to count our pennies. If the prices were even half of those posted on the menu in the menu box, the answer was a non-negotiable no. We kept on driving. The landscape was not one to cheer one on. It is natural, I think, that when confronted with circumstance that we find unfortunate and unenviable, that we picture ourselves in that milieu. The only marginal relief from the torpor came from viewing the ocean, never a bad thing.

I sped by what we would later discover to be an eating establishment. I was a mile past when my wife said she thought she saw a neon “food” sign dangling askew from in a small window from a single nail. So I made a U-turn , raced back and pulled into a sandy, what else, space in front.

The building was a sad affair, 20 feet square, one short story with a white washed finish that obviously hadn’t been white or washed for a very long time. Do we, should we, are we really this hungry? We soon found ourselves standing inside. Claustrophobic low ceilings, dirt floors albeit firmly packed with a kerosene lamp on a sideboard and five very small tables dressed in glistening white tablecloths, one set square, the other diagonally just like in restaurants in Paris and New York.

Well, I though, i’m sold, just one more test, the big one. I headed for the single tiny rest room. On my way, she appeared. Tiny, dressed in black, her hair bundled into a neat bun on the back of her head with criss crossed knitting needles holding it all in place. That’s it! I’m sold. She’s from southern Italy and probably a very fine cook. She managed a small smile, not wan but small and waved her hand across her modest dining room beckoning us to sit anywhere.

I continued to the rest room, maybe 5 feet square, maybe, but as I opened the door the most familiar smell filled my nostrils, Lysol, the disinfectant that no Italian household would, could ever be without. On the back of the toilet was a small stemless wine glass with fresh flowers and two small hand towels. I instinctively pressed the towels to my nose. They smelled of sunshine and fresh air, no dryer for her linens. I was in love.

My wife had taken the only table that afforded diners a view of the work area, the “kitchen”. There was no menu. As I sat, Signora came with a small carafe of water ice glistening, set two small water glasses and filled them. She soon returned with 2 small stemless glasses, for wine and as I would learn, southern Italians don’t use stemware found to be too delicate for their rigorous lifestyle.

She disappeared once again to surface carrying a steaming small round loaf of her bread directly from the oven wrapped in a white serviette. Steam escaped as she broke it in two placing both halves on a small wooden board she held under her arm. She then placed a tiny dish of the butter she churned once a week between us. I placed a pat on my wife’s bread and then a pat on mine. The lumps disappeared into liquid on the still steaming bread. She placed a small plate of large green olives, celery hearts and slices of soppresatta, the ethereal home made dry sausage that identifies with southern Italy, especially the region of Calabria, a gift from a her husband and his cousins, courtesy of pigs raised on their farm in Pennsylvania. We told ourselves not to give in and eat all of this wondrous treat as we knew more great food awaited us. If the bread was any portent, this meal would be memorable.

Signora came to our table carrying a bottle of crimson liquid and poured some in each of our glasses. She waited as we tipped our glasses and took sips. Grape juice from heaven, no mean feat as home made wine is almost always terrible, She smiled when she saw the look on our faces and turned and left. Her husband’s contribution again. She appeared again empty handed simply to see if everything so far was acceptable. Indeed!

She next appeared carrying two small plates, each with a small mound of her freshly made pasta, wider than spaghetti with rivulets of her chunky marinara dotting the pasta and the well of the plate. The marinara no doubt made from tomatoes from the six foot plants in her garden the perfect basil leaf just picked from plants as tall and leaves as large as saucers.

There was perhaps a bare 3 ounces of pasta on the plates and I learned that day that Americans , not Italians devour great amounts of pasta. While pasta is usually served as a primi piatti, (first plate), at Italian dinners, it rarely exceeds 3 ounces, while in America, the average portion is 6 to 8 ounces. A great meal and an education too.

She patted her stomach gently as if to ask, “are you full’? Not at all. Next came small plates a little larger than the pasta dishes and on it a blossom of some sort, zucchini, I would later learn, looking as if it had been painted by Monet on a great day at Giverney, a spectrum of the vaguest pastels Do we eat it or photograph it? It was a squash blossom filled with a forcemeat of veal and wild mushrooms dredged in a thick batter and fried quickly in olive oil pressed from that small “frontoia” ,olive press, out back near the tool shed. We tapped the coat of breading and it cracked audibly.

There was no sauce. If an Italian is known for anything it is restraint, knowing when enough is enough and resisting every thought of gilding the lily. And I thought , what must it be like to commnad a stove like that? To know how hot, when and importantly, why ? That blossom remains today one of the most delicious and addictive vegetables that I have ever tasted. We made certain that no morsel was left as to do so would be if not criminal, then insensitive.

We nodded to Signora who seemed pleased. She cleared our places and to our surprise even our wine glass. She brought out a cut glass bowl, so popular in the south of Italy artfully arranged with Seckel pears, white grapes and fresh figs interspersed with large walnuts from that tree over there. Then she arrived with small bottle of amber liquid, two very delicate small cordial glasses and a tiny plate on which sat two almond biscotti. The amber liquid was vin santo, the “holy wine”of Tuscany. No ice cream, no cake or pie but still the most memorable dessert in my life before or since.

In the countless decades since that unlikely experience on a sandy stretch of lonely highway, I think of it often and though the food was memorable, it is she who has permanently captured my imagination. Wanting neither accolades or even recognition she had contented herself with stretching the limits of her talent and skills every day to feed strangers she will never see again. She seemed unaware or uncaring that the world was speeding by. And in a world of billions determined to “find themselves”, she had found ultimate happiness following her Muse in an invisible shack in need of repair.