Saturday, June 1, 2013.
Daddy-Daughter Date At Nuvolari's.
When is a routine day not routine? When nothing is predictable that used to be. Today followed a long-established but now rare pattern for me on Saturdays.
I had breakfast with Mary Ann at Mattina Bella. They ate the usual pancakes and such, while I did in one of Vincent Riccobono's more recent concoctions: poached eggs on top of fried eggplant, with a little marinara sauce and a lot of hollandaise. This is a marvelous dish.
After exchanging clean, starched shirts for wilted, smelly, splattered ones (what a deal!), I returned home for the three-hours Saturday show on WWL that's scheduled for noon, but almost never gets on at that time.
Then an extended walk around the Cool Water Ranch, including the first pass I've been able to make in months on my trail through the woods. It's rained so much this year that the trail has been too wet to hike. It's dry now, but the rains had another effect. The foliage grew wildly, making it tough to get through. I need to spend an hour or so wielding my clippers, lest the trail be lost to the undergrowth.
Mary Ann had something going on tonight, so Mary Leigh and I didn't have to please her with our plans for dinner. We decided upon Nuvolari's, which MA doesn't care for. The other members of the family all love the place.
Even though we were there early, Nuvolari's was nearly full. We were set up at a table in a not-so-great corner near the kitchen door, but we were happy to get that. I began with a cup of tomato-basil soup, which was very good. Does it ever happen that this concoction fails? Tomato soup was the first flavor Campbell's canned when they started in the late Cretaceous. Clearly they went for the easy one.
ML indulged in her usual wedge salad, and I with a Caesar. I was reminded that Nuvolari's never did make a very good Caesar. My theory: it comes free with the entree, so why bother making it great?
ML wanted a filet mignon, but was hesitant about eating so much beef. I pushed her past that scruple by insisting that she order the big one instead of the petit. That way she wouldn't be tempted to eat the whole thing, and a lot of it would come home to be put to other uses.
That proved to be a good move for other reasons. "This is the best filet I've had in a long time," she said. "Maybe the best ever!" That's saying something, coming as it does from one who eats these pucks of beef often.
For me, it sauteed fish placed atop pasta with mushrooms, with a garnish of crabmeat on top. I didn't remember having had this before, but Nuvolari's has been around for coming up on thirty years, so maybe I did. Good, in any case.
ML saw a big, beautiful chocolate cake go by, and felt it had to be sampled. That gave me permission to have a creme brulee. A nice evening with my lovely girl, one with minimal discussion about the new path of life that she's decided must be taken soon. The block is that she doesn't know what path that will be. But that's hardly abnormal for a twenty-one-year-old.
Nuvolari's. Mandeville: 246 Girod St. 985-626-5619.
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