Get the Lady a Salad

An editor-turned-friend treated me yesterday to lunch at Perbacco where everything is fantastically delicious from the skinny breadsticks to the wine to the agnolotti dal plin. Agnolotti dal plin: tiny pinched tortellini-like pasta packages filled, in this case, with sausage. Ok, they were filled with blood sausage but trust me: scrumptious.

Here's my small complaint, to be filed under "princess and the pea:"

The waiters (handsome!) at fancy Italian restaurants always bring you bread and bread and bread. When you first sit down and are ravenous, bread is precisely what you want. But as the meal progresses and you're midway through your hearty entree, what you really require is salad. I'm not talking about the fussy salad you order as a starter, I'm talking about plain lettuce salad. Ideally they would bring you bread AND salad, but given the choice, I'd take the salad. Trying to put away a plate of blood-sausage agnolotti, even a trencherwoman could use a few leaves of refreshing, stamina-enhancing lettuce. A bite of pasta, a bite of salad, a bite of pasta, etc. until it's all gone. Or you could put some buttery pasta and vinegary salad on the fork at the same time. . . .

 

It was a fabulous lunch and made me wish I were cosmopolitan and Italian and rich so I could eat that way more often. But with salad.