‘God, you are going to love this place — it is absolutely perfect!’ I report back after my recce. ‘It’s completely ramshackle, kind of a beach-hut arrangement, almost. They don’t speak a word of English. It’s in this gorgeous position bang next to the sea. And they’re open for lunch tomorrow.’
‘Sounds brilliant,’ says the Fawn.
‘Oh it really is. I think this is going to be it. The one. You know, one of those throwbacks to the days of Elizabeth David, like they just don’t make any more.’
‘Great!’
So we arrive the next day, the four of us, and it is indeed as I described: the dining terrace right on the very edge of the sparkling azure waters of the Adriatic; the scruffy arrangement of huts and awnings and other makeshift structures lending it a pleasing air of rustic authenticity and tremendous value for money; the proprietor and his wife and brother or whoever looking less like restaurateurs, more like the kind of people you see running a fairground — which is good, very good, because it means they’re proper fisherfolk, probably, who are doing this for the love.
There’s only one problem. The restaurant specialises in fish and Girl doesn’t like fish. This we try to explain to the proprietor as he looms over our table, but we don’t succeed, first because he doesn’t speak a word of English and second because he’s far too busy telling us what we’re going to have: ‘Antipasti — frutti di mare. Uno? Due? Spaghetti alla vongole? Spaghetti alla marinara? Uno? Due? Tre? Sea bass? Quattro sea bass? Tre?’
OK, I exaggerated. He does have two words of English, ‘sea’ and ‘bass’. And possibly a few more words of multilingual praise for how good his frutti di mare and his spaghetti alla marinara and his sea bass are.
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