Travel

An excerpt from  "Hungry for Paris"

Some ten years ago, I went to dinner one night with no expectations. A London newspaper had asked me to write about Lapérouse, an old warhorse of a restaurant overlooking the Seine on the Left Bank—it was doing historic Paris restaurants, and this one’s been around forever. I politely suggested that there might be better candidates, because as far as I knew, this place was still a slumbering tourist table flogging its past: it has several charming tiny private dining rooms with badly scratched mirrors—as the legend goes, these cuts were made by ladies testing the veracity of newly offered diamonds (real diamonds cut glass).

The editor was unyielding, so off I went. The stale-smelling dining room was mostly empty on a winter night, and though the young mâitre d’hôtel was unexpectedly charming and gracious, I was more interested by my friend Anne’s gossipy accounts of a recent visit to Los Angeles than I was by the menu.

Like a mother hen sweetly teaching their young how to find the water and food bowl is the way our Mother taught us how to appreciate the world of wonderful food that awaited us at a very young age. We were on our first trip to Europe, I was 6 and my sister was 11 when my mother became very ill in Paris. We were staying in the 5th Arrondissement at the Lutetia Hotel and as my mother faded in and out of consciousness she was worried that we needed to eat. She gave us money and told us that we weren’t allowed to – #1 not cross any streets and #2 we had to hold each other’s hands. We could eat what ever we wanted and we were armed with plenty of francs.

On our first sojourn, we happily discovered a precious little Bistro with a delightful French female owner that surely must have wondered what the story was with the two small hungry American children popping into her restaurant hand in hand. But all curiousness aside, her mission was to feed us and introduce us to French food and maybe our story would unfold. For three days we visited morning, noon and night always hand and hand. As we waited for our meal she placed a tiny kitten in each of our hands to help pass the time until we ate and to make us feel at home.

Above the title of our local paper, the VINEYARD GAZETTE, is the pithy quote (they always have a pithy quote), “With rod and tackle box, I’m slogging through soft sand, A red sun going down in the surf, Swag-belly clouds drifting in,” authored by Peter Makuck. Just below the Gazette title is its mission statement: “Devoted to the interest of the six towns on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.”

The world simply does not intrude on the Vineyard!

This week the above the crease headline reads, “Patricia Neal – Sparkling Stories And Sunflowers To Say Goodbye.” (We will all miss that dame!) Near it is the ‘shocking’ story of a Trustee who nearly – nearly! – Ran over a nest of LEAST TERN CHICKS on the barrier beach, forcing his resignation. (If only our federal government could function with this kind of immediate civic responsibility!)

The Vineyard Gazette is as good an introduction to Martha’s Vineyard as anything I know. Even its dimensions – larger than most newspapers – forces one to sit back (preferably in a rocking chair), open the paper and read... not scan, but read! We people on this Island actually still read, support bookstores, treat authors most gently, and buy local painters. In other words, we love this Island and the eccentric characters that reside here. And, eccentric we all are!

A fascinating journey can be made driving through the narrow, winding streets of Verona and onto the busy auto strada. Past AGIP gas stations and tessellated pylons contrasting with the verdant countryside and the endless rows of vines upon which tiny grape buds soon would appear. Almond and cherry trees with pale green leaves beginning to decorate their elongated arms, and ancient farmhouses painted in faded pinks and umbers seemed not to have changed since Romeo and Juliet pranced in the sun stroked fields. In the distance smoky purple hills, unperturbed by the comings and goings of travelers and my group of voluble giornalisti, watched over peaceful vistas, till we arrived at the Villa Quaranta.

Set in sculptured gardens, this lovely Villa became a wonderful setting for a very special dinner orchestrated by the chefs of five restaurants from the surrounding areas of Venice, Treviso, Padua, Verona and Vicenza, together with many wine producers of the Veneto. Before the grand scale dinner began, a classical concert was performed by members of the New Italian Percussion Group. A most unusual concert using bottles as instruments: long, tall and thin bottles; fat, round and bulbous bottles; bottles made from green, blue and plain glass and goblets of red and white wine on multi-level shelves producing varied musical tones, all blending into a cacophony of sound.