un buon ristorante

Today's travel preparation included:

• Purchasing a house present for the owners of the agriturismo. A set of silk-screened tea towels and a microplane grater/zester thing. Daniela suggested throwing in some Almond Roca or boxed smoked salmon, which have been a hit at previous visits.


• Purchasing Rick Steves' Italian Phrase Book and Dictionary and Eating and Drinking in Italy, Italian Menu Translator & Restaurant Guide, by Andy Herbach, a slim volume which already has a sticky spot of balsamic vinegar on the first page.


• Dinner at Spinasse with Bill and Steve. We brough along the Italian menu translator, thus the balsamic vinegar. It was part Italy preparation and part cheering me up since Charlie and the boys are backpacking. The food at Spinasse is Piedmontese, an area far from where we're going, so I'm not sure it counts as actual trip preparation, but it was outstanding. I had been anticipating a meal at Spinasse for months, and was not disappointed. It's a gorgeous little space, although the floor and windows are unchanged from when it was The Globe restaurant, enough to remind me that my last bowl of grits at the Globe contained some hair.

Dinner details:

An amuse-bouche of toasts with rabbit pate, nicely crunchy, fatty and salty.

The staff was kind enough to serve us a generous plate of fava beans sauteed in a little olive oil and garlic, even though it wasn't on the menu.

Paper-thin sliced roast pork with house-made mayonnaise. (This would make an excellent bag lunch for the kids, served on rye bread.)

Ravioli with Jerusalem artichoke filling, with fried sage and pine nuts.

Some little chewy rolled pasta with peas and squash blossoms.

"Random wide cuts of pasta" with a ragu of tripe and pork belly. (The diva.)

I had a glass of Langhe Nebbiolo to start, and we had a bottle of Barolo with dinner. Research tells me that Barolo is made from the Nebbiolo grape, but I don't know what makes a Barolo a big wine, and the plain Nebbiolo a lighter wine. I seem to have had them in the right order.

We finished at the unfortunately named "Old School Frozen Custard" at 1316 E. Pike St. It's great frozen custard, although if it was "old school" it would be cheap (it is not) and one would have the option of a wafer cone (I saw only waffle cones). But the ice cream is super, and it made me really happy to see an ice cream store with a line almost out the door on a Sunday night in Seattle.