Lunching at Little Napoli in Carmel (CA) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
When my husband was getting his third master’s degree (this
one in the teaching of foreign languages), I would take my daughter Florence to
Little Napoli in Carmel, California for an early dinner once a week as
“Hollywood Etiquette” after picking her up from her Waldorf Charter School in
Pacific Grove.
When I arrived at Little Napoli with my small child, I told
them Florence was going to practice her “nice manners” for lunch. We always got to sit at a table by a window
in the round room in back that looked out over the garden. The host would give us the standard menu and
the day’s specials orally.
I know children do not initially like all foods, but our
deal was that she could get one appetizer she liked all to herself, and I would
order maybe one or two more appetizer plates.
I would order a pasta dish to share and desserts for each of us after
that. I would let the waiter know this
is what I wanted to do before ordering.
I would get two or three appetizers like the following:
-slices of cheese focaccia bread made with Parmesan cheese
-deep-fried calamari – Florence would eat one and the rest
were for me. She did not like deep-fried
calamari
-three-pepper salad in olive oil – Florence liked this
salad. I make it at home, but it is a
pain to do, because you have to remove the pepper skins from roasted peppers by
hand. Claudia Roden has a very good
technique for doing this in her cookbook for the BBC Series Mediterranean
Cookery
-fennel-casserole made with Cabrales blue cheese from Spain.
(The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily was one empire under the Bourbons at one
time. Many food products are still
exchanged between Spain and Sicily on maritime routes.)
-fresh peas with pancetta (pork belly meat) sautéed in
onion, butter, and olive oil with a little black pepper on top
-Capri Salad (insalata Caprese – you can take ferry boats
from Naples to the islands of Capri and Ischia) made with basil leaves,
tomatoes, and slices of fresh Buffalo milk mozzarella cheese and olive oil and
turns of freshly ground pepper
Recipes for all of these items can be found in the following
cookbooks:
-Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Naples and Campania
-How to Eataly: A Guide to Buying, Cooking, and Eating
Italian Food by Oscar Farinetti
-Italia: The Recipes and Customs of the Regions by Antono
Carluccio
-The Good Food of Italy by Claudia Roden
-Lidia’s Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine: Everything
you Need to Know to be a Great Italian Cook by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and
Tanya Bastianich Manali
-Italy in Small Bites by Carol Field
-Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
After our selection of appetizers, I would order one dish of
pasta to share as a main dish. These
pasta dishes were usually on the menu as specials:
-pasta with peas
-pasta with squash
-pasta with cabbage
-pasta with fava beans
-spaghetti with clams
Those vegetables are “traditional” Italian vegetables as
well in addition to tomatoes. Before
tomatoes were brought from the New World to Europe, all Europeans almost
exclusively ate cabbage.
Clifford A. Wright begins his award-winning book A
Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the
Mediterranean, from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs (with more
than 500 recipes) with a recipe for cabbage soup eaten since the Middle
Ages all throughout Europe.
For dessert, there was usually something on the menu like
the following:
-crème brulee (not Italian, but Little Napoli knows how to
make money)
-cannoli
-almond-chocolate torte
Florence asked once, “Why do I have to be on ‘nice manners’
here especially?”
I quickly responded:
1 - Clint Eastwood eats here along with other Monterey
celebrities. Stars, directors, and
producers hate ill-behaved children when they are trying to get business
done.
2 - If you are filmed eating, I do not want you to look like
a pig.
3 - Everyone in Hollywood eats Italian, because it’s good
for you and not always hideously expensive to prepare. There are also many vegetarian and vegan dishes
in Italian cuisine that help actors stay thin and lithe as well.
When we were done eating, we would go for a walk in downtown
Carmel. Conway of Asia was right across
the street and still had Tibetan art as well as Buddhist art from Thailand and
Persian carpets.
After our trip there, we would go to the Phillips Gallery
and look at sculpture by the Zimbabwean artist Gedion Nyanhongo. (I wrote reviews of his work for the Monterey
County Weekly – Circulation: 200,00 and Art and Antiques Magazine.)
Then, we would go home and sing to Gwen Stefani songs.
That was enough for the day!
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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