The mid-afternoon sunlight is coming into my almost-three-foot-wide, skinny kitchen and it strikes me as so beautiful. It’s almost a black and white shot, except for that delicious green mug, a sprinkling of red, painted petals on another mug, and red pepper lip stains on the cotton napkin. Nothing contrived or set up, yet it is all so perfect. I smile.
Hour and a half. A slow 4 miles. Beach. Hill trail. Neighborhoods. Wind, rain, hail, sunshine. Singing birds and seaweed. I needed that.
Ten years ago today, the earth shook both Seattle and my life.
“Scared to death” is not just a figure of speech.
In spite of the snow and hail that keep passing through… and the continued temperatures in the 30s, signs of springtime surround the observant ones here in Seattle. Swelling buds on trees and daffodil stalks. Wild violets blooming. Lenten roses braving the cold. And deciduous catkins popped open, lengthening out and pendulous.
A year ago, after enduring a long, gray, cold, wet winter in Milano, I felt we had all earned our Spring! We’ve earned it here, too, and these little emissaries of warm-days-to-come thrill my spirit.
Just because I’ve returned to Seattle, will my blog come to a halt? No.
There’s still more to say. I have more mulling over to do. Comparisons to draw. Reflections to note… And having shot 16,314 photos in my close-to-14 months in Italy, I have more images to share.
I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting, but do keep checking back now and then. I’ll be adding posts about Seattle, too. Next week I’m being taken on a personal tour: “100 Amazing and Bizarre Sights in Seattle”. As a native Seattleite, I want to see this city with the same wonderment and freshness I reveled in while exploring Italy.
Octopus as tender as a dream, served warm and simply, with potatoes, olives and olive oil. Fish and pasta prepared and presented with an expert hand. Warm-hearted hosts, all family, welcome their guests into an easy, comfortable dining room in their restaurant alongside the Naviglio Pavese canal: Carlotta Café Bar & Restaurant. If you want to eat at all in Milano, EAT HERE.
During my year here, I have eaten at the Carlotta Café 5 times, and each time I have swooned and savored my meal. The fish could not be fresher. The light seasonings could not be more perfected. The preparation of every dish has never been pretentiously grand; it is simple, pure and complete. It’s no wonder I keep going back.
Carlotta Café owners, Ninni and Agnese, have had the restaurant for 13 years.
Siblings, Carlotta (after whom the restaurant is named) and Erik, work with their Mother in serving the café patrons. Erik is as attentive and welcoming as one could wish for when out for a nice meal.
Here are a few of the dishes I’ve enjoyed in my times at the restaurant.
(The photos were taken in varying lighting conditions, evening and daytime.)
Pane Carasau, also called “Paper Music”, is a wispy-thin cracker served hot, generously drizzled with a flavorful olive oil and brightened with salt. This bread starts the meal and wakes up the mouth.
The dish that keeps bringing me back for more: Piovra con Patate – Octopus with Potatoes.
I can’t even descibe how delicious it is.
Gamberi Rossi Crudi della Mediterranea – Mediterranean Red Shrimp, served raw – are a delicacy and a gift to the palate.
This shrimp will be splashed with lime and relished.
Spaghetti con Vongole e Bottarga – Spaghetti with clams and grated, dried fish roe.
Bottarga is a southern Italian gourmet specialty.
Branzino Vernaccia con Olive – Baked seabass with olives and olive oil.
Look at how beautiful those filets are. Ninni knows how to handle fish!
Carpaccio di Spada – Thinly sliced, raw swordfish, served with rucola – arugula – and tomato.
Paccheri all’Isolana – Paccheri pasta with tuna, basil and tomato.
Gnocchi con Speck e Rucola – Potato Gnocchi with lightly smoked speck (cured meat somewhat similar to prosciutto), arugula and a creamy sauce.
The Carlotta Café offers a full bar, wine list and caffé. Order an ice-cold bottle of Mirto, a Sardegnan specialty from myrtle leaves and berries, as a digestif to sip after your meal.
The Red Room is the quiet, more intimate room set off from the bar and main dining area.
There’s also a north-facing Terrazo Room with it’s pleasant light.
The café is not in the central hub-bub of town, and unlikely to be found by tourists. It’s not close to a subway stop and, for me without a car or scooter, it would be a long walk on a hot day. So I gladly take a quick cab ride to the restaurant and it is oh-so worth it.
Ninni and Agnese offer a “Cena a Base di Pesce“, dinner based on fish, at an incredibly reasonable price. Make it simple for yourself: order this special dinner and a nice bottle of wine then sit back and enjoy the steady stream of expertly prepared foods that arrive at your table. You will go home happily satisfied. And you, too, will dream about the octopus. (Tell them “Maureen” sent you.)
(Check with them on their current pricing, since it may change.)
Carlotta Café Bar & Restaurant
Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, 274
20142 Milano, Italia
TEL: 02.89546028
E-MAIL: carlottacafe@gmail.com
If you haven’t been to Firenze (Florence), put it on your “life list” of must-see places in the world. Really.
Two years ago I spent a couple of afternoons exploring Firenze, but I hadn’t been back since I returned to Italy last June. So I hopped on the train late last Friday morning, and less than two hours later, at 1:00, I arrived in Firenze and smiled. I walked from the train station to my hotel shooting photos along the way because I couldn’t wait until I put my bags down. I checked in, changed my clothes for the bit of humidity under the partly sunny skies, then left and took off walking for the next five hours.
If I were to move to Italy NOW, or want to relocate to another spot, I would pick Firenze.
Excerpts from my journal Friday night, 26 March 2010 , while resting my feet and having a delicious dinner:
“I love Firenze! At this point, with what I know and with my familiarity and my language, I’d move to Firenze. Milan was a great place to land and gave me anchors. I find much to interest me there. My camera is always at my side and I can stay as busy as I wish, but in just an afternoon, Firenze has thrilled me with its visuals, much the way that Venezia does.
“It’s very definitely a tourist town! I think that Spring/Easter vacations have begun because the clustering tour groups are everywhere and unavoidable. (I thought that, late March, I’d still be missing them all.)
“Firenze – Florence – is ‘tighter’. Narrower streets close into the center of town around the Duomo, and many ‘pedestrian-only’. the selection of little shops, restaurants and curious places gives much to explore without going far. The antiquity is a saturated wash over the town and gives it a texture that is lush across-the-board. Like Venezia, I could photograph here forever.
“I’m sitting at a table for two at Zá-Zá, a lovely, dar, funky, delicious trattoria just blocks from my Hotel Caravaggio. There’s been a table of four sitting near me having their meal, their drinks and their desserts. I smiled at them once… As they were leaving, the woman that had been nearest to me said goodbye – ‘Arrivederci‘. That tickles me.” (I highly recommend both the restaurant and the hotel.)
Excerpts from my journal Sunday afternoon, 28 March 2010 , on the train heading home to Milano:
“I had an incredible, full time in Firenze. So glad to have gone back, and with only an hour and 45-minute train ride, I could come for a day if I wanted to, or just an overnight.
“The city of Firenze, though packed with tourists, seems to have a quite comfortable parallel world of locals that go about their days and their work. With transportation and services so readily available, Firenze seems quite livable and pleasant.
“I very quickly got the-lay-of-the-land and covered much of the “Centro Storico” – the historic center of town – in my two days there, walking close to 20 hours overall.”
Yesterday evening, a friend asked by e-mail, “Should Florence be on my to-do list? What did you especially like about it?” I responded with an off-the-cuff, spontaneous list:
Everyone’s on foot or bike! The whole historic center, large radius, is almost all pedestrian-only with very few cars and some half-size, mini-buses. Walk everywhere. (I don’t think there IS a subway, but lots of public transportation.) Streets are narrow and closer in for easy strolling. NO traffic to even have to think about.
Absolutely fascinating art, history, culture, architecture at EVERY turn!
Historic sites. Historic art: Michelangelo’s David. Botticelli. Caravaggio. Dürer. Giotto. Leonardo. Lippi. Raphael. Rembrandt. Rubens. Titian. And so many more!
Visually lush. Vital, Small-city-energy.
VERY tourist-oriented (which I didn’t like having the vacation tours already swarming) but it felt like there was a parallel universe happening of people just going about their lives.
Florence doesn’t have the crazed-busy-frenzy of business-minded Milan.
Cool stuff for curious kids and adults alike. Sundials and crenulated towers.
Good gelato.
Neat bridges.
Street markets selling you-name-it.
Good cow-stomach sandwiches. (Lampredotto.)
The heartland of the Renaissance.
Oh. And they have curb-cuts designed for uninterrupted walking.
They call it “Cavolfiore” or Cauliflower here, but Americans call it “Romanesco Broccoli”. Either way, it tastes great, it’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s math on your plate.
The Romanesco is a clear example of fractals and the fibonacci number sequence.
See how the whole head of Romanesco is made of smaller heads that mimic the shape of the bigger head, and each of those smaller heads is made of even smaller, duplicate heads? Fractals!
FRACTALS: “A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole… Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms).” (Check Wikipedia for cool examples and further explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal)
And you see the ever-expanding spiral emanating from the center point along which all the smaller heads are arranged? The Fibonacci sequence and the Fibonacci spiral!
FIBONACCI: “In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. Thus the sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 etc.” (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci)
Click HERE for a beautiful video by Cristóbal Vila about numbers as they establish patterns in nature.
*TWO words are Italian!
The “pinch me” part. Along our drive I had been seeing “travel-guide Italy”, scenic, seaside towns, cliffside old buildings, palm trees, polished hotels and trattorias. The statues, the weathered stone and white columns were brilliant against the blue sky we had been given, and were just the sights that make people book a vacation. Incredible. It was all here.
We drove west along the Ligurian Sea route, through Bordighera and Ventimiglia to the border town of Menton, France. We got out and strolled the seaside walk, the streetside markets, the town squares. I heard French all around me but forgot to switch to “Merci”.
Most of the details on this yellow building are painted. Can you tell which shutters are real?
We continued on to Monaco and the Casino Monte-Carlo…