The scampi are on me

After the protracted proceedings at the bank yesterday afternoon, what better reward than taking Marco, Maddalena and Luca out to dinner for a second celebration of our nuptials – even if they are not recognised in Italy.

Stephen had been wondering all week where to go, and after much deliberation, he finally settled on a fish restaurant on the beach front in Porto San Giorgio. Called Damiani e Rossi, it is an elegantly understated restaurant that serves good food with a minimum of fuss but a great deal of finesse and knowledge.

As we are still without transport, Marco and Maddalena drove us, and when we got in their car there was a present for us to open: three sepia toned pictures in a frame of us on our wedding day. Thank you again, M&M; it’s lovely. If that was not enough, after we had parked up in Porto San Giorgio and were walking along the promenade to the restaurant, Luca, who had just arrived, hailed us from across the street. He joined us and presented us with a bouquet of roses and gypsophila, not camp at all.

When we arrived a couple of minutes later, we were shown to our table on the terrace abutting the beach, with its remarkably precise grid pattern of furled beach umbrellas and sunbeds, where we were able to watch the sun setting as we ate our way through the restaurant’s antipasti selection before primi and secondi piatti then desert and coffee.

I won’t bore you with a blow by blow account of everything we ate, especially as you can click on the hyperlink on the restaurant name above, but I will mention a couple of highlights – the first being tender lozenges of salmon that almost dissolved on your tongue, served with a peach salsa, and the other being a mini burger of tuna on a panzanella style base of tomato infused bread. Stephen was particularly pleased with his secondo piatto of scampi (the proper sort, not the make believe type ubiquitous in baskets in 1980s pubs) and served by the waiter from a copper fish kettle – but I think he was even more pleased with the prosecco with which we started the evening.

He’d remembered from a previous visit here a few years ago that they served one in a metal-capped bottle as opposed to one with a cork. He asked the waitress about it, who said yes they did still have this one. When she came with it, before opening it, she tipped it upside down; this was because the secondary fermentation occurring in the bottle leaves a deposit at the bottom and the agitating of the sediment mixes it through the wine. Surprisingly, when the wine is poured the sediment remains suspended in the glass; if you were of a fanciful frame of mind, you might say that the slanting rays of the sun make it look like you are drinking gold. But as that is a particularly pseudo thing to say, I assure you the idea never crossed my mind.