Remembering Recipes

Rating:
Summary: Dress Designer Turns Restaurateur
Review: Here is an instance when the art of cooking and the art of couture converge with pleasant results. The authoress showcases the tasty menu items as if each were a model strutting across a dining room in one of her creations. She calls them Triumphal Platters(Grandi Piatti).Often, accompanied by a march or a tarentella from the house orchestrina.She revified the aging landmark restaurant, supercharged by her to live on for another 35 years for a total of seventy-five. Villa Joe's restaurant was not a posh restaurant. I remember going there with my parents as a child, being mischievoius in the gardens, playing with the house pets, and lingering at the huge dog kennel alongside, listening to the cafe chantant entertainment in the dining room, creaming myself with spumoni. Imagine my parents, faces bright, were singing along with a tune,
a far cry from the drabness of East Side tenement! With all her fashion training, the author, remained true to the spirit of the restaurant; nothing gimmicky about tried and true recipes I remember too, the beautiful murals,
the red Pompeian walls with vedute of the Amalfi coast There was a touch of artistry everywhere.I have read Remembrance of a Restaurant, and Chez Dogs, companion volumes that compose a trilogy with Remembering Recipes.Really, a marvelous hat trick! Never has a restaurant been so ably described, and so lovingly. Un bel ricordo!