EVERYONE has their dream of the per- fect Italian restaurant,
a fantasy more often met by proxy in the writings of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. One turns up at some modest hostelry, is furnished with course upon course of delicious food, every ingredient, animal or vegetable, reared or grown in the next field, and with rough jugs of throaty yellow vino locale just that morn- ing squeezed from the vat by a cheerily aproned signora, who at the end of lunch presses on you, as a modestly proud cour- tesy, a home-distilled aromatic and molten digestivo, before handing you, some hours later, a bill for fourpence.
Reader, that restaurant exists. Lo Stram- botto, it's called, but exactly where it is I couldn't tell you, even if I do have the address. The best I can say is, if you're coming from Porto Ercole go towards Manciano, passing through Albinia, but be sure to phone for directions first.
On arrival I was disappointed. After a long drive in the heat, I'd imagined sitting outside, with a picturesque view. Instead, we were bundled into a dark and low- ceilinged hut, the walls covered in that depressing off-white bobbly paint which looks as if someone's been throwing por- ridge at the walls. Forget all this: wait only for the food.
We were ten, including some Italians who'd arrived first, which probably helps, and the table was already filling up with good things to eat. In a London restaurant this would be naff beyond words, but here it worked: a wicker basket is laid in front of you, filled with salami; by it is placed a small chopping-board and a sharp knife. Cut and eat. I did, most memorably from the salame toscano, mild, sweetly peppery and infused softly but insistently with garlic, and studded with huge and pearly eyes of fat.
We left the ordering to the Italians and the signora. Plates of antipasti came: bruschetta with a garlicky, deeply toned purée of aubergine (in unsmart trats in Italy bruschetta is much more like fried slice than chic toast, as it is in trendy Lon- don restaurants) in a bowl in the centre of the dish; a just warm tan,_;le of fennel, roast to wilted, honeyed brownness, somewhere between a salad and a stew; and my favourite, olivt.. bread with anchovy butter, only the olive bread was dense, thinly sliced, not the olive-dotted light bread you can get in M & S, but as heavy and grainy as pumpernickel. The buff-coloured anchovy butter was cold and smooth. I eat and re-eat this in longing memory.
Three plates of pasta came: wide straw- coloured ribbons with porcini; twisted, sinewy ropes of it with rap', and gnocchi w pesto. Now, I don't even like gnocchi • I loved these. They were more like _dges of mashed potato bound with herbs, more like a dream of gnocchi than gnocchi.
Main coorses followed, though we were flagging. Rabbit was stuffed, studded with juniper berries, fennel seeds and needles of rosemary, rolled, and cooked by that dis- tinctively Italian method, both braised and roasted at the same time. Carpaccio was plentiful, draped like pieces of red silk over the big round plate. The brasato had been cooked so slowly, so long, that the beef, thin, pale, wine-wet slices of it, was as sweet as carrot. Potatoes were roughly cubed and roasted with rosemary and garlic, a text- book example of a familiar dish. Peperona- ta was silky and smoky and spruced with salty grey capers. A plate of soft white goat's cheese came too, each small-cut square topped with gritty local honey. Only at the River Café in Hammersmith have I come across this combination before. It works. Ifs heaven.
Panna cotta — best described as halfway between crème caramel and crème with just picked and diced strawberries heaped on top — came at the end. Wine came throughout in pitchers, thick and yel- low and cidery, Argentario wine, and after cups of lemony-strong coffee, the signora put on the table a bottle of home-made golden grappa, flavoured with oranges.
And if the meal didn't cost fourpence, it came to about its modern equivalent. With the 2,000 lire a head for admission (because of licensing laws the place is nom- inally a club) we paid, including an unso- licited tip, about 30,000 lire — about £13 — each.
Lo Strambotto, Loc S Sisto, Manciano (GR); tel: 0564 605002.
Nigella Lawson
1 find these sudden death shoot-outs very unsatisfactory'
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