Dalla Padella alla Brace

There are places you don't choose for the food, even when the food is excellent. You choose them because you've left a piece of yourself inside. Dalla Padella alla Brace, for me, is one of those.

It's on Via dell'Ospedale, in Oneglia, and the street itself is half the story. It's a pedestrian lane, one of the caruggi, and I've known it forever: it starts behind my old elementary school, up at Largo Ghiglia, and runs down to Piazza San Giovanni, the church square. As a kid I walked it the other way, at a run, with my backpack on. As a grown man I started walking it again, to go to dinner. Same street, two different lives.

This osteria is one of those places that takes things seriously. It's Slow Food, it works with the presìdi and the products of the territory, and it has something few in Oneglia can claim: its own vegetable garden, up in Oliveto, a hamlet just above town. The seasonal vegetables come from there, the meats are chosen with care, the bread and the focaccia are made in house. And then there's the grill, in plain view, on lava stone: the name of the place isn't there by accident.

But I didn't go there to have the presìdi explained to me. I went with my mother, Stella, with my daughter Emma and with Roberta. It was our place for land cuisine, when we felt like something that wasn't the usual fish. And above all it was the place for birthdays: my mother's falls on the 14th of August, right in the middle of Ferragosto, and for years we celebrated it there, at those tables. Three generations around a plate, with the August heat outside and the town half empty, because by Ferragosto the people of Oneglia are all already at the beach.

The house specialty, the one everyone recommends, is the Ligurian rabbit. They braise it in Rossese, the red of the Ponente, the one from Dolceacqua, and they bring it to you deboned: no fight with the little bones, just the tender meat and the sauce. It's exactly how a well-made Ligurian rabbit should be. I have to confess something, though, and here I'm laughing at myself: I don't eat rabbit. I never have. So yes, I'm recommending with all my heart a dish I'll never taste. But I've watched it arrive at the table dozens of times, I've seen the faces of the people eating it, and that's enough for me to tell you that, there, the rabbit is the real thing.

What stayed with me from those dinners, most of all, was the dessert. It's called meringata, and it's a thing both simple and perfect: two large meringue discs with strawberries and cream in between. Crisp outside, soft inside, sweet but never cloying. Emma, who has a passion for meringues that borders on fanaticism, lights up the moment she sees it arrive. It became the family dessert, the one we order with our eyes closed.

And here's a tip from a regular, one paid for the hard way: order the meringata the moment you sit down, before the starters even, and ask the lady to set one aside for you. Because getting to the end of dinner, looking forward to it the whole meal, ordering it and being told «I'm sorry, we've run out» is a blow that, once you've felt it, you never want to feel again. I learned it the hard way: now I always reserve it.

The meringata at Dalla Padella alla Brace: the original — the one you hope is still there by the end of dinner.

At some point I had the nerve to try recreating it at home. Meringues, I told myself, are just egg whites and sugar, how hard can it be. Well, a little harder than that. I made and remade the discs, I whipped the cream, I sliced the strawberries, I assembled it all carefully, and every time out came something good, indulgent, that vanished at home in two minutes. The same as theirs, never. There's always that something-or-other missing, the thing that makes the difference between something made at home and something made by people who've been making it all their lives. It's one of those cooking lessons you learn by missing the mark: some things you remake just for the pleasure of remaking them, knowing full well the original stays right there, on Via dell'Ospedale.

My version, made at home with strawberries: good, but never quite the same as theirs.

There's the wine to mention, too. They choose it with the same head they use for the vegetables and the meats, and in a place named like this one, next to a plate of land cuisine, a good bottle is half the work. Let them advise you: usually they get it right.

And then there's the lady, who welcomes you with a kindness you find less and less these days. It isn't that surface politeness you get in restaurants; it's the kindness of someone who's genuinely glad you walked in. She's one of those people who, just by the way they greet you, already make you want to come back. A practical tip: book ahead, because it's an osteria of few tables, and in the caruggi word travels, the people who know go there.

If you're at Stella sul Mare and one evening you want to leave the fish in peace, this is where I'd send you. Walk down the caruggi to Via dell'Ospedale, the same one that, a few steps further down, takes you to Piazza San Giovanni, where Blengini's bread is and the heart of Oneglia beats. Sit down, ask for the rabbit in Rossese and a good bottle, and if the meringata arrives at the end, do me a favor: think of a lady blowing out a candle on Ferragosto, with a little granddaughter beside her who was only ever waiting for dessert.