San Francisco summers bring visiting friends, relatives, and celebs, and last week the top celeb was my ex-neighbor Mary Ann's mother, Antoinette. A good mother is hard to find; Antoinette is one, a youthful charmer with Sicilian ancestry and an engaging drawl. She arrived from New Orleans bearing a shopping bag laden with maternal bounty: a giant-size Nawlins muffaletta sandwich from the deli, a bunch of scrumptious miniature cannoli from a Sicilian bakery, and an octet of huge stuffed artichokes from her own kitchen. A few days after this exquisite repast, we decided to invite Antoinette et al. to a local Italian dinner of, we hoped, comparable quality. Mary Ann and I discussed and discarded various possibilities, rejecting the raucous lawyer hangouts in the Marina, the pricey exec feeding troughs downtown, and the impossible Friday night crowds in North Beach. One name kept coming up -- Laghi (pronounced "loggy"), a trattoria that from its opening (about eight years ago) has had a quietly superlative reputation.
TJ dropped us off at Laghi's door to follow his knightly quest for a parking place (only slightly more accessible than the Holy Grail in that neighborhood, and nearly as dependent on miracles), while the rest of us were greeted by Mrs. Laghi's lovely warm smile, and silently led to a double-size table in a cozy alcove at the back of the simply decorated, middle-size dining room. The reason Mrs. Laghi smiled silently was that we wouldn't have heard anything she said. The last time I ate there (about six years ago) the restaurant was half-empty, and rather quiet. This time, it was packed, including several diners at the bar (their just desserts for not reserving). Rugless and fabric-free (but for the tablecloths), the room's sound level was deafening in our corner, although the Laghis kindly forbore to pump in any music. The noise ricocheted against the three enclosing walls and bounced off tables, plates, human thoraxes. "Why are all the restaurants I've been to lately so noisy?" I yelled to Antoinette, sitting diagonally opposite. "The -- last -- three -- you -- couldn't -- hear -- across -- the -- table!" "Pardon me?" asked Mary Ann's boyfriend, Nick, sitting catty-corner. "How'm I gonna get any good quotes from these guys?" I muttered to myself.
The tables bore oil and vinegar cruets, and the waiter brought a bowl of marinated lentils and another filled with heavy white house-made bread. Parked at last (over on Lake Street), TJ rejoined us, tasted the lentils, and stated what we were all thinking: They were too vinegary. I stirred in a tablespoon or so of the extra-virgin from the cruet, and the mix smoothed right out to everyone's satisfaction. Kids, you can try this at home, and in restaurants, too.
The menu changes every night, although each week will have common elements based on what produce is at its best. The mode is Northern Italian, but don't expect Tuscan austerity. Gino Laghi's combinations are often exuberantly creative while still playing by classical rules. Everything is cooked to order (risotto is a 25-minute wait, entrees take 30 minutes), so unless you start dinner by 6 p.m. or deprive yourself of a main course, the meal serves as your evening's entertainment.
Like the imaginative menu, the wine list is a delight, with plenty of Italian bottles for $20 and under, as well as higher-priced quaffs. Our Sicilian-Irish waiter, Mitchell (he didn't volunteer his name and ancestry, we asked him), expertly helped us navigate to an $18 Barbera that he accurately described as "velvety." He also gracefully accommodated our specification to serve "family style," bringing a full round of plates for each course -- no round-robin dish-passing or overloaded bread-saucers required. In fact, throughout the evening, service was perfect -- with neither inhibitory hovering nor imbecilic stock questions, the staffers simply showed up whenever you needed something.
Our salad of organic tomatoes and mozzarella ($6.50) had sugary "Sweet 100" microtomatoes, ripe quartered cherry tomatoes, and suave cheese, with scallions and cukes for contrast. "This dressing isn't overvinegary, I appreciate that," said Mary Ann, veteran of too many pizzeria salads. Grilled black figs wrapped in Carpegna prosciutto ($7.50) were a sensual departure from the more usual melon-and-prosciutto appetizer, the fruit edged with smokiness, the veils of delicate ham presenting a smooth, salty contrast. Snails ($7) served shell-less surrounded by a circle of comforting soft polenta, were gently dressed with butter, fresh herbs, mushrooms, and a hint of garlic. "Ooh, so tender, they really melt in your mouth," said Antoinette. We all loved them madly; we concurred we'd never had their equal. Although the dressings were similar to classic Burgundian escargots, the taste was rounder and easier, and if texture is any indication, these were surely fresh, not canned. When I mentioned that our backyard snails are the same petit gris breed -- a French immigrant brought them to Colonial America, whence they escaped in a massive snailbreak and have been feloniously chomping our gardens ever since -- TJ was ready to start an escargot-recapture program. Come to think of it, you clean their systems by feeding them cornmeal for a week. No wonder they went so well with polenta.
Our next course comprised both a pasta and a risotto. The porcini pasta with exotic mushrooms ($12.50) were thickish 2-inch cylinders of dusky house-made noodles, lightly but richly dressed with a wonderful array of fungi, in which each species maintained its distinct character: There were porcini, morels, chanterelles, fetal cepes, and at least a couple more whose species I'm not sure about. All tasted like they were picked that day. The risotto ($16) was even more remarkable: The succulent short grains were mingled with savory goose stock, red wine, and bite-size nips of goose. It's rare to find goose on any menu in summertime, but on a cold foggy night it was completely apropos. "This is the best risotto I ever had in a restaurant," Mary Ann exclaimed. Laghi was inspiring us all with far-out ideas for home cooking, and she began to contemplate preparing goose for Christmas.
Much as I'd like to be invited for it, I had to warn her that roasting goose is even more labor-intensive than stirring risotto, what with the boiling water showers every 20 minutes to melt the fat. "Excuse my language," I said, "but goose is a real pain in the ass!"
The menu offered four main courses, so we tried 'em all. Grilled range-fed veal chop with garlic and herbs ($16.75) was a giant, top-quality chop, medium-rare to order, simple and perfect. By "top-quality," I mean flavorful pink-red meat (the kind Nancy Oakes serves at Boulevard), not the icky calves-in-bondage Provimi white-out. Prawns sauteed with tomato, garlic, and parsley ($16) were also cooked precisely right, with a slightly sweet, fresh-flavored tomato sauce topped with a thin layer of cream -- another dish you wish you could make as well at home. The other two entrees were somewhat disappointing. Rosemary-strewn sauteed rabbit ($16) had a pleasantly earthy accompaniment of artichoke slices and mushrooms, but the bunny was dryish (especially the bony rib pieces, which are hardly worth serving). The boneless lamb sirloin in a pastry crust ($16.75) was an ambitious dish, similar to beef Wellington, and like most Wellingtons it was all wet. The trouble with dishes like this is that if the crust is cooked, the meat is overcooked; if the meat is rare, the crust is doughy. Here, the lamb was leathery, the crust (a plain dough shell, rather than multilayered puff pastry) was gluey on the inside, and the eggplant mush that was evidently supposed to keep the meat moist had not only failed in its mission, but none of us liked its flavor. (Oh, well, every good chef is ineffably tempted to try a Wellington riff every few years. It never works, never.) All the main courses came with more yummy polenta and a handful of overcooked wax beans.
Against our wills, our overfed bodies now had to essay a few desserts. Antoinette chose the best: Ice cream ($4) consisted of three scoops, with a choice of a dozen house-made flavors (mixing allowed). Her choices were hazelnut ice cream and coconut sorbet. Both carried a full intensity of flavor. (The nearest place I know of to get coconut ice that good is the island of Trinidad, where coconuts grow on trees.) Puffi ($5.50) had blueberries and blackberries surrounding a blueberry sorbet with a whiff of mascarpone cream on top -- a highly sophisticated version of berries and sour cream. The sorbet was barely sweetened, with an intense berry flavor. "It's like a high-wire act," said TJ, "a perfect balance between tart and sweet." Our least favorite was a revisionist tiramisu ($5.50), served in a sundae glass. To reach the soaked ladyfingers you had to excavate through a lot of cream, and en route there were too many useless bittersweet chocolate chips interfering with the texture and overpowering the other flavors. TJ also disliked the quality of the powdered espresso on the topping; I was at the time sipping the same espresso, brewed, and indeed found it rather heavy-flavored.
Meanwhile, as the room emptied and quieted to a dull roar, operatic arias played quietly on the sound system, and chef Laghi emerged from the kitchen to greet the diners. He looked tired but happy. We felt tired but happy, too; the meal had set us back nearly $50 each, but it was more satisfying than many a $75-a-person outing we've had in this town. And Antoinette had eaten a meal of San Francisco's new Italian food that she swears she'll tell her friends about when she gets back to New Orleans -- "especially those snails.
