L'Osteria (heart, home)

Okay so no honeymoon (not yet). Gio and the kids are at the beach with my in-laws and I'm back to work, hands full at Poggiosole. A sweet group checked in today, all the way from Australia. Glorious weather for them, big clouds and sun and gusts after an afternoon of steady rain yesterday, which washed the horizon and dropped the temperature a full 8 stonkin' degrees. Guests shown 'round and settled in I called a handful of tradesmen, delivered a cash payment to one of our metalsmiths, and met with a young mason who will soon restore a stone wall in our cantina, our cellar. I texted with a guest arriving two weeks from now, then decided to treat myself to dinner.

I rolled down to the Osteria Enoteca i Vignaioli, a chill, somewhat oversized restaurant less than three kilometers from our front gate. The place used to be a glorified truck stop, just off the ramps leading to the Firenze-Siena state route, a location which does it no favors. But about five years ago it was taken over by a family I know, a family of farmers, artists and cooks, who began the painstaking process of turning the place around, night by night, week by week, dish by dish, really you have to be half out of your mind to undertake such a thing. Occasionally I would check in, meaning sit down, order a meal. "Yeah", I'd think to myself, "it's getting there." Where "there" was felt hazy though, so the Osteria went on and off Poggiosole's list of recommended restaurants. For the past couple of years it's been off. Call it an abundance of caution, like declining to review a book written by someone you know well.

Anyone in the restaurant business will quickly disabuse you of any notion you may have of the thrill or glamour of putting food in front of people. When I'd run into the 30-something daughter of the Osteria's owner and ask how it was going the response was between hope and despair, tilted towards the latter.

Tonight, I noticed the menu had been redesigned. Pretty. I opened it and my eyes fell upon a page of prose. Prose verging on verse.

A lot of places do this on the overleaf: who we are, our values, our commitment to local growers, preserving tradition, etc etc. This was different. This was about toil, pain, and the promises we make to ourselves when we're all in. When there's no plan B. When the work and our person and our family blur in a consuming, messy, endless, numbing procession of tasks the sum of which is often chaotic, occasionally beautiful, then not, then a stumble, then, fleetingly, sublime.

I asked my waiter, the brother of the aforementioned daughter, to recommend a starter and a main. Based on those I chose the type of wine, a Vermentino which ended up being shockingly good, as did the food... the starter especially.

I came away impressed. L'Osteria is on our list of recommended restaurants as of today, and will likely remain there. This is probably overdue. We're often hardest on those we know, ourselves included, ain't that so?

The verse, photographed above, is all heart. Reading it, twice, I felt a pang of recognition. I felt at home.