pippo

Before we leave Paraty I feel you should know about Pippo. Because it's going down in history as one of my favorite dinners of all time, because it's beautiful and you should go there, and because funny things happened there.

Of the dozens of restaurants we passed and admired, we chose this one because it started to rain just as we walked by its door. I love Italian food, and the dining room was elegant and cozy and way dryer than outside in the rain, so we immediately started drinking wine to celebrate all of this. I'm usually not a big fan of vino but Tickby and Mark were into it, so I joined.

Well, the wine was delicious. and the little bruschetta and eggplant-on-toasty appetizers they brought out were delicious. In keeping with my reputation as the cheapest drunk ever, I started giggling halfway down my first glass, and Tickby and I turned our attention to the following page in the menu:

I honestly don't know what we found so goddamn funny about it.

So the owner is a dude named Pippo with a soulful gaze and a huge pepper mill. So what?

But it's kind of a little bit funny, right? He's all 'Hello. I grind you pepper so hard you eat make love it.' he's all 'hello. you eat you noodlies i make cannoli. hello.'

I don't know. We were drunk. And in hindsight, maybe loud. Um, I hope not.

My dinner was so good. It was a pumpkin and sheep cheese ravioli with herbs and I don't remember the rest. But it was so so delicious. To celebrate this I drank more wine.

'Hello. I shake my pepper mill you face you love the ravioli. Hello.'

After a good and thorough laugh at the founder of the restaurant we were enjoying so much, guess who came out of the kitchen to eat his own dinner at a table right near ours?

'Hello.'

Doubly intense: we were, at that point, the only people left. So we had to chat with him and, you know, say hello.

I'll be honest, I didn't feel so bad about having spent a long time making fun of him a lot because I knew i was 100% sincere in gushing about how delicious his food was. Also I was 'drunk.'

PLUS we discovered we have a mutual friend! The manager of a hotel in Sicily near Pippo's hometown, where my best friend got married.

PLUS - and this is where it all gets fuzzy, so I'm going by Tickby and Mark's telling of it - but apparently I was babbling to Pippo about how our mutual friend made the most delicious limoncello I'd ever had and how I had learned in Sicily that I love limoncello.

So guess what pippo sent us.

pippo's fave limoncello

OK in more hindsight I'm embarrassed. He couldn't have been lovelier or awesomer, and I worry that he needed his limoncello to be better than Nunzio's because maybe Nunzio's pepper mill is bigger? But nonsense. Pippo's pepper mill was so huge!

Pippo asked us to send a photo of the three of us to our pal Nunzio in Sicily. So we did.

me, tickby and pippo

Um, this is the end of the Pippo story. Yeah sorry, I guess it's not that funny. But drink some limoncello and read it again and see what happens.