Moveable Feast Marino Corazza
DURING our courting years one of the simple treats my wife and I would indulge in when we had a little spare cash was to have dinner at La Lampara in Norwood.
La Lampara is a fishing boat lamp used at night to attract the fish. The eaterie had similar beckoning powers for lovers lost in this African metropolis. Small, dark, smoky and cosy, the tiny bistro supplied idyllic honest meals at reasonable prices and memorable moments for free.
Twinkle in the eye, we enjoyed heaped-high hot plates of deep fried whitebail with lashings of lemon squirts together with very basic, done just right, salted plain pizza bread. Or blushingly braised, tender veal chops on the bone with real Nioise salad.
“Thanks for the memories,” which are kept in a closed laquer-ed box.
Close on two decades have gone past, so when friends of ours asked us to join them at La Lampara the other night we did not hesitate. She’s Swedish, he’s Irish/Welsh and with us, and our respective progeny, we made eight. It was going to be a splendid evening.
We pitched, all scrubbed and polished. Pizza oven still in the same place, smiling faces, but the place had tripled in size, a sign of success: if the joint was good then, it would be good now. Sat down all nice and comfy and ready for a fond capriccio of the mind.
Suddenly we were confronted by this tightly dressed apparition who arrogantly took us through the specials; we were all players on the stage of an Opera Buffa. Mesmerised, we listened to the waitress’s crescendo coloratura as she mispronounced and got all the ingredients wrong with lots of fioritura and conviction of the ignorant. Bravo, I say. What a marvellous fandango!
The kids chose pizzas and cokes, all Reginas at 19 smackers each. The adults settled for a huge salad for four for cleansing and purifying. One lasagne at R19, a panzerotti at R20 and two carpaccios, one for moi — and I could not resist a half-portion of penne pasta with crab meat sauce and a plain pizza bread for old times’ sake.
We munched and glugged the wine and the pasta arrived. This was truly a dish d’imitazione, bland and insipid, man-made stock fish tubes artificially coloured and flavoured. Shame. I inquired from the owner if I could possibly have the real thing, only to be bossily told to have something else.
Declining, I had my carpaccio. The raw beef was so thin as to be transparent, not marinated at all, and the parmesan shaving turned out to be local pecorino. Hey, there’s nothing like utilising vacuum to pump up the profit margins. That’s how it goes, unfortunately.
The android-programmed Barbie doll waitress and Mr Designer-clothed Owner had that attitude of know- it-all pseudo-cognoscenti and disdain for one and all that was the most objectionable part of the evening.
We polished off three bottles of modest wine in this commedia dell’arte. The bill was burlesque at R287.
Hungry but still with a smile, I would call this lot una burla (a prank), un imbroglio (a trick), but then there’s a lot of that going around at the moment.
Never mind, my wife and I still have our matching laquered boxes.
La Lampara: Grant Avenue, Norwood. Tel: 728-4715
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THE WEEKLY E-MAIL
AN ELECTRONIC SERVICE OF THE WEEKLY MAIL AND GUARDIAN JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
ISSUE DATED SEPTEMBER 23 1994
# NEWS & OPINION SECTION
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