It's just coincidence that this restaurant in Amalfi is called the same as the one in Locorotondo mentioned in the last entry in this blog. There are probably hundreds of Taverna del Ducas across Italy. Like there are hundreds of Dog and Ducks across England, I suppose.
Anyway, it was here at this little restaurant that I ate a dish I'd not encountered before, and would be disappointed to see on the menu after a Tuesday. It was schiaffoni alla ragu della domenica, or pasta with Sunday sauce, and I enjoyed it, appropriately enough, on a Monday. Like many a Monday supper in our own home, the dish presumably relies on leftover roasted meat from Sunday. Whilst we have cottage pie with yesterday's roast beef or shepherd's pie with yesterday's roast lamb, they have pasta with Sunday sauce. I couldn't tell you whether the meat was beef or pork, but it was delicious, with the occasional caramelised burnt edge of roasted meat and a deep ragu of tomatoes and herbs and maybe red wine that spoke of long, slow cooking.
So why the picture of a guitar? Well, the service here was what you might call relaxed. Not sloppy or tardy, but casual. Our food was brought to us by a middle-aged chap with longish, thinning hair and a toothless smile, wearing a worn out jumper and jeans. Part way through the evening, he picked up a guitar and started to sing to the assembled diners. Except he sang so softly that no one could hear him. When he accompanied his playing with a kazoo (played just as inaudibly), it became bizarre. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Pepe.
Turned out that Pepe was a true wandering minstrel. On discovering we were English, he proceeded to regale us with tales of how he had worked in London as a young man. At the Café Royal, no less. And the Ritz. He punctuated his little tales with an occasional (soft) strum of his guitar. He told us how the people he had worked with had cropped up again in his life, unexpectedly, in other parts of the world. Strum. Like the boy from Naples who worked with him in London, before they went their separate ways, until he bumped into him in a park in Paris several years later. Strum. It was a small world. Strum. If truth be told, we couldn't get rid of him. Until he told us that he had a wife and five children to support and that he just worked in the trattoria to help out, they didn't pay him, and times were tough... we gave him a few euros, and he was off to the next table. Strum.
Next morning we wandered past the restaurant on our way down to catch a boat from the harbour. There was Pepe, setting up the parasols. He waved, as if surprised to see us. It's a small world.
Ristorante La Taverna del Duca, Piazza Spirito Santo, 26 - 84011 Amalfi
Tel 089 872755
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