A little vacation is a dangerous thing. A big vacation is even more dangerous. Why? Because the bar goes up. The quality of life, which so easily gets lost in the daily shuffle, can become way too important -- perish the thought.
Apply this to dinner. Eat this example for inspiration on quality: During March break I landed, tired and hungry, on a small undeveloped Caribbean island. We stumbled into the restaurant Cristoforo Colombo, although to call it a restaurant seemed, at first glance, giving more credit than was due. The place was no more than a wooden porch (painted turquoise and hot pink) hanging off the back of somebody's house.
A barefoot guy wearing rumpled shorts and a few days' worth of 5-o'clock shadow ambled over to our table. He said: "I have pizza and I have fish." Then he told his story: He was the descendent of a noble Milanese family. But, he continued, "I quarreled with my father, so I had to get very far away. There was a catamaran in Genoa, and I cooked on it for a while. Now I am here. Every day I go fishing, and I sell what I catch. If I no catch, I no sell. Today I caught fish at 5 o'clock, so you can have fish. You can have it sashimi or salt-broiled."
But we don't think the guy's for real. Being from Toronto means never having to give up your cynicism. Vigilance demands the asking of trick questions: We make him tell us what he serves with the sashimi. Soy, wasabi and lettuce. Passed that test. So, we order everything the guy has -- salt-broiled fish, sashimi and pizza. After the rum punch, of course, this being the Caribbean.
The fish he caught at 5 o'clock is more than impeccable: Sashimi form, reclining on Bibb lettuce, it is the sweetness of the sea incarnate. Salt-broiled, he serves it with olive oil, lemon, and "jam" made from long-cooked green peppers, onions and raisins in olive oil. His respect for the proud simplicity of ingredients, coupled with insistence on serving only that day's catch, and his personal commitment to how it's cooked, reminds me in one mouthful why I first (and second, and third, and fourth) fell in love with Italian cooking.
The spirit of that homespun gastronomy lives -- albeit slightly altered -- at Bar Mercurio in Toronto, a curiosity of a restaurant in the Medical Arts Building at Bloor and St. George streets. At lunchtime, it's the unofficial cafeteria for University of Toronto professors and medical folk. They're surprisingly obedient about lining up at the counter to order their food: On good days, someone brings your order to table; on bad days, you have to do the schlepping yourself. Lunchtime is strictly a steam-table affair, with precooked pastas, soups and pizzas.
One could imagine the worst, but one would be wrong. Turnover is so high that the stuff never sits for long, so the pizzas are crisp and unsoggy, and the pastas full of flavour. This is honest cooking. Add a bottle of high-end Italian orange or lemon soda and count yourself clever for lunching there for a whopping $18 a person -- from rich pasta e fagioli to creamy espresso. So what if the tables are cramped and the pace hectic?
After dark, Bar Mercurio morphs into something soft and elegant. Lights go down, tablecloths go on, tiny lamps with silk shades twinkle on the long marble bar. As at lunch, cooks labour in the galley kitchen behind the bar; but the lunchtime hustle gives way, in soft light, to the pleasure of seeing food production as if behind a theatrical scrim.
The best of the food is antipasti and pasta. As at lunch, there are splendidly crispy pizzas with fine toppings. And superb soups, my current favourite being purée of rapini topped with fontina cheese and emerald al dente rapini. Papardelle with porcini uses dried Italian porcini (which have about 10 times more flavour than fresh local portobello mushrooms) with scallions and roasted red peppers in light cream sauce with just enough chilies to stand up and take notice. The frequently used tomato sauce is splendidly robust and happily blessed with garlic. Even risotto has flavour and bite.
But promise me you'll stay away from the big hunks of grilled flesh. At dinner they attempt veal, beef and chicken on the grill. Clearly none of it is the most expensive money can buy, and everything grilled tastes like what we grill at home when we've forgotten to clean the barbecue for a while. That "old grill" taste may be familiar but it falls short of salutary. The moral of the story is to provision yourself with purée of rapini and porcini papardelle, please.
Bar Mercurio, 270 Bloor St. West, 416-960-3877. Dinner for two with tax, tip and Italian soda: $36. Accessible to people in wheelchairs.