Remembrance of a Restaurant: A Decameron of Dining

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Summary: A World of Culinary Enchantment
Review: Enter a world of culinary enchantment which explores lovingly the human side of the Italian (Neapolitan) cuisine in this memoir of a notable landmark restaurant (1915-1975) in a heyday Coney Island. The memoir begins as a recollection of a small boy reared in a Neapolitan restaurant founded by his parents. Here- we find all the ins and outs,the antics and foibles of patrons,the wiles of waiters,the flaring temperament of cooks at the hot ranges,"originals" of staff and patrons, and in passim an entertainng history of a recent immigrant ethnic past in the proscenium of a restaurant dubbed A Little Bit of Naples in Coney Island. During the course of about a hundred anecdotes,vignettes,sketches,short profiles, we meet Al Capone's cook,Jimmy Durante, Vittorio De Sica,
Jimmy Walker,Sam Liebowitz,Tito Schipa, the Ballet Russe,the Follies and Vanities chorines,Bugsy Siegel,Damon Runyon,Frankie Yale,the Dodgers,Fred Thompson--the notable and notorious of the roaring Twenties and ensuing decades, May I suggest a companion read by the same author, his Under the Blue Skies of Naples,a picaresque novel in which the scion of a magnate pizza manufacturer in the USA sends his callow son to Naples to eatablish a frozen pizza franchise. The premise is kinky from the start with uproarious situations in the manner of Tom Jones by Fielding .It is a romp through Naples.The author has all his bona fides and credentials, he is a distinguished translator of Neapolitan poetry. Yes, this memoir is a sesame to a culinary enchantment.Buon appetito!

Rating:
Summary: Enter a World of Culinary Enchantment!
Review: Enter a world of culinary enchantment! The author is a distinguished translator of Neapolitan poetry,novelist and poet who explores the supremely human side of the Neapolitan cuisine of a noted restaurant in a once hey-dey,and fallen Playground of the World. I was an habitue of the restaurant in its greyer years,but still vibrant with activity and color.From an early age,(he must have been compelled to become a novelist) the author's mind was flooded to overflowing with vivid sense impressions of a bustling emporium: temperaments of cooks on fire,the wiles of wily waiters,the adult antics of staid and notorious patrons,and so many "originals" of many walks of life.Bye the bye this memoir is also a bit of recent ethnic history as seen though the stagelike atmosphere of this restaurant-chantant. How well he revivifies, and animates a populated dining room:an orchestrina strumming,singers singing canzoni, a comic doing a sketch,the general bonhomie in a haze of tobacco smoke from Turkish Helmars and Murads,the lovely coiffured women,an evening when chorines from the Follies and Vanities displayed shapely legs from under tables, ballerinas from the Ballet Russe tiptoed a tarantella ,at other tables Jimmy Walker,Bugsy Seigel,Will Rogers,Damon Runyon,Tito Schipa, Marie Dressler,Jimmy Durante.or one of the Barrymores summering at Sea Gate---Villa Joe's,A little Bit of Naples in Coney Island ,was one of many fine restaurants that graced the shores of Coney Island and Gravesend which included Guffanti's,Feltman's,Reisenwebers,Garguilo's,Beau Rivage,Villepique's,Tappens,Lundy's----Consider if all these restaurants were gifted with a recorder such as our author? How enrichening it would be to patronize by word these various worlds of culinary enchantment.Reserve a table!