An older couple responded extremely positively. “Delicious,” he said, with a hint of an English accent. “A very full taste,” she agreed, with another, harder-to-read accent, sipping her cappuccino delicately.
I jabbered about the new Lavazza machine, and may have clowned a little, my gestures big and silly. (I wanted to demonstrate my feud with the old machine, which had a tendency to spray milk wildly.) The couple laughed, the woman’s smile vast. She was very elegant, with a clear bright smile, and big brown eyes. He was older than her.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Originally California, but more recently Ohio.”
“Ah,” she said. “I am from Brazil. And he is from Pakistan.”
“Wow! That’s a ways away,” I said.
“Miss,” the man asked, “how long do you think I’ve been coming here?”
This is a question I hear a lot from regulars, their favorite game with young servers. They generally lean back and reply some variant on, “Before you were even dreamed of.”
I grin nervously, and try to beat him at the game, “Before I was even dreamed of?”
He nodded. “Nearly 50 years. It was my first day in DC. I’d gotten a job with the World Bank, but I hadn’t found a place to live yet, so they put me up in the Dupont Circle Hotel. I was walking to work, and as I passed by this place, the aroma from the kitchen just… captured me. I was in a rush, so I promised myself I’d come back for dinner. I came back for dinner. And of course, the food was superb. And bless you, it hasn’t changed.
“So I came back the night after, and the night after that. At least once a week, every week of the year. I took all my friends, my family, and every girlfriend.”
His companion giggled, “So many girlfriends!”
“All of the women I wanted to be girlfriends. Sometimes, it worked out, sometimes it didn’t.”
The woman said something under her breath in Portuguese, and they both laughed.
“I even took my father, and he had a fabulous time. He was the first president of Pakistan, and in those days, he was treated like a king. He didn’t have to do anything for himself, all of the details were handled by others. And in America, of course, it was not so. And still, he loved it. He wasn’t used to food cooked in this way, and he was delighted for the whole meal. A meal for a near-king.”
The man took another sip of the cappuccino, the foam lingering a bit on his upper lip.
“But at the end of the meal, he ordered some coffee, and paused a minute after tasting it. On the table, there were five little shakers: sugar, red pepper, black pepper, salt, and cheese. My father reached out and grabbed the cheese shaker, and started tapping parmesan into his meal. At first a little, then more and more. I just stared at him as he sipped his coffee.”
He said to me, “Son, this place may have the best pizza in the world, but their coffee is wretched.”
The man tipped his cup to me, and took a long sip.
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