Hey Friends,
At the start of each week, I so look forward to two of our special nights at TATM…’Cowboy Taco Tuesday’ and ‘Stanley Tucci Wednesday’. However, I must admit I am somewhat conflicted and caught between two worlds.
Some days I swear, our valley tilts just enough to blur into Tuscany…(maybe it’s wishful thinking or just my cataract vision)…the light gets that honey-gold color, the hills breathe in slow waves and suddenly I’m not just a Chef & restaurant owner…I feel like I’m a character in a spaghetti western scored by my favorite composer Ennio Morricone himself.
I’ll be walking past the Mission on the way to the restaurant and I feel that delicious tension between the two worlds I love. The Tuscan world of olive oil, slow afternoons and what the Italians call ‘dolce far niente’…the sweetness of doing nothing…and the cowboy world of dust, leather, and cast-iron cooking. I sometimes expect Clint Eastwood might step out from behind a Mission wall, squint at me, and tip his hat before ordering a plate of Pasta Carbonara to go while I hear the distant wail of a harmonica… ‘wah-wah-wahhhh’.
San Juan Capistrano clearly still embraces its own frontier spirit…a place where horses prance past aged adobe walls, the air smells like mesquite and citrus, and where the valley still remembers the old vaqueros like we do at our Tumbleweed Bar.
And yet, when in my home kitchen, I’m stirring risotto, shaving Parmigiano, and, with Tino by my side, coaxing my backyard rosemary into purple blooms. I’m basically Clint Eastwood if he traded his poncho for a black apron and a glass of Chianti. Two cultures…both rugged, both romantic, both shaped by land, hunger, passion, grit and grace.
So yes….I’m caught in a spaghetti western…instead of gunfights, my showdowns happen in the kitchen. Tuscan herbs versus cowboy smoke, Chianti versus tequila, cast iron versus terracotta. I’m a guy with one foot in Tuscany and one boot in Capistrano. A guy who believes a hand-crafted bowl of pasta can be as heroic as a cowboy riding into the sunset. A guy who knows that the best stories and best meals can come from letting worlds collide and be shared…caught between two homelands: the rolling hills of Tuscany and the wide-open West of Capistrano… I think Morricone would have loved it.
Honestly…I wouldn’t want it any other way…this valley is my film set…the restaurant is my saloon…and my life equal parts pasta and saddle leather make up my spaghetti western…and I’m proud to be its leading man.
Ciao & Adios
David….along with nominated best supporting cast member…Tino
