Back before Big Oil came to St. John's and gentrified the place, there were very few eateries whose main offerings were not deep-fried. One of these places was a fascinating dive down on Water Street called Napoli Pizzeria and Restaurant. The proprietors were a colorful old couple from Naples who came to Newfoundland for some undisclosed and wholly incomprehensible reason and opened the place years and years ago. He scowled at the world through a style of spectacles not in use since the fifties and possessed a kind of furtive hunch suggesting illicit knowledge, an apron which was never either notably clean or particularly dirty, and a tone of voice that seldom varied from a querulous trumpet. She, on the other hand was a jolly, rotund little thing, wreathed in smiles and black taffeta, usually wearing 3-inch heels which brought her brain pan maybe 4 ½ feet off the floor. She spoke virtually no English but could turn out a remarkably tasty meal with the best salad available in St. John's and a lovely chewy Italian bread she made in the pizza oven.
As near as we could make out her name was Mamma and he didn't have one. We referred to the place as Luigi's just because we knew what we meant, and went there from time to time because it was handy and cheap. Most of their patrons went there to get take-out pizza but there was an actual menu with spaghetti and ravioli and such on it and they were always excited when somebody ordered from it because it was more expensive than the pizzas and it looked more respectable having people sitting at the tables with plates and forks rather than just lounging at the counter waiting for the heavy-on-the-pepperoni.
After we had gone there a few times it got so they recognized us and Luigi would escort us solemnly to a table and trumpet something to Mamma in the kitchen. Then he would carefully unfold a couple of paper napkins and deploy them over the spots on the table, first in front of Jim and then me, then deposit a second pair of virgin paper napkins in front of each of us, as if he was preparing for surgery, and dump a heap of sticky cutlery on them. Then Mamma would waddle out beaming beatifically and chattering in some hybrid tongue incomprehensible to Anglophones and Italianophones alike. And we would beam back at her and pretend we knew what she was trying to say, which we almost never did. Then we would order something and wait for our salads to appear.
There was no shortage of visual distractions to while away the time and spur conversation. There was usually either wrestling or greed shows on the tiny black-and-white television which was thoughtfully placed so all the customers could share the entertainment. Or idiosyncratic floral arrangements which ran to a jelly jar full of plastic flowers with an occasional daisy tucked in for authenticity. And on the walls, which had not been washed since 1953 when Luigi got his glasses, there were great numbers of original paintings lovingly rendered by somebody's relative who was either very young at the time or almost entirely lacking in talent. Or we could squirm around in the chrome set chairs and pick at the clothes pins that held the construction plastic in place over the tablecloth.
For most of the nine endless years I spent in that dreary land Luigi had been engaged in a no doubt fragmented and certainly frustrating dialogue with City Hall concerning the acquisition of a liquor license. As you can imagine, it was a red letter day in the annals of Napoli Pizzeria and Restaurant when some minor functionary inadvertently allowed this application to slip through. Luigi responded gamely by immediately acquiring an artistically calligraphed sign, conspicuous by its absence of fly spots, announcing FULLY LICENSED, and propping it in the front window next to the menu. While it didn't draw tumultuous crowds as anticipated, it did cause a tiny flutter in the breasts of certain of us regulars, and on our next trip we plumbed the depths of this veiled promise and discovered that what “Fully Licensed” meant to Luigi was a bit of cheap scotch, a bottle of gin, three or four varieties of local beer and two kinds of Italian red wine. Having sampled both of the latter we settled on Chianti Classico and as soon as we walked in the door Luigi growled a greeting, very nearly smiled, and rushed off into the kitchen to fetch us a bottle.
Meanwhile Mamma effused and we looked at the menu and then for the sport of it, asked her what she thought we should have since we once discovered that there was a whole world of stuff which was not on the menu which was frequently better than what was, and furthermore what was on the menu was often not available. The menu was just a coded notice which said “We've got stuff that isn't pizza.” Encouraged by our interest, she launched into a very long and perfervid discussion involving clams and spaghetti and “shrimpa like dis” (indicating a point halfway up her forearm) and since she clearly wanted us to do this we ordered it with no clear idea what to expect. When it came, it proved to be one of the happiest surprises I've had at a restaurant. They charged us twice the price of anything else on the menu bringing it up to the price of an average meal anywhere else in town and it was worth every dime.
I think it was this meal that earned us Most Favored Diner status down at Luigi's. Be that as it may, the next time we went in there we got cotton napkins.
Then one momentous Valentine's Day we thought we should have a night out, and naturally thought of Luigi's. So we set out through the rain, drizzle, and fog thinking about all those nice surprises in Mamma's scrupulously tidy kitchen only to discover first, a big, red Closed sign, and second, and altogether unnerving, an accompanying For Sale sign right there next to FULLY LICENSED. We were dumbstruck. This was like selling Mount Rushmore.
A few days later I happened to be strolling down that way in the middle of the day and looked in. I was pleased to note that Luigi was there in his usual spot propping up the counter and watching the TV, so, consumed with curiosity and concern, I badgered Jim into going down there for dinner shortly thereafter to explore the mystery of the For Sale sign. All seemed as it should be: Luigi fetched out our Classico and Mamma came and told us what we should have, and then ensued a fractured conversation slotted between the arrival of the wine glasses, napkins (cotton), salad, and the unreasonable demands of Other Diners, the upshot of which was that they (i.e. Mamma) suddenly decided she had had enough and wanted to go home. So they put the place up for sale and were returning to Naples the following Tuesday. The catastrophe confirmed.
Then after we had finished our meal (a lovely bit of squid, unremarkable sausage, and world class salad), Mamma waddled up and planked herself down at our table, which she had never done before, and poured out their whole sad story. I think this is what she said.
She and Alfonso (not Luigi after all) had arrived in Canada donkeys years ago and had gone to Hamilton, Ontario, where there were lots and lots of Italians. Then 19 years ago they had decided to strike out on their own and open a restaurant in St. John, New Brunswick. Unfortunately there was some misunderstanding when they bought their tickets and they found themselves in St. John's, Newfoundland instead. One can only guess what ran through their minds when they discovered their mistake. But I guess they didn't have the price of return fare and one barbaric outpost was no worse than another so they stayed on. But now Mamma was 63 and Alfonso was 68 and they were unable to entice any relatives to come over from the old country to take on the restaurant, so they were throwing in the towel, which is the most sensible thing they could do, I suppose, but it left us bereft and uncertain about where we would find another source of shrimpa-like-dis.
With heavy hearts, Jim and I went down for dinner on their last day for one last culinary adventure. We took along a little going away trinket accompanied by a Farewell and Have a Lovely Retirement card (the range of greeting cards available these days takes my breath away). Mamma ordered us lobster tails (three apiece), which were delicious, the usual wonderful salad and chewy bread, and of course the Classico. When we were finished Mamma brought us a couple of glasses of Sambuca with a couple of coffee beans floating in it which you are supposed to suck on while you drink the stuff - not bad. Meanwhile Mama brought us a doggy bag with breadsticks and apples and butter packages and we finally broke away (the bill came to $60 Canadian, including 12% sales tax), shaking hands all around and turned our backs regretfully and forever on the legend that was Luigi's.
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