Bill's Birthday at Milano

When The Great Plotnik was taking restaurant photos with On Line for Idiots, he always walked in right before the place opened for business. The ostensible reason was to take photos of the restaurant set up and looking beautiful but without any people in the shots who would require signed releases.

But Plotnik had a hidden agenda and that was to find restaurants that smelled great. (When the place is empty all you can smell is the food, not perfume and hair spray and people stink.) These were those rare spots that had that East Coast hard-to-describe aroma and homey feel that he (and all of us) can sense the second we walk through the front door. Of every twenty restaurants whose photos Plotnik snapped, perhaps he'd find one that met his criteria. He'd file the name away, and eventually take Ducknik back there for dinner.

SOMETIMES he got to review the place and eat for free, Glory Be to Saints James and Julia. But usually he had to pay, and the smell test never led him astray.

One of these places was Milano, on Russian Hill. Plotnik loved the place when he took its picture a few years ago, but had never been back until last night. Milano smells Italian, but not North Beach Italian, where they pump up the garlic just to get people to walk in off the street. It's Northern Italy Italian, sophisticated but not shmancy, with a menu that makes you want to try every single dish.

Plot and Duck have really gotten lucky to have fallen in with a group of people who have known each other for decades and who enjoy spending time with one another. This is the other variable for any restaurant -- you have to go there with people who like to eat. Being newbies in this group is a delight.



To be a superb Italian restaurant, you have to make a superb veal chop. Milano's is just that. Most restaurants don't put veal chops on the menu because not that many people order them, but The Great Plotnik once ate his way through Tuscany, ordering nothing but veal chops in each restaurant in every city. It may not be possible to match the beauty at Il Bambino in Florence, but that may have something to do with the fact that Plotnik and Ducknik were placed next to a Japanese couple who needed help ordering, and Plottie was studying Japanese at the time. So he got to translate from Japanese to Italian, and Italian to Japanese, two languages he still doesn't speak, and it was TONS o' fun. Then the veal chop came, the size of Nebraska and as beautiful as a Michelangelo. Oh, man.



Last night, one delicious dish followed another, but Ducknik's polenta with homemade Italian sausages was maybe the best of all. The salmon was better when Nettie made it smile.



Walking out, everyone met the owner, Aldo, who turns out to have also owned Palatino on Cortland Street, before it closed. Silent Bill, who knows everyone, recognized Aldo having dinner with his very Plotnikkie-looking family, and they reminisced about long-ago meals.

Then we all walked out in the rain. Mush was holding Bill's hand, but dropped it right before the shutter snapped. But you can see it, can't you?