Making Limoncello of Lemons

We traveled to the birthplace of Limoncello.

With nothing in particular to do, we grabbed some fruit and hopped the subway to Sorrento, home of the enormous and incredibly fragrant Sorrento lemons.

After a few days in Vico, it felt like we'd arrived in a big city.

Sadly, my research had already informed that despite being a resort town, Sorrento has no real beaches, so I wasn't going to finally reach the sea here, either.

A short walk, however, proved that there weren't many more sights to see than in Vico, just more tourists to dodge doing it.

Probably the coolest natural phenomena was Il Valone dei Mulino, a deep cleft in the mountain caused by a volcanic eruption 35,000 years ago.

Naturally the locals made the most of it, building breathtaking homes and terraces along the sides and putting a roadway at the bottom.

These people are nothing if not resourceful.

Further down the sunny main drag, we saw the distinctive Duomo, easy to spot with its three tiered bell tower (how many bells do you need around here anyway?) and decorative majolica clock.

Probably my favorite part of Sorrento was the abundance of the tiniest side streets jutting off the main drag, Corso Italia.

We were looking for a specific one, Via Fuoro, for a restaurant (of course).

Just as we were about to give up, we came upon the charming Inn Bufalito.

The patio had a wooden pergola, the light bulb covers were baskets hung upside down and the walls and benches were stone.

Ours was a corner table, meaning an L shaped stone bench with bright red cushions and a tucked away feel.

Even better, the restaurant is a member of the Slow Food Movement, so we settled in for an afternoon of stellar local food and wine with an emphasis on buffalo, of all things.

Because nothing says a long, leisurely afternoon like pink bubbles, we began with a bottle of Cantine Montesale spumante Agliancio Rose, dry and lovely and eminently drinkable over the long haul.

We have had gallons of Agliancio, the local grape, but none so far as Rose.

Our 20 year old server was adorable, even more so for his very retro 70s era glasses.

When I complimented them for their vintage look, he earnestly assured me they were very stylish.

 I laughed, telling him I'd known guys who'd worn that very style when I was his age, but yes, I knew they were stylish.

Born in Naples, he moved to Sorrento to work six days a week at Inn Bufalito, lunch and dinner shifts after which a few nights a week he came up to Vico to see his girlfriend.

He was pleased with our first choice, an antipasti of cured buffalo meats: salami, Parma ham made of buffalo and my favorite, schiacciata, which came in small rectangular slices with a square of pure fat in the center.

Our corner vantage point meant we got to see everyone in the patio area as they came and left.

The couple from Annapolis spoon feeding each other dessert, the trio from Boise, Idaho who lingered for hours like us, the fat American couple, the husband cracking wise with the server, saying, "Oh, you have pasta?"

The restaurant had every variation of buffalo mozzarella imaginable, tiny, large, braided and we got ours in a Caprese with tomatoes as bright as the red cushions we were sitting on.

When we finished, another server came to clear our table, spilling my glass of pink bubbles, much to his mortification since he had just knocked over a wine glass on another table.

He graciously went and got me a full glass to replace it, despite our bottle being nowhere near finished.

For our main course, we shared an enormous earthenware dish of mussels, clams and tomatoes in a white wine and butter sauce.

Neither the clams nor mussels were large, but the flavor was distinctly that of the sea, that elusive prize I had been seeking unsuccessfully since arriving on the coast.

The restaurant had an art show up of large format black and white photographs, done in the past few years.

A tiny nun talks to two uniformed police officers on the street. An ancient looking woman checks her makeup in a street mirror. A donkey carries a load of produce.

Any one of them would have been an amazing souvenir, not that any one would have fit in my suitcase.

By the time we were ready to leave, our server was my new best friend and it was late afternoon.

Our meal and even the hours spent on the patio had been easily some of the best of the trip so far.

Meandering back toward the subway station, we stopped for espresso (no, not me) and gelato (yes, again), this one so whipped as to be more like mousse than ice cream.

Pure butterfat, my companion noted, downing his caffeine fix and two apricot butter cookies.

It wasn't until we were riding back to Vico listening to a band of gypsies serendaing our subway car that I realized we'd just come from Sorrento, the lemon capital of the world and had not had Limoncello.

Considering the fine and leisurely meal we'd had, though, it hardly seemed to matter.

I'll just wait for a donkey load of Limoncello to arrive in Vico.