RESTAURANTS
When on Lake Como, Craig Brown does as the
Italians - and the famous - do and visit the Locanda dell' Isola Comacina
As attentive readers of this column may
have noticed, I am a keen spotter of
celebrity photographs on restaurant walls.
Over the years, I can claim to have
spotted pictures of all the major British stars - Reg
Varney, Clodagh Rodgers, Tommy Steele, the lot -
their flamboyant autographs often accompanied by a
personalised message to the restaurateur ("To Frank
and Lin - In appreciation of the truly superb grub!
Ever yours, Terry Scott").
But in recent years, the modishly spartan design
of the new juggernaut restaurants has accelerated the
decline of the celebrity photograph. Nowadays, you
are almost as likely to find a restaurant wall decorated
with three duck as the Three Degrees. So imagine
my joy when, on a recent trip to Italy, I discovered
a treasure-trove of these photos in a restaurant on
the edge of a little island on Lake Como, all the
celebrities pictured with their arms around the
beaming proprietor, Benvenuto Puricelli.
And what celebrities! Arnold Schwarzenegger! Elton
John! Bruce Springsteen! Gianni Versace! Ursula
Andress! Sylvester Stallone! Kirk Douglas! There was
even one of Mr Puricelli with Dr Christiaan Barnard,
certainly the handiest of dining companions if ever
one's beef proves tricky to carve. But what had led all
these superstars to visit a restaurant on a small island
serving only house white and a compulsory set menu
that has remained unchanged down to the last pat of
butter since 1984? In a spirit of inquiry I set off as
a passenger in a little ten-seater traghetto across the
200-yard stretch of water from the mainland to the
Isola Comacina, an island small enough to walk
around in 15 minutes. For such a tiny place, the
Isola has had a notably topsy-turvy history, acting
as a home-from-home for superannuated monarchs,
aspirant saints and bearded pirates. Its most disastrous
error occurred in 1169 when it declared war on the
mainland: it is now rich in ruins, and little else.
The restaurant is the only building visible on the
island, though rumour has it there's a house for painters
tucked away in the bushes. The building itself is at
best nondescript, like an ungainly Swiss chalet, but its
view of Lake Como is spectacular. Happily, we had
fine weather on the evening of our visit, so everyone
was eating on the terrace. The inside looks rather
ugly and functional, the hundreds of paintings hanging
on its walls perhaps purchased in a job-lot from the
railings at Piccadilly on a particularly poor Sunday.
We were shepherded to a table for four, sandwiched
between two tables for at least two dozen, one of them
a wedding party. The Locanda is obviously not only a
place for tourists, but a destination for special events
for the ordinary inhabitants of Como. In fact, the
most striking thing about it was quite how un-chic
it seemed. Our table and chairs were basic, and the
house Soave was served in glasses more commonly
to be seen in the more down-at-heel primary schools.
Within five seconds of being seated, antipasti were
arriving at our table from every angle, and in Billy
Bunter portions: vast melons, mountains of beetroot,
carrots, prosciutto, slices of thick-cut ham, onions
roasted in their skins, courgettes, salami, red peppers
and fagioli, all of them gloriously fresh and simple,
and served with a long stick of bread. One might
have thought that dishing up exactly the same
meal twice a day for 14 years would have staled the
enthusiasm of Mr Puricelli and his team, but I could
detect no sign of corners being cut. All the antipasti
were bursting with taste joie de vivre. I particularly
liked the slices of tomato served on very thin slices
of lemon, the clear instruction from the waiters
being to eat tomato and lemon all in one go. I had
previously associated lemon-eating only with those
desperate to elbow their way into the Guinness Book
of Records, but lemons as succulent as Mr Puricelll's
could make record-holders of us all.
Yet more plates began arriving, this time with
grilled trout swathed in salt and lemon and olive oil.
"The thing about this place," observed one of my
companions, "is that most restaurants obscure tastes
or make them too complex, but here they make
everything taste purely of itself: the ham tastes
incredibly hammy, the trout incredibly trouty."
At about this point, we began to wonder how
much more there was to get through: one of the
few disadvantages of having no menu is that it is
impossible to gauge what stage of the meal you are
at, so that you don't know whether to save room for
later or not. It later emerged that we were halfway
through, so we needn't have held back. After the
trout, on came the chicken, an upmarket version of
Kentucky Fried. If I have one criticism of the menu,
it was of this chicken, which is really too pedestrian
a meat to serve as a centrepiece. It was followed by
a pudding of sliced oranges with ice cream and a
dense and delicious orange sauce. I had already
suspected that Mr Puricelli was no shrinking violet
(his historical brochure of the island contains no
less than 26 photographs of him, plus facsimiles of
letters from previous bosses singing his praises) but
I was still not prepared for the ten-minute ceremony
he conducts before coffee. Dressed in a funny cap
and employing fire and gobbledegook in equal
measures, he ritually exorcises the island from a
Curse laid upon it by the then Bishop of Corno as
long ago as 1169. One would have thought that two
exorcisms a day for the past 14 years might have
done the trick, but apparently not.
While the others were recovering from the exorcism
over a liqueur coffee, I went inside and had a snoop
at more of the celebrity photographs, including the
unexpected (Joan Baez, Joe Cocker), the ubiquitous
(Richard Branson, Michael Winner) and the by-the-skin-of-their-teeth (Dale Winton, Samantha Eggar).
Never have I been to a restaurant in a more beautiful
location; seldom have I been to one more eccentric,
self-confident and competent. And for all its razzle-dazzle, it is not all that expensive: less than �40 a head
for everything, wine included. �
Locanda deirisola Comadna, Ossuccio, Lake Como,
Italy 00 39 0344 55083 Open daily from 1 March to
31 October, noon-2 pm and 7pm-late. Closed on Tuesdays
