There’s a lovely Spanish restaurant in Menlo Park that Barnaby and I used to frequent when we lived in the Bay Area. We’d ride our bikes the one or so mile from our apartment in Palo Alto to the charming little bougainvillea covered building. We rarely sat in the main dining room, and instead headed to the tapas bar where we’d cozy up in one of the intimate two-person booths or sit back in a pair of the over-sized leather chairs.

We had a repertoire of tapas dishes that we’d always order, but one of my favorites was jamon serrano; gorgeous ham hand-sliced from a whole leg which, clamped in a beautiful wood and iron stand, sat upon the bar counter. Sometimes we’d have it on toasted bread rubbed with garlic and tomato (called Pa Amb Tomaquet in Catalan), other times we’d simply ask for a few nice slices to go with our olives.

Another favorite preparation, Italian-style with fresh juicy melon (called prosciutto crudo in Italian). Spanish or Italian, you can’t go wrong with this ham.

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Photo: pink_fish13

I return home from work (hungry), check the mailbox and find my newest issue of Gourmet magazine. There on the cover is a delicious grilled sandwich bulging with juicy ham, its bread toasted to crisp perfection. When I flip through the pages (which, by the way, reading a food mag is never a good idea to do when you are hungry) I am reminded of the sandwiches we used to get in Siena, Italy. After school my girlfriends and I would head to Bar Centrali for panini and cokes (okay, sometimes wine). When I first arrived in Italy I could barely speak a lick of Italian, but I quickly mastered the art of ordering my “panino.”

“Prosciutto crudo, fontini é fungi con salsa rosa é salsa verde, per favore!”

Raw cured ham, fontina cheese, mushrooms with red and green sauce grilled to perfection on a big fancy panini grill. I’m still not really sure what the red and green sauces were (tomato- and pesto-esque), but they were divine in their mystery. Best of all, I felt oh so Italian when I placed the order! I ate that same sandwich almost daily for six months straight. Whether I ate the same version because I was so in love with it (completely) or just scared to learn a new string of ingredients (probably) I’ll never quite know (or admit).

Oh, so young, so naive! If I were there again I’d be ordering a different panino each day. Choosing from amongst the cured meats and cheeses that hung over the bar.

I’ve never been able to reproduce that same panino, and I don’t think I actually want to, as the memory of that one great panino would somehow be sullied. I will always miss that sandwich, though not nearly as much as I miss the time spent with my wonderful girlfriends. Nothing comes close to either.

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