Summer Vacay, 2021. Day 6

My artistic rendering of flames on the platters of meat because I kept missing the shot. Pretty realistic!

Free Bird and Food

August 5, 2021

We are sitting in the crosshairs of a restaurant: food coming out from the kitchen is the same portal customers are going in to pay their bill. It’s close to chaos but somehow staying on the rails. I love this place.

I have a debate. Is this like a TGI Fridays of Italy. Or is it the bar scene from Star Wars? The lights go down and everyone sings Happy Birthday. So, Red Robin? What American institution haven't they borrowed from, but leave it to the Italians to do it better.

“Viva La Vida” by Cold Play set to a techno beat is pumping in the background. It’s not much of a stretch blender-izing those two and sure I’ve had a few glasses of Prosecco. But still. This place is the bomb.

They have old guy waitrons. They have young hot guy waitrons. They have 20 something year old woman ‘trons sharing the show and a never before seen rotund leather bedecked matron of hostesses with green tinged hair. But my absolute favorite was the Geeky guy.

How often do you see the geek side by side with the cool guy? The popular girl? Even toe to toe with the leather bedecked hostess? Just when I think I couldn’t possibly be more entertained by simply watching the wait staff, they started bringing out flaming animal parts. Waaaaa? Platter after platter of some kind of meat, propped up like the masthead of a boat, set aflame in the kitchen and ushered out through the portal of chaos in a sizzling display of gastronomy. I feel like I’m in Game of Thrones.

I have a salad.

Subconscious FM Radio, my near constant companion has been completely mute this trip. Maybe the marauding cellos scared it off. Maybe it’s the music that is constantly in the air subduing it, which I don’t like. I know it sounds like it would be charming, but the sound of piano and accordion buskers plying their trade with the same old threadbare tunes tires me. Pachelbel’s Canon in D, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “Perhaps” covered by Doris Day. “Hernando’s Hideaway”. You get the idea.

My family had a tradition of going out every Christmas Eve to a local eatery to celebrate. We stumbled upon Nonna Amelia’s in Beaverton where we found our accordion player, Joel.

Now this was not our first encounter with Joel. We knew him from years earlier via his previous gig at der Rheinlander in Portland. But he disappeared one Christmas and we faded away, only to reunite with him at Nonna’s.

When we first met Joel he was also relegated to the accordion “classics” mentioned above, and he did a fine job. But a job it was. Until one of the smart-ass Elliott kids just couldn’t leave it alone:

  “Hey Joel, can you play Stairway to Heaven?”

Truly, his eyes twinkled and without skipping a beat he launched into the famous melancholy intro that most people can identify within the first five notes.

Of course we could have been happy with just that, but oh no. It only emboldened the Elliott kids who were hanging onto Joel’s every rendition, delirious to hear an accordion reduction of their favorite rock classic. “Piano Man”? Sure! “Feel Like Making Love”? Absolutely! “Dream On”? Okie dokie! And it begged the question: how long had he been waiting for an audience like us? Because dear reader, he denied us nothing.

The pinnacle of our musical pas de deux with Joel became “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was usually the last song of the many Christmas Eve nights we spent with him, or close to it. We stalled as long as we could, after the primo, after the secundo, and when dessert was in sight, finally one of us would blurt it out:

     “Play Free Bird!”

We got out our lighters, banged on the tables and sang with all our hearts. The rest of the restaurant may have been bewildered, probably annoyed, but between our abject enthusiasm and copious tipping, Joel was completely in his element and we were his adoring groupies.

But then one Christmas, every changed.

      “One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more

       And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.”

We were crestfallen. We went to Nonna’s but our pied piper was not there. Frankly Nonna’s food was lousy and without the music to cover it up, we actually cared. So that was the end of that.

Now I’ve set myself a goal. Learn some Italian so I can stroll down into the Piazza and say “Hey dude. Don’t suppose you know Free Bird?”

©Theresa Elliott, All Rights Reserved