I was out walking with my friend Bonnie, and as we passed
Charles Street, I suddenly got peckish so steered us to the
Liberty Hotel and its Lydia-Shire-run restaurant Scampo.

Let me preface that the last three people I had taken here, all in
the last two or three years, have been Nicholas (now dead), Gunther
(now dead), and Beth (now dead). A pity, as Gunther had some good
compositions left in him, and I was going to try to ask Beth out,
but she said, with a sigh, I'm getting old, probably knowing more
than she was letting on. Nicholas, well, he had been in substantial
decline for a while; when he finally went, he left an eye-popping
two-thirds of a million dollars to the club, a chunk of it for the
purpose of fostering commissions of new works.

It was Sunday, and the hostess said that they were serving brunch,
but there were some regular dishes on as well, and please look at
the menu to see if there was something we'd like. As almost all
the time I used to get the same thing, I scanned for that, and it
was there, and all was well.

As it was brunch, the normal excellent baker's bread was replaced
with date nut bread, which was essentially cake in disguise, not
bad for that, but not useful for, say, soaking up olive oil or lard.

Vermentino La Mora 16 (Maremma) was sprightly and pretty delicious
with peachy and citrus flavors, and way overpriced - for the price
of a glass here, you could get two bottles in the store.

I wouldn't have ordered it, but being a bit of a culinary conservative,
Bonnie got the "Cobb salad with Lydia's style lardoons," which was
pretty ordinary except for the lardons, which were thick, smoky, and
chewy. A little salty for me, but they had to keep up with the blue
cheese (which I didn't try).

For me, Rosato Brancato Il Poggione (M0ntalcino) 16, an excellent
warm-weather wine, complexly fruity and minerally both, with a touch
of bitterness, perfect with my favorite dish perhaps ever anywhere,
spaghetti with cracklings and hot pepper. I used to get this for an
appetizer, and when I came for lunch, I'd get a half-portion off the
menu (for which they charged sometimes half price, sometimes full).
It along with standard sauces (clam, Bolognese, carbonara) is on the
brunch menu, and if it weren't I'd have asked for it anyway. The
dish changes periodically, but the basics - heat, fat, crunchy pig,
and garlic - are always the same. This time, the hot was contributed
by minced red and green sweet-sour pickled peppers; in the past, the
place has used chopped dried (my favorite) or chopped fresh. It was
still an excellent dish, especially with the crunchies, which this
time were made out of fresh meat-free pork jowl fat (in the past,
diced salty pork jowl with or without attached protein, once or twice
smoked, as in bacony, which is the way I make it). This time, there
was less fat shed at the bottom of the dish, which if it had been
there wouldn't have gone with the date-nut bread anyway, though if it
had been there I might have eaten it with a spoon.

So I was still not full up, but having had an ample dose of carbs for
the day, dessert was out, so I ordered a side dish of "scrambled sausage
with melting Scarmozza," which was lightly seasoned something between
loose breakfast sausage made with savory and sweet Italian, topped with
an ounce or two of scamorza, which they must have respelled to reflect
its being a scary version of mozzarella (i.e., somewhat sharp). It was delicious, and they charged me a buck LESS thn the menu price for this.

We ate and drank well and plentifully, and even if we'd had another
course (appetizer), we would have come in at my general limit for a
festive meal for two, the very low three digits.
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