Riturna alla Italia

Spent a very pleasant evening Sunday with some girlfriends I don't often see, at Donato Loperfido's Sapori Enoteca and Bierrieria. Got a chance to chat with Donato, who was busily serving as host (they were booked, I was glad to see), and was excited to hear that he was just back from Italy where he led a culinary tour for a small group of couples to Piemonte (the Piedmont region), Verona (in the Veneto, near Venizia, my favorite place) and Toscano (Tuscany). They stayed in rustic inns, often in separate cottages, and, since Donato has chef friends all over Italia, they were fed very well, indeed, he said.
He told me of two projects:
• He and some partners are negotiating the tricky process of bringing in some complex Italian pasta-making equipment to develop a wholesale and (hopefully) retail operation for making fresh pasta from a highly regarded type of semolina flour. There are many hurdles, he said, not least that Italian electrical equipment doesn't run on the same kind of current as does ours. And multiple partners always make a deal interesting. I begged him to do a retail outlet or to sell to retail outlets so that we, like the shoppers I watched with envy in Bologna last summer, could walk into a deli or pasticceria (bakery) and pick up a pound of tortellini made fresh that morning, ready to be tossed in a light sauce for lunch or dinner that day.
• He has purchased an olive vineyard of 1,500 trees in Puglia and will be making olive oil under his own brand next year. That will make a nice gift item!
If you'd like to get on a waiting list for information about Donato's next culinary excursion, e-mail him at chefdonato@gmail.com (he invited me to go and the only time I said yes faster was when my husband asked me to marry him). To make reservations or learn more about sapori, go to saporihonolulu.com.
Bad, bad blogger, I didn't take any pictures last night...and you want to know what I had to eat, si? Donato's offers a range of dishes from small plates adequate to make a whole meal for parsimonious eaters to larger dinners of generously sized fish, shellfish and meat items (special last night included a wagyu beef steak and a bouilliabaise).
I chose a polenta cake with grilled goat cheese and a topping of roasted beets and a salad of mixed greens and was perfectly satisfied in all respects: The polenta was creamy, the corn flavor pronounced, the fried exterior perfectly golden and delightfully crunchy; ditto the square of breaded goat cheese. I wished for more flavor, more caramelization, on the beets, though, which seemed to have been braised or steamed rather than roasted; they needed a little sugar and some time under the salamander. Still, I was very happy with my dish and with the it's-steal-price of $9! My friends also seemed to appreciate their orechiette (little ears pasta) with vegetables ($10) and beef carpaccio with crostini ($12). It is just my kind of place and I will gladly return. Have to try the risotto and the gnocchi (oh, I'm such a carbohydrate slut!).
I'll share a picture of tortellini in Bologna to make up for my photographic lapses last night