ALICE’S RESTAURANT. AND EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD
Siena did come to the West Coast for a few days. And it was good. The Spannocchia parties were a great success with the LA event even getting mentions in the LA Times. Blizzard-bound Mainers, noses pressed to the windows of the Portland Jetport trying to see even a hint of the runway — well, we didn’t have a snowball’s chance of making that party. But we were all present and accounted for in San Francisco. We met up with Randall Stratton, from Siena, Italy and Gail Cinelli and Erin Cinelli, both from Maine at Alice Water’s famous CHEZ PANISSE in Berkley. How famous is it? Someone just gave me the book “1,000 Things to See Before You Die ”. (Morbid-ish title, if you ask me, which they didn’t) Anyway, under “San Francisco” in the book, there are basically two entries: Cable Cars and Chez Panisse. What a fine and legendary place that is. Oh my. That was a wonder. Freshest ingredients, freshest presentation, nicest people running it. And the building is so fun. Like a tree house for grown ups. Very funky, even for fun Berkley.
The Spannocchia estate outside Siena is all about sustainable agriculture, so an interesting side shoot of the visit to Alice’s Restaurant was that the manager encouraged us to make a few block jog in our trip around Berkley to visit a foundation started by Alice Waters called the Edible Schoolyard .
This was really a demonstration of what one person with a good idea can accomplish. With her vision and guidance the people at Martin Luther King Middle School dug up a concrete parking lot and made a one acre kitchen garden. The kids dig this garden. They dig, plant, weed, harvest it. Then they eat their results and compost anything left over. We took a nice tour with the director who had been a student there herself in the early days of the garden. Another fun part of the tour is when Rusty Lamar former Internship Program Operations Manager at Spannocchia biked over to join the tour. He’s traded the good life in Siena for the good life of Architecture School in Berkley. He’s show in the photo here, at the right, with Spannocchia Foundation executive director Erin Cinelli. 
At the party later in the Noe Valley part of town near Mission Dolores Park at Incanto Restaurant, we wined we dined most excellently with old friends and new and then Randall Stratton introduced the newly translated book by Delfino Cinelli about life on a large Italian agricultural estate in the 1920s – with many parallels to today’s farm life. Randall is Spannocchia’s General Manager so he was the perfect editor of his wife’s grandfather’s book.
The book’s translator Archie Stone spoke and both he and Randall were signing copies later. They sold every copy they had with them before we could get to them. The books can be ordered by calling the Spannocchia office in Maine (207-871-5158), and they will ship them as they get shipments in from Spannocchia.
Eventually, Erin says they will have an option for ordering online, but not quite there yet. This is the first ever English language edition of the book: “Castiglion che Dio sol sa” – The Castle that only God knows. Midge later pulled the name of the lucky raffle winner out of a hat and announced that Berry Stafford had won a week at the Castello. Good times indeed.
In the photo here we see Gail Cinelli, Randall Stratton, Sarah Chironi and Erin Cinelli. Sarah is a Spannocchia intern program alum. She and Erin were interns together in 1994. Today, Sarah owns an olive oil production company and mail-order business in St. Helena, California called Elixir Olive Oil.
Ok, hawk-eyed viewers have accurately pointed out that your intrepid reporter was sooo wrong on his former Golden Gate pictures. Looked good to me. But what do I know. I am (was) such an Out Of Towner. OK, NOW we know that the first fantasy bridge outside our lovely (and wired!) 
We took our floral based shots from a park just before you go over the Golden Gate Bridge. Our fun friend and native San Franciscan, Paulette (she’s also our neighbor in Panicale in Umbria) took us there. And she said she had never in her California life ever been in this park. As you drive up to this park by the toll booths, it looks a bit generic, in a WPA Park Service sort of way with its concrete gift shop etc, but it is a super garden and a great place to check out the bridgework. 
Well that certainly did not work. We slogged our way to town, parked our car, took taxi to the airport, drank our four dollar Starbucks, watched the monster snowflakes fall, watched the plows attempt to plow accumulated monster snowflakes off the runways. And watched one flight after another cancell out. And then ours too. By then the taxis had quit running and we had to rent a car to escape the gravitational pull of Portland “International” Airport. That Hertz. Sigh. So. Here we are. Home again. Have new tomorrow tickets out of Boston this time. Yes, it is still snowing here in Maine. Wish us luck! We will so appreciate San Francisco when we get there!
I was having this conversation with myself this morning: what would be more fun right now, Stew? Maine in March or California in March? On the one hand, I thought, gee you know Maine can offer these brisk and refreshing 10 degree temperatures, howling winds and 10 inches of new snow. On the other hand, I remembered that Steve of San Francisco had emailed me just yesterday that it was 72 degrees and sunny out there. Hmmm. OK, I have made my decision.