Il Nostro Posto

Mio Posto ought to be called, in our case, Nostro Posto for it is our place. Tonight, midway through the 2nd qtr of SuperBowl LIX –- (that’s 59^th! OMG: I remember watching the 1st with my first, All-American father-in-law who had played for Pitt in the Rose Bowl of ’28 [Stanford, 7; Pitt, 6.]) – but that’s a different story I’ll tell another time.) – I bailed out of the game and we headed for our retreat of Leslie and Associates. The guy in the black cowboy hat was at the bar as usual along with the other regulars, refugees finding refuge from the crazies of our time in banter, beers, and the Brotherhood of Austin.

We go to Mio Posto about three times a month, typically on Sundays. Our preferred seats are at the end of the bar from where we can see the prep cook prepare Ann’s melanzana con mozzarella sopra arugula, watch the oven-master roast it in the pizza oven just for her (it normally is served cold), and having our waiter serve it up with salad and a glass of Malbec. (Tonight, the cooks knew whom it was for and served it up to her directly.) That’s after the calamari starter, of course.

Mio Posto’s calamari is unique in our experience – and we’ve eaten a lot of calamari over the last 40 years! It is roasted, not battered and fried, in a zesty puttanesca sauce – really special.

But our main treat is watching the multi-person staff weaving about each other to spin out pizza dough, prep salads and deserts, bake pizzas, and all the rest – a beautiful choreography of a happy crew in constant motion and working hard to please. And do they ever work hard! In between the prepping and cooking is cleaning: I have never seen such care and attention lavished on cleaning workstations, constantly wiping and moving ingredient stores to keep all safe and sanitary.

The downer is knowing that this great staff, mainly Columbian immigrants, most with very rudimentary if any English, are all are facing threat from Don-boob and his ideologue henchmen, racists like Steven Miller, Don Jr., J.D., and the rest. These newly- arrived are invaluable to Mio Posto, to their associates and team-mates, and to us, their customers. That they work so hard, so happily with their fellows and gals, all the while in fear of Don-boob’s ICE-Sturmabteilung, is a shame that perhaps our coming back helps a bit to assuage.

It is Nostro Posto, indeed.