It was threatening to rain when we left our apartment for dinner. It was only 6:30, early by European standards, but we figured we’d get an early start. We were not excited about walking down to the river so we circled around to the restaurants on the street above us. It being before 7, the first few places were not seating guests yet, so we went on to the end of the street before turning around. And of course, it started to rain.

No outside seating was available because it was wet, so our options were narrowing to the point of heading to another neighborhood. I saw one last place as we reached the turn to our street, unnoticed on the first pass. The menu tended Italian, and we figured we’d find something to eat so we went in. The maître d’ asked if we had a reservation, and lacking one, we were seated by the open kitchen. It wasn’t a problem as we were freezing and the kitchen gave off a nice warm glow. The server came by, we had our regular conversation about languages and he turned out to be from Argentina, so our Spanish was going to work just fine.

The meals were amazing, MLW had a mushroom risotto and I had osso bucco. Now we’ve eaten both those dishes in the heart of northern Italian cuisine, Milano, and these two dishes easily surpassed anything we’d had there. I had to reluctantly admit that they might have been better than my rendition. Paired with another duo of excellent Douro wines, the meal was complete. Absolute perfection from (once again) the last restaurant we checked – Puro 4050 ended up being a really good choice.