#42 – Rescue ricotta ravioli out of the pool of tomato sauce at the Waiters Club – Friday, May 31 2013
A good restaurant is like a good person. At first sight, a person appears more attractive if they are better dressed, have a nice tan and charming manners. But the more you get to know someone, you quickly realize that it’s the inner values that make them really attractive … or not. You want to spend more time with them because they have good stories to tell, make you feel comfortable despite your own shortcomings and in the end make you have a good time.
I know I’m punching above my weight here, but I say that it’s very similar with restaurants. The most memorable ones are often not the polished restaurants, but the small trattorias in the dark lane, where the tablecloth is always a bit greasy and the furniture has not changed since the ciabatta was invented (which was 1982 by the way). It’s those restaurants, where you see people from all walks of life: young and old, business woman and hipster, tourist and local. They all feel and are welcome.
The Waiters Club is such an unpretentious place of a restaurant (they even don’t have a website I could link to). Despite a nicely designed sign on the wall outside, you’d never know to walk up a hidden flight of rickety stairs into a tiny box of a room with an open kitchen. Opened in 1947, it still bears ’50s drapes, wood panelling and Laminex tables. There certainly isn’t anything fancy here, but it’s an unpretentious legend, and that’s the reason you climb the staircase in the first-place. And despite what the lonely planet wrote, we found the service people to be very nice and welcoming.
We took advantage of the place being BYO and got complimented on our choice of red wine. Since my food choice was already pre-determined by The List, it was only Harriet who was left with options. With the help of the waitress she went for the Spaghetti Carbonara (e una coka cola for all Germans who listened to the radio in the early ’80s)
As we looked around we realized that this was less of a couples place, but rather a communal hangout. The Waiters Club with its round tables is the perfect location to have good food and conversation before going out for drinks with a bunch of friends. The other thing I noticed was a lot of older Italians, which is a trusted indicator of excellent food. And the food held up to this promise. As usual, Harriet’s highlight was the dessert, a well soaked tiramisu accompanied by a double espresso. We left the place well fed and entertained, looking forward to coming back.
The quote on the wall may summarise it best: We haven’t changed anything since the ’50s. So we can’t be praised or criticized.
