Mark it down, DeLo’s back. Tired of the same old lunch? Take a
ride out to one of Santa Clara County’s oldest golf courses and
enjoy garlic-laden fare served up by Don DeLorenzo, Garlic Festival
chef and local pro, at the Gilroy Golf Course. He will be cooking
up a storm (and there have been plenty of those lately) every
Monday at lunch. How about this to start the week
– Chicken Scarpatta with Risotto Milanese? Nice. If you can take
a Monday afternoon off and play 18 after lunch, even better.
Mark it down, DeLo’s back. Tired of the same old lunch? Take a ride out to one of Santa Clara County’s oldest golf courses and enjoy garlic-laden fare served up by Don DeLorenzo, Garlic Festival chef and local pro, at the Gilroy Golf Course. He will be cooking up a storm (and there have been plenty of those lately) every Monday at lunch. How about this to start the week – Chicken Scarpatta with Risotto Milanese? Nice. If you can take a Monday afternoon off and play 18 after lunch, even better.
Great meals do come in bunches. Favorite weekend … Friday dinner at Sinaloa in Morgan Hill, where my lovely wife and I struck up a conversation with the family establishment’s matriarch, the gracious Mrs. Pena, who enjoyed the hustle and bustle from her seat at the bar just as her late husband did. Mrs. Pena dresses elegantly for dinner, and told us her family story harkening back to the days she spent long hours in the kitchen. It’s a classic hard work and American dream story told by a woman of depth and experience who has been around the block. Coupled with the best margarita on earth, it’s a great night out. Then, Saturday night we landed at Original Joe’s in San Jose where my grandfather used to take me for counter lunches. There’s just nowhere as fun and consistently good as OJs.
Good fun, too, is throwing a few bucks into a Super Bowl pool. Usually, the game is a bore, so your pool numbers can keep you interested. Our local odds afficionado, Bob Burch, calculates that the amount of money Gilroyan’s spend in Super Bowl pools exceeds the gross national product of San Martin.
Sunday’s Super bet … Heart: Giants; Head: Pats. (tough to bet against head pats).
Everyday bet that’s a sure winner: the Gilroy Post Office stinks – and not in a good garlic-town way. What is our town, chopped liver? The employees inside are friendly despite the cramped quarters, but the parking stinks and the drop-off boxes in the alley are a pain in the rear for customers and those who live adjacent to the alley. If only there were an 8th City Council seat for the press where we could humbly suggest to Mayor Al that he drive to neighboring Morgan Hill (10,000-plus fewer residents BTW) to witness a modern post office with a real lobby, a parking lot and a contemporary drive-through mail drop. Mighty mayor may ye mount a campaign to improve Gilroy’s post office lot in life … whoever cracked, “Don’t bet on it,” should collect their Super Bowl pool winnings now.
On the winner’s list: Jeanette Stimac who wrote in and appreciated our Johnny-on-the-spot Web coverage – seems it had to do with our story posting 20 minutes or so after the tree fell on the car in downtown Gilroy. Amazing that no lives were lost … and back to downtown.
Ernie Filice writes in to say “It’s not the bun in the oven, it’s the oven baking the bun.” No, that’s not an Italian joke, it means that local folklore has it that the Pirozzoli family had a “magic” oven responsible for baking such great bread, and that the oven still exists in the old building between Sixth and Seventh streets downtown. Well, shiver me hot cross muffins … now all we need is a magician to go with the magic oven. …
In the pet peeve column: One car coming out of Eagle Ridge at Ballybunion changes the light almost immediately forcing traffic on Santa Teresa to stop. That gives motorists like me a ballybunion. Can’t our city traffic engineer Don Dey tell the state to adjust the stoplight for fairness and balance?
You’ve got to love the segment on the city of Gilroy’s Web site: “Live Webcam of Construction of the New Police Facility” designed to show the breathless public the progress on the $30 million-plus Taj Mahal, perpetual winner of the Ugliest Building in Gilroy Award. The Webcam doesn’t work and the monstrosity was completed nearly a year ago. ‘Nuff said.
