Breaking Bread A family restaurant is a comfortable place to meet when romance blooms between families.
Alexandra--Alex--is not working tonight. Alex is the doe-eyed beauty who has stolen my son’s heart. She is a waitress several nights a week at Amelia’s--a restaurant founded and eponymously named by her grandmother--on Balboa Island. But tonight she is doing what 17-year-olds should be doing on a Thursday night: reading and studying for upcoming exams.
Still, my son, Max, is happy and loquacious tonight. Though Alex is not with us, we are very much aware of her presence in her grandmother’s restaurant. On the wall behind our table is a black-and-white photo of Amelia, taken perhaps 30 years ago, but the resemblance between her and her granddaughter is obvious. The same infectious smile, the dark, moody eyes.
“There are more pictures of her in the back room,” Max says. I don’t know if he is talking about Amelia or Alex. Perhaps both.
Shortly after Max and Alex started dating several months ago, he visited la grand-mere, Amelia. It was a command performance. Max was nervous. They drove to her house on Balboa, not far from the restaurant, and he was introduced, shown the mementos on her walls that included a number of photographs of her favorite politicians, particularly Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Max’s political leanings sway in the opposite direction, but he politely admired the old photographs anyway.
La grand-mere told her granddaughter that she found her new beau to be quite charming. Max, I think, was just as charmed by Amelia. It was a good start.
Amelia no longer runs the restaurant. She has turned that task over to her daughter and son-in-law, Alex’s parents. Tonight Alex’s father, John, is here, and when we walk in--unannounced and unexpected--he seems startled to see Max. And Max, understandably, is a little uncomfortable suddenly showing up with his father and sister at his side. Since John and I have never met, this is new turf for all of us.
We are seated next to a group of festively dressed ladies who are exchanging Christmas presents--fountain pens and penguin dolls, books and tea caddies. After we have ordered, John comes over to us. The fathers of Romeo and Juliet sit across from each other peppering the other with questions while Max, caught in the middle, looks on nervously.
John, like his daughter, is a charmer. Though he has lived in the States for 25 years, he still retains his British accent and offhandedly refers to my daughter, Paige, as “love,” as in “What did you order, love?”
We talk about the restaurant, about business on Balboa Island, about Amelia. We do not talk about Max or Alex. It is as if John and I have come to an unspoken agreement that whatever it is his daughter and my son are up to romantically, we will not intrude. This is quite different, I’m sure, from the conversation my wife and Alex’s mother would be having if they were here tonight.
When Max let it be known, rather suddenly, that he had fallen in love, his mother immediately wanted to invite Alex for dinner. Max refused.
“Why?” his mother wailed. “I want to meet her.”
Max shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ll say something embarrassing,” he told her. “I’m afraid you’ll want to bring out baby pictures and tell her stories about when I was a little boy.”
So Alex was kept away from our house for weeks until a chance encounter gave Jan an opportunity to prove that she could be counted on not to tell embarrassing stories. After the two had met and chatted briefly, Max told his mother, “Alex says she likes you. I guess we can invite her over for dinner sometime.”
We got to know Alex, and Alex’s parents got to know Max. Yet, until tonight, the parents had not met. And I know that whatever I say or do in her parents’ restaurant, with her father at the table, is going to be reported back to Alex. So I’m trying to be chatty, but not too chatty; earnest, but not anxious. John, I’m sure, is thinking the same thing, because being in love at 17 is a delicate thing, like a souffle that can suddenly collapse if exposed to a chilly draft. A souffle, after all, is as evanescent as the “breath” for which it is named, and in a way, John and I are trying to keep our conversation puffed up just long enough to make a suitable presentation without causing any major disappointments.
John excuses himself when our entrees arrive and everyone breathes an audible sigh of relief. The two fathers have met and it has not been catastrophic. So far, so good. The house calamari dish, named after Alex’s grandmother, is wonderful, as is an unusual lasagna made with chicken. While Bing Crosby sings Christmas carols in the background, we enjoy our food, and Max talks so much--perhaps from nervous, pent-up energy--that his sister remarks that she can’t get a word in.
Max tells us about a recent performance of Cirque du Soleil he and Alex saw; of Christmas presents he is considering giving her; of his visit to her grandmother’s house. He is, it is plain to see, deeply in love. Even at 17.
Our waitress clears our plates and tells us that John would like to buy us dessert. Max, who has come here often with Alex, now begins to act a little proprietary, as if Amelia’s were an old haunt for him, some place he’d been going to for years instead of just in the last couple of months. His sister is thinking of ordering cannoli, but he suggests, instead, the chocolate truffle cake. And when it arrives and she tastes it, she tells him that it is, indeed, quite good.
“I told you,” he says, smiling, happy. “Isn’t the food here great?”
The evening has been a success for all of us. On our way out the door, I thank John, tell him I enjoyed meeting him finally. As we head into the night, he waves to Paige and says, in a most cheery voice, “Good night, love.” It seems the perfect ending.
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 5-9:30 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.