A Day of Mirth and Mirto

 Cocktail Correspondent: Weldon Gardner Hunter 

On Thursday, May 16 - a hockey night in Canada - I decided to look for a quiet spot to have dinner and a drink. That meant, no TVs.  I settled on Fiorino Italian Street Food (212 East Georgia Street, Vancouver). At 6pm, the place was quiet and it didn't start hopping for about an hour, which seemed appropriately Continental. The interior of the restaurant also tallied with my vision of Italy, with a checkerboard floor, sensible, sturdy, modernist-stylish chairs, long tables, and some smaller ones in nooks, for kissing and conspiracies. I'm not sure which Dino Risi film I felt like I was in.

Of course, I sat at the bar. I ordered a delicious plate of Beef Carpaccio and a Mirto Daiquiri (Rum, Mirto liqueur, Bluberry compote, Maraschino liqueur, Lemon Juice, Lemon sugar rim). Mirto is a Sardinian/Corsican liqueur made from the blue-black berries of the myrtle plant. Myrtle is a common bush on the Mediterranean islands of Italy, and I think my GoogleLens has informed me of its presence on some of my Pacific Spirit walks. The Greeks and Romans included myrtle leaves in the garlands worn by heroes and Olympians. 

What a beautiful rosy-violet colour. Take a picture, stare dreamily at the liquid for 5-10 seconds, then drink. Floral & bittersweet. It's not an overpowering fruit flavour, but I like how the blueberry blends in. The lemon sugar rim dusts your digits and you can lap it up to sweeten the herbal aftertaste. I spent a famous 15 minutes slowly sipping, then I spied ...

this lonely Mallard. Regrets, he's had a few. He's waddled each & every highway.* I named him Frank Anatra, Anatra being Italian for duck. I chuckled at my own wit, then told the bartender what I dubbed the duck. He was too busy to chuckle, but he humoured me. 

In the spirit of la dolce vita, I decided to order Strega as an after-dinner digestivo. 

Strega is herbal, sweet, viscous, and it packs a punch. Sip slowly. You'll forget your phone and just enjoy the wave of Italian images that will play in your mind's teatro. For me, that'd be Ermanno Olmi, but Fellini's fine, too.

My revels weren't over, I still had a ticket for my colleague's stand-up performance at China Cloud (524 Main Street, Vancouver). She did a 5-minute set: bits about pencils and pregnancy tests. It was cute and weird. Long story, but at work we have a "Duck Gang," so I wore this:

I had to take it off because it was too humid. There were more chuckles, and the evening was as sociable as a raft of Mallards on Lake Maggiore. But no one's laughed at my Frank Anatra joke yet ...

*joke suggested by Arash Hajbabaee