Trattoria by the Sea

The morning had been so wonderful, I couldn't even imagine what we would do with the rest of the day. We squished pennies, shopped for souvenirs, including a t-shirt for brother from Crabby Jim's, and wandered around looking for someplace to eat that wouldn't involve HRH's lips touching a fish. I know we were on the seaside (literally, we were staying in Seaside, California) and it is kind of hard to find food that never floated.

I think I mentioned that HRH keeps fish as pets. Well, she calls them pets, it isn't as if they play fetch or walk on a leash, or anything. They sort of swim around in a large tank and stare at you if you drink too much. Not that I spend a lot of time at my sister's house, drinking, with the fish staring at me. But it would be really freaky if they did, so I don't. Anyway, she says I don't eat dogs (which are real pets, unlike fish) so she shouldn't have to eat fish.

She tends to give seafood nick names, like sea bugs and oh, icky don't kiss me after you eat that. Sometimes she just shudders and asks me to eat under the table cloth. She also does that when I eat rare beef or anything that looks like it did when it was alive.

But I digress. We had walked to the end of the wharf and were rounding the corner to start up along the boardwalk when we spotted a luncheon special menu board - Linguini Alio e Olio - well I don't speak Italian either but that sounded so good. And they did have a patio on the boardwalk. What more could we ask for?

Turned out, not a whole lot. This was Paluca Trattoria Authentic Seafood Restaurant, named for the owner's sons (or so the website says) Paulo and Luca. We were welcomed in by the owner/chef Salvatore Tedesco with promises of more on the menu. As we perused the menu he told us about the specials and how his family had fished the bay since before he could reach the cook top.

At first we thought a nice iced tea and appetizer would be enough to refresh us from the whale watching. We could have settled for that, if we just ordered the Parmesan Garlic french fries, or the lightly battered sweet onion rings. But we just had to try the beer battered artichoke hearts. Sal assured us these would all be great since we were in the garlic, artichoke, and romaine lettuce capitol of the world.

Wait, we didn't get anything with romaine. So we just had to get the rosemary chicken breast on a Francesca roll, with romaine of course and the aforementioned linguine of course. Not to mention the rock crab salad.

The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing in off the bay, and the food was delicious. This place is definitely going in our "let's go back there again soon" list.