Do You Remember the First Time?
How a Late-Summer Weekend in Philadelphia Led Me to Lancaster
A (Bittersweet) Philadelphia Story
You often know from the first time you walk through the door at a restaurant or bar when it’s destined to become one of your favorite places—the kind of spot where you hope to become a regular, even if it’s located miles away from where you live. Whether it’s a cocktail, the wine list, or a particular dish that lands in all the right ways; the room and decor; the music on the speakers; or the way the staff interacts and welcomes you; you just know that after you pay your bill you’ll be counting the days until your return.
One of those kind of places for me is LUCA, a modern Italian restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is more than 150 miles from my place in Brooklyn. It may come as no surprise that it was amaro that first drew me there, and as I’ve continued to return to Lancaster at least a couple times a year for the past six years, my love for LUCA remains. But through that experience and frequent visits I’ve gotten to know and love the city itself. At places like the Horse Inn, Valentino’s, Cabalar Meat Co., Pizzeria 211, Beiler’s Doughnuts, Lancaster Central Market, Passenger Coffee, and so many more, I’ve become a regular by proxy, and in many cases have become friends with the owners and staff.
It was late July in 2017 when I made what would be the first of countless trips to LUCA , but the origins of that detour began in early December, 2016, in Philadelphia at the final stop of the book tour for my book Amaro.
Abe Fisher (now, sadly, permanently closed), was hosting me for a sold out amaro talk and tasting the afternoon of Saturday, December 3. My dear friends Mike, Ali, and Marty all made the trip from New York where we met up with our Philly-based associate Peter. And David Lebovitz even came to Philadelphia which was such a nice surprise. We spent the morning walking around and seeing the sights but as they made plans to post up at Oscar’s Tavern, I went back to my nearby hotel to clean myself up and prep for the event.
Since this was the last event on the book tour, I went all in with a tasting of a dozen different amari, plus a small bottle of Underberg, which I always closed my events with, knocking them back en masse with a little straw (“Prime Meats style”). The team at Abe Fisher had the same idea and throughout the tasting sent out plates of snacks (including bites of their signature Montreal-style smoked beef rib) and, by my count, at least five full-size cocktails (everyone got their money’s worth, that’s for sure).
It was around the sixth amaro when I lost control of the room. It was common at my events for attendees to talk among themselves, especially after they tasted a distinctive and possibly divisive amaro, but it was starting to sound like a nightclub. I did my best to bring the focus of the room back to me but, as we rounded the bend on the tasting mat, the sound of breaking glasses increased in frequency. Between the rich food, cocktails, and people shooting (rather than sipping) a dozen amari, I had a fun, but raucous, crowd on my hands and wrapped things up just before it descended into Altamont-like chaos.
The party continued among the guests after I posted up in a booth to sign books. People were a bit sloppier than they were when they first walked in and I even had to interrupt one young couple furiously snogging on the signing line to ask them to whom I should personalize their book. All of this is to say, it was one of my favorite events and a memorable way to close out the official book tour.
Chef Mike Solomonov had invited me and my friends to have dinner at Abe Fisher that evening and while I hadn’t had a drink the entire day or at the event, I couldn’t say the same for my associates, who were already painfully full and spent from eating and drinking all day in my absence. As the Montreal Smoked Beef Rib dinner and its many accompaniments landed on the table in front of us, all they could do was cringe.
But it was during that dinner that I received a DM from Steve Wood, who was then the head bartender at LUCA, which had just opened that past July. He mentioned their extensive amaro selection and invited me in to check it out, also dropping that Alton Brown had stopped in the night before. I assumed Lancaster was a suburb of Philadelphia, but when I plugged it into Google Maps and saw it was 80 miles away I knew it wasn’t in the cards for this trip. It would take me until the summer of 2017 to make it to LUCA, and it was worth the wait.