Restaurant review:

Signor Siniora

It was all Little Italy, complete with arias and a roadblock

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Collective faith is like a collective security blanket -- it is warm and nice but you have to share it with others. In a cold theological night, there is little you can do when your co-religionists pull the blanket closer to their necks, turn over and snore, leaving you out in the cold. Something like that happened a week ago, when someone somewhere in Cairo issued a religious opinion denouncing yoga as a form of heathen exercise and advising good Muslims to stretch their muscles in a way that is less Hindu. I thought something has to be done before a full-scale confrontation develops between the yogophobes and the yogonists.

I spent much of last week in intense contacts with various fitness experts to come up with an exercise formula that is of global reach and tolerance. I am producing a 30-min multi-denominational exercise tape that will be approved by the world's top clerics and churches. Progress has been made, I am proud to tell you. I have the initial approval of dozens of international clerical authorities so far. Only the Jehovah's Witnesses are holding out. They want step-aerobics to be replaced by door-step-aerobics, but they'll come round, they always do (I gave them my Côte d'Azure address, you can't be too careful). My butler will restart the negotiations as soon as he is back from a multi-denominational shoelace-tying contest in Mogadishu.

This week's restaurant deserves to be in Little Italy, had we had one. Instead, it is in Garden City, in a serene, low-traffic street. A street so quite and rustic you can hear the birds chirping near the roadblock protecting the US Embassy. And it is not just a restaurant. It is a labour of love by a young Lebanese businessman with a passion for the gourmet.

We're nibbling on our bruschettas when Signor Siniora arrives. He introduces himself and tells us that the place has just opened two days earlier. Within seconds, he starts a slide show on his laptop, showing us various stages of finish at this place over the past few months. Siniora (no pun, just his family's name), a savvy workaholic with an eye for global business, government biddings, and real estate, decided to create this restaurant about six months ago, perhaps as a diversion from his other weightier pursuits. The pasta is prepared in house, fresh and from scratch, every day, he assures us. A minute later, Siniora offers us a taste of his own sauce Siniora, a very spicy version of vinaigrette.

I find my fettucini marinara soothing and playful, like schoolgirls lingering in the early morning to watch Catholic fishermen spreading their nets off the coast south of Napoli. The Guru and the Canadian get lasagnas with two different sauces, try each other's out, and can't decide which is better. The Designer clears off his fettucini carbonara and looks satisfied. I have ordered a special chicken mushroom, but we're all full by the time it comes. We have it wrapped up and the Guru tells me that it was delicious the next day.

The place is small and intimate, perhaps 10 tables or so. The sense of Little Italy is heightened by Siniora's choice of music, exclusively opera. Gilded chandeliers and matching wall-mounted fixtures give the establishment a touch of class, so do the framed pictures of old Italy girdling the walls at eye level, like a reassurance of places that differ in faith but are more beautiful than anything known to man. At the cashier, Siniora answers the phone and prepares the bill himself -- between arranging for his next trip to Vienna and a multi-million land grab in Zaire.

By Nabil Shawkat