If you can't see the sea, then you order lamb or, preferably, goat, especially if you have been hearing the bells around their necks all day, spying them grazing on wild shrubs and grasses and herbs and such. We've just stopped at a cherry orchard to ask some men chatting by the fence where we should go if we want some lamb or goat. It's not 300 yards up the road- a tidy restaurant with fresh sheet rock and old men. Just to make sure, I confirm before sitting down that they have goat and they say that indeed they do, so I sit down and start in on an aperitif of chatter, as I already know what I am ordering; I'm ordering goat.
After a time, one of the older gentlemen comes to the table and sits down and we exchange some greetings. He is warm and very lively, with an extraordinarily broad and bushy mustache; it would turn heads on a large man. On this gentleman, who is unusually compact and wiry, it is astonishing. It's not clear whether he has come from the neighboring table just for a chat, but after a bit he begins to tell us what they have*- pancetta (this is magnificently meltingly fatty delicate slices of pork), patties of minced meat ("bifteki"), and kokkoretsi. Judging from the flocks sheep covering the hillsides this last one will be a good choice- a tangle of organs, generously seasoned, bound in a salty coil of small intestine that hopefully will have crisped and colored deeply as it turns for hours on the spit. (It's not for everyone.)
"And the chops? Lamb, goat?" I say I had only just then been assured that there are chops. A brief silence follows as his face drains of any readable expression. "I can't imagine why the cook would say we have chops. She must have misunderstood you." We move on to the salads. He says they have the usual salads. In fact there are two- cucumber and tomato, and cucumber and tomato with feta. On returning to the unsettled matter of the main courses, he goes through a very thorough and not untempting explanation of each. Having listened in silence, I can only bring myself to soberly remark: "It is a shame about the chops. You say you have none." There's an uncomfortable pause as either chagrin or pride at length gets the better of him (I do not know yet which, but I shall.)
"Well..." he begins. Ah there now, at last we are getting somewhere. "We do have mutton." I smile with satisfaction- I do love a chop. It's not so simple though; apparently he will not yield them so easily as that. "But it is mutton. Do you know mutton? It can have quite a chew to it." "I'm sure they will be fine," I say.
Indeed, they were fine. Their time on the grill had coaxed the most expensive-looking lustrous brown out of the surface; the maillard reaction has never begat a more becoming or more tasty exterior. Amply salted in advance, that strip of fat that clings to the one side of the bone had fried itself up in the hot smoke into an airy crisp of herbaceous, wild-tasting bacon.
It was an excellent meal.
Toward the end the gentleman came back with a grand dish of cherries. They were his own, from that very same orchard just down the road. We told him how we had admired it. Encouraged, he could not but then boast of his fine herd of two-hundred and seventy(!) sheep. The very great extent to which he had been holding out became clear, and equally clear that it was pride, not shame, that had got the best of him- he could not help showing off the excellence of his domaine. You know that expression to not cast pearls before swine? He just needed to make sure his mutton were not cast before swine. And who of us would not do the same?
*The absence of a menu is not uncommon. It simply means that they are offering what they thought best and what they have on hand, The price will also be entire as expected.
