Cafe La Fortuna--random thoughts

While waiting for my lukewarm Starbucks coffee, my thoughts wandered to the past when there was a real cafe in my life.  Cafe La Fortuna.  Vincent and Alice.  Alice's sister who waited tables, and went to Italy for a visit and never came back.  Opera music.  Exposed brick walls full of opera memorabilia.  The first decaffinated espresso I ever drank that tasted like espresso.  When it opened it was half a store front, two steps down from the sidewalk with a garden in the back.  The regulars who sat at the first table inside the door, when Vincent wasn't sitting there himself, included Joe who always had something to sell.  My first taste of Veniero's Italian Cheesecake.  It put the cream cheese type to shame and out of my life forever.  I never baked another one again.  Walking to La Fortuna from the West 80's taught my boys how to walk.  A half mile or more was nothing.  Summertime, iced cappucinos with homemade coffee flavored Italian ice.  An uncomfortable afternoon in the garden bearing witness to a couple breaking up.  Sideways glances at the occasional celebrity who lived in the neighborhood.  The two Gregorys, waiters, one an aspiring poet and the other a caterer to be.

It was not Starbucks or fame that claimed the life of Cafe La Fortuna.  It was love.  The love a parent has for a child, that would trust the child to be able to take over a business the parent had built.  Unfortunately, we are sometimes blinded by this love, and do not realize that our children are not capable enough.

It was heartbreaking to see Vincent come out of retirement to sit at the cash register once again.  Even sadder when he was there after his beloved Alice had passed away.  A place that love built had to end when those two lovers died.