Midway through our vacation in Zancudo, we decided to go out for dinner at La Puerta Negra. La Puerta Negra is an Italian restaurant owned by Alberto, who originally hails from Genoa. Alberto is a little crazy. You’ll usually find him with a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth and his wild, black hair tied back in a ponytail. Alberto drives a very loud 4-wheeler up and down the beach a couple of times a day. He’s also extremely friendly and fun to talk to. We met Alberto our first day in town because, besides being a restaurant, La Puerta Negra is the closest place in town to buy a six pack of beer.

After a short stroll down the beach at sunset, we arrived at La Puerta Negra. Although it hadn’t looked like much during the day, the restaurant was utterly charming at night. As is the case with the other restaurants in Zancudo, the seating was all outdoors. The dining area consisted of a few cute wooden tables and benches, nicely decorated with white tablecloths and flowers. Funky plants and strings of Christmas lights added to the ambiance.

As I was walking in, I passed by a large basil garden so I couldn’t resist ordering pesto pasta for my dinner. Robert had the pasta arrabiata, which is pasta with spicy red sauce. Both entrees came with a pretty salad and Alberto’s homemade bread. Our waiter didn’t know much English, but spoke an interesting Italian-Spanish hybrid instead. Ordering food from him wasn’t difficult but, asking if we could buy a loaf of bread to take with us proved to be a bit more of a challenge. Somehow, between Robert’s limited Spanish and the small amount of Italian that I could recall from college, we were finally able to explain what we wanted. Our waiter, after brief consultation with somebody in the kitchen, was able to tell us that the bread was “integral” or “not white” (no problem!) and that he would have to get it from his girlfriend’s house next door (hmmm….okay.) After all of this, what we ended up getting was a perfect little loaf of really good grainy bread, just what we were looking for. I used it to make a delicious French Toast the next morning, which I served with peanut butter and honey.

On our last day in town, we had to swing by La Puerta Negra once again to return our empty beer bottles. There, we caught Alberto in the middle of making pasta dough. We hung out with him in the kitchen for a while, sharing ravioli recipes and talking about our trip. Yep, just hanging out in the kitchen at La Puerta Negra. How very Rachel Ray of us.