Rustic Italian Country Soups of Pane é Vino.

To be sure, most restaurants offer some soup on their menu, but few serve the marvelous concoctions that spring from the fertile, creative and yet traditional hand of the Italian chefs at Pane Vino and its sister restaurant Via Vai in Upper Montecito. Eight years ago Pietro Bernardi who had owned and run an Italian food supply business in California gave birth to the first Pane Vino restaurant which he located in the charming village of Montecito.

Pane Vino was such a success that it was quickly followed by opening a second in San Francisco and another in Los Angeles. They all share a basic menu and culinary approach created by Claudio which each individual chef then expands to tailor his menu to his local clientele and to his own personal preference in cuisine, often defined by the dishes popular in his home region of Italy.

Our soups are made daily. The South (of Italy) traditionally is not so big on soups. If they make soups, I would say, they are mostly seafood soups. They make a lot of very good soups from seafood. But, you see, the soups of the North are mostly from beans, lots of rice, oh! we make a very big soup of rice and celery with lots of tomatoes and some potatoes." At this point, Pietro disappeared into the kitchen. We contentedly bided our time with a few cups of Espresso taken on the sun dappled terrace bordered with tubs of miniature trees and hanging pots of Geraniums. A short time later out came a bowl full of steaming illustration; a faintly pinkish, brothy soup with finely chopped celery, onion, potatoes and a few pieces of chopped tomato with Arborio rice al denté. Deceptively simple; marvelously full in taste; clearly the freshest of ingredients. "But again you know, it is not so easy for us to serve this, because Italian rice tends, after a while, to become mush, so you loose all the consistency, you loose everything, and you loose the flavor too I would say. Just like pasta, the texture in the mouth, to taste good it has to be served at the moment it is cooked."

Pietro Bernardi who waves away any claims at being anything more than an enthusiastic amateur chef, nevertheless shows remarkable aptitude in demonstrating the points of view of Pane Vino's culinary philosophy by disappearing into the kitchen for periods of time and popping back out with a steaming plate of this or a bowl of that, a type of tactile discussion that this writer greeted most enthusiastically.

We make our soups and our food the freshest way. Most of the work here is the preparation in the morning, cutting up all the freshest of ingredients we can obtain, the tomatoes, the peppers and then just put them together at the last minute. We shop around to find the best quality products. In the last few years we have been buying 80-90% from the local farmer's market right here in Santa Barbara on Cota and Santa Barbara streets. We don't buy anything from a distributor. With the long growing season and abundant choice, California is like Paradise as far as finding fresh ingredients all year. Basil, herbs like fresh oregano, rosemary, sage are all right here. Even tomatoes are available year round with the greenhouses and hydroponics." He went on to explain that at Pane Vino and Via Via the menu is designed to reflect cuisine's from all over the Northern part of Italy. The soups and other dishes form a travelogue. In one restaurant here in California, we can travel gastronomically over a large part of Italy.