I met Andy Lane for the primary time when he walked by the doorways of my cooperative industrial kitchen and needed to speak about pasta. Folks do that each every so often, and I all the time get pleasure from it.
Nevertheless, this assembly was stuffed with loopy coincidences. We had been each from restaurant households; his great-grandfather fled Sicily within the late ‘40s and ended up establishing the longstanding downtown favourite known as The Grand Café and Deli. My grandfather had a diner known as Kent’s Café, and a fried rooster restaurant known as The Drumstick. We each have a love of Italian meals, and we had each studied linguistics. He grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a mere 75 miles from the Wyoming city I grew up in. It was fairly uncanny.
The opposite factor we had in frequent is the truth that he was opening up a Mediterranean Restaurant right here in Lincoln, and a few years in the past, I had seemed into doing one thing comparable.
Andy has now opened his personal place downtown known as, Dammi Dammi – which is Italian for “give me give me.” The brightly coloured spot opened July 26 at 126 N. thirteenth St., proper on the nook subsequent to the Rococo Theater. Because the identify suggests, there are dishes from Italy, Greece, Spain, France and extra.
The menu itself isn’t in depth. Actually, except for the drinks and gelato, it consists of solely 17 gadgets. The fascinating factor is – it’s simple to seek out a number of dishes to attempt, as a result of they’re so numerous with such completely different taste profiles. There are soups, salads, protein bowls and breakfast gadgets such because the eggy French clafoutis. Dammi Dammi additionally serves a rotating menu of unimaginable selfmade gelato, with flavors comparable to fiordilatte (candy cream), lavender honey and bacon mascarpone, together with dairy-free sorbettos, like dutch chocolate, prickly pear, and melon and prosciutto.
