When our waiter was rattling off our choices of entrées, we passed over the whole lamb's brain en papillote, and the poached calf's foot, though I was feeling adventurous. The waiter seemed to try to warn us against one dish, although the only adjectives he could muster were "intense" and "heavy." I interpreted his warning as an attempt to protect a valuable secret, and I asked him to tell me more about the dish. As he concluded his description, he warned me again that it was "very heavy." I chuckled inside; this waiter had obviously never been to America. When I ordered the dish, he asked if I was sure, and warned me again about its heaviness. I concluded that this wispy tri-lingual waiter was now daring me to eat the dish I had ordered, and I resolved that -- for the honor of myself, my onlooking girlfriend, and, yes, my country -- I had no choice but to face down Cibrèo's cappello di prete.

The "Priest's Hat" (also referred to as the "Pope's Hat") is a triangular pork sausage, wrapped in sheets of pork fat to hold its shape, and poached in broth for four hours. When it's done, the fat wrapper is removed and shredded, and served alongside the sliced sausage. Picchi pairs this porcine powerhouse with a little tart of Mostarda di Cremona - a mustard-glazed candied fruit concoction - on a base of cheese custard.

I mentioned before that Picchi likes to hit you with sweet, salty, and fatty sensations all at once; well this dish is all that in spades. The hostess walked by the table at one point and asked whether I was eating the meat and the tart together. "You have to!" she chastized me. So I did. And then nearly fell out of my chair.

The mostarda, aside from being sweet, has subtle acidic and spicy notes; it's the perfect foil for the fatty sausage (and the ribbons of pork fat that were disturbingly easy to eat). The sausage itself was also a bit sweet and unbelievably moist, permeated throughout with the gentle broth it had been cooked in. But the genius of this dish is the cheese custard at the bottom of the tart. Part fat, part water, slightly sour, slightly sweet, somewhat rich, somewhat light: the cheese was the bridge that tied the dish together. It was the medium through which all the flavors on the plate were gathered at full force and sent slamming headlong onto the palate, where they lingered with a lazy, mouth-filling contentedness. I couldn't believe it. I actually laughed out loud.

Lisa ordered a dish that had a very intricate description, but which was essentially eggplant parmigiana. Lisa loves eggplant parmigiana. She sometimes gets it on a sandwich, for lunch. Now she can never do that again.

The typical deli-counter incarnation of eggplant parmigiana has more in common with sodden cardboard than with Picchi's creation. How he controls the eggplant's texture -- rendering it tender but not mushy -- while avoiding the bitterness that so often creeps in to an eggplant's cooked flesh, I only wish I knew. Poor Lisa. The eggplant is ruined for her, and I'm powerless to bring it back.