Sandro, my Italian restauranteur bud, cracks me up. His enthusiasm for his restaurant is tremendous and he can almost be found around the premises talking to the patrons, guiding the staff, and instructing those unfamiliar with pizza and pasta of the proper way to eat it. “No, no!   With your hands, with your hands!”, which is actually usually delivered in Chinese.   Or, the best is when he sits down next to you and takes you fork and knife and rolls the proscutti and formaggio up for you and dips it in the olive oil and vinager mixture, then hands you back the fork and knife.

I was a little surprised by his absence when I made my first visit after I was done with my tour of Shenzhen (provided by my company; I’d been to all the places I was taken). But, the waitresses recognized me immediately and called out my name. After chatting with them for a while in my crippled but re-emerging Mandarin and placing an order for my favorite pizza, I called Sandro. Of course, he didn’t know who I was since I dumped my old China Mobile SIM card (after being fed up with the confusing monthly fees). After teasing him a bit, I told him it was me and he excitedly replied, “OK, I’m on my way!” He showed up with his fiance, Lulu, and I had Penny, one of the waitresses, snap this shot of us:

Sandro ordered me a complimentary slice of tiramisu.   I had to ask (as I did many times in the past) him if he still made the tiramisu himself.   “Of couuuuurse!!!”, he proudly shot back.   That’s the answer I always like to hear.