Princess Travel

Frank Sinatra flew pesto to Las Vegas.
Not the restaurant. Just the pesto. Jars of it, made at Via XX Settembre 20 in Genoa by the Belloni family, loaded onto a plane and sent to wherever Frank happened to be performing. He had discovered Ristorante Zeffirino in the 1960s, and something about the sauce, made with basil grown in Prà, a coastal neighborhood west of Genoa's port, held him from that point forward.

On August 15, 1984, Sinatra walked into the restaurant in person. The photo is on the wall.

The place had existed since 1939. Zeffirino Belloni opened it that year on Via XX Settembre, near the Ponte Monumentale in the center of Genoa. The idea was straightforward: fresh pasta, Ligurian fish, and Genoese pesto made the way it had been made in Liguria for centuries, with the right basil from the right soil and no shortcuts. Belloni named the restaurant after himself, which in a port city that had been naming things after Christopher Columbus for 500 years was either confidence or stubbornness.

Then the world showed up.

Frank Sinatra had the pesto shipped to his tour dates. The Vatican signed on as an official client, receiving the family's recipe for papal functions. Heads of state ate here. Football players ate here. The ceiling filled with signed photographs, and a dish called Paffutelli alla Frank - a puffed filled pasta in basil cream, created SPECIFICALLY for Sinatra's preference - appeared on the menu and never left.

You walk up a staircase off Via XX Settembre to get there, slightly elevated from the street, and the room has wood paneling, hand-painted furniture, and a canvas portrait of Olga, Zeffirino Belloni's wife, watching from the wall. The open kitchen sends out the smell of basil and focaccia before you sit down. It does not feel like a tourist destination. It feels like walking into someone's house in 1955 and finding that the same family still lives there.

The restaurant still operates today, now in its fifth generation of Belloni family management. Open daily, 12pm to 3pm and 7pm to 11pm. Reservations at +39 010 591990. The Paffutelli alla Frank is still on the menu. The pesto still uses basil from Prà.

Some people name dishes after themselves. Sinatra had a dish named after him by the family whose recipe he could not stop ordering.