R E C E N T L Y Couped up in Cambodia By Rosemary Berkeley Remembering the right place at the wrong time (07/17/98) Mondo Weirdo Nude beaches of the week Favorite nude beaches around the world (07/17/98) Tour en Irlande By David Moore Tour de France: Pomp and pedaling in Ireland (07/16/98) Bad news from a black coast: Part Two By Moritz Thomsen Part Two of Moritz Thomsen's unpublished memoir (07/15/98) Bad news from a black coast By Moritz Thomsen Moritz Thomsen in Ecuador: Exclusive excerpts from his unpublished memoir (07/14/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		LORSICA'S TINY CIRCOLO ACLI BAR OFFERS ASTONISHINGLY SAVORY -- AND CHEAP -- WILD BOAR STEW, HANDMADE FETTUCCINE AND OTHER DELIGHTS JUST 10 MILES INLAND FROM PORTOFINO. BY DAVID DOWNIE | Speedboats screamed across the northern Mediterranean. Seaside ristoranti served $100 plates of sea bass to the Italian Riviera's tanned and beautiful. Ten miles inland from Portofino as the seagull flies, the clack of a centuries-old loom echoed down hilltop Lorsica's cool stone alleys -- alleys scented by jugged hare, wild boar stew and homemade fettuccine writhing under pungent sauce, all served at the village's sole trattoria, Circolo ACLI Bar. Italy is a country of great contrasts, and none is more startling than that between the sun-washed Riviera and mountainous Lorsica. This Appenine village has about 600 inhabitants, many of them elderly. A single, chase-your-tail road coils up 1,000 feet from the Fontanabuona Valley, through terraced olive and chestnut groves, then dead-ends here. The back of beyond. But there are two reasons to visit Lorsica. The first -- and for most people, the more compelling -- is the presence of the De Martini family weaving workshop. For about 500 years, Lorsica had hundreds of silk and cotton weavers. Domenico Colombo, Christopher Columbus' father, was a weaver, and some historians claim that the family came from hereabouts. The De Martinis are Lorsica's only remaining weavers. A handful of connoisseurs of damasks, brocades and Shantung trek to their workshop from all over the world, place their orders and wait several years for a delivery. Some of these intrepid silk lovers arrive at feeding time. They wind up, as I did, at the Circolo ACLI Bar, Lorsica's second draw. Now when I go it's for the sow's ear, not the silk. Lorsica is small, its stone houses chased into the rocky hillside along stone-paved footpaths. But you won't find the Circolo ACLI Bar unless you ask for directions. It has no sign outside and doesn't seem to be a restaurant at all. It looks like -- and is -- the kind of wood-paneled place where Good Old Boys smoke smelly cigs and boast about huntin' and fishin'. For good reason: The woods around Lorsica are overrun by wild pig and boar, hare, pheasant, mountain goat. The Lavagna and Màlvaro, two mountain streams, still have trout and perch. It's not that the locals are unfriendly. They're just unused to outsiders. So when my wife and I had finally found the presumed eatery and stepped inside, silence fell. A rare experience in Italy. N E X T+P A G E | A meal and a history lesson