Missing Papa Ricco

Reply To:	Mark Heyer <MARKH@HEYERTECH.COM>

My pleasure at returning to Boquete after a month in Guatemala was tempered this week by the unexpected death by automobile of my friend Papa Ricco. He would be the first to agree that he had many friends and shall we say, unfriends in Boquete, but for me and my wife Martine, Papa Ricco held a unique place in our hearts - he was the first person we spontaneously met on our first day in town.

We were enjoying our dinner at Christoff's second restaurant in Los Establos, when this grizzled, unshaven old character shambled in and helped himself to a seat next to us. In his characteristically rough Italian, New York way of speaking, he filled us in on the life of Papa Ricco to date, his DeLorean car and especially how Boquete really needed a good pizza restaurant and he was the guy who was going to make it happen. 

We took this whole dissertation with a bemused grain of salt until our next trip to Boquete months later when we enjoyed our first meal in town at his new Papa Ricco's restaurant (pics below) and watched him return the money to a gringo customer who had aggressively demanded a jubilado discount, throwing him out of the restaurant to "Never darken my door again!" Right then I knew I was going to like this guy.

Papa Ricco was a guy who made things happen - his exploits were never ending, always looking to the next enterprise, like his comically abortive foray to Antigua and his return to start over in his beloved Boquete and indeed finally finding a loving companion. Along the way he supplied much of the baking equipment that seeded the wonderfully successful new baking industry in Boquete. 

Papa Ricco had the honor of leaving this mortal coil doing exactly what loved and wanted to do, every day till his last. I for one, and I suspect many of you, will miss this irascible but charming and creative character who added such spice to our lives here in Boquete. 

I can hear him telling St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, "What dis place needs is a good pizza restaurant..

     Thanks to Keith Woolford for posting this lovely picture

 

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