1 · Position
A Ligurian fish restaurant on the Piazzetta, the harbour square of Portofino, sixty covers between a stone-walled room and the terrace over the water. Reservations by telephone only. It is the most photographed lunch in the village and has fed, by the accounts, Gianni Agnelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera and Silvio Berlusconi — all of them, the obituary says, devotees of its pesto made without garlic.
2 · ⚑ The conflict, which is the reason this entry is worth reading
The house’s own history: Evangelina “Vange” Miroli opened a fry shop in Portofino in 1946, which became the restaurant Il Navicello in 1948; her son Luigi, born 20 October 1932 and called Puny from the Ligurian for little one, opened his own restaurant in 1980 and gave it the name his mother used for him.
The obituary: he opened Il Navicello with his mother in 1945, left it in 1976, and opened Puny some years later with his wife and nephews, who later left to open another restaurant.
A restaurant guide: it is Olivieri-family-run and in continuous family ownership since 1958.
Three accounts, two family names and three founding dates. The Library prints all three and resolves none.
3 · Why it prints them rather than picking
A register that chose the tidiest version would be publishing a guess with the authority of a record. The house’s own account is the strongest of the three and is still only the house’s account; the guide’s Olivieri may be a straightforward error, may be a second family, and cannot be settled from here. The disagreement is stated in the entry and carried forward until a document settles it — the same treatment this register gives the founding of LHL-015 Airelles, dated three ways by its own owner.
4 · Candour
⚑ Luigi Miroli died in 2017 at 85, in Genoa, where he was born; his son Andrea, then 38, continued. The restaurant now runs two websites with overlapping histories and a farm operation attached. Not established here: what became of Il Navicello, when exactly Puny opened, and which family owns it today. ⚑ Nobody from this entry is in Part IX; the founder of a house that outlived him belongs there, and cannot be entered until his dates are settled.