Wandering Italy Blog: Restaurants

Sexy food in Piemonte · Jul 28, 12:11 AM by James Martin

I like Tuscan food. But then, there’s Piemonte cuisine, a whole different thing. I spent a few days eating in Piemonte recently. From the fab food cooked by Marla and Fabrizio at their Bed and Breakfast (and cooking school!) called Bella Baita to the simple seafood at the Lakeside Chalet del Lago, to the sophisticated food at Ristorante Al Castello Della Manta Noch Leit adjacent to Manta Castle.

Thus an internet photo essay on the two distinctive types of food porn discovered on this trip. Peek, then avert your eyes, as usual.

Here is the hot, raw, dripping, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it food porn:

guazzetto

(Guazzetto from Chalet del Lago Ristorante in Avigliana)

And then there’s subtle, little black dress, caught in the shadows food porn:

bacalao stuffed zucchini flowers

(Salt Cod stuffed Zucchini Flowers from Ristorante Al Castello)

I’m hungry.

Sexy food in Piemonte originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jul 28, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Restaurants

Italy Travel Toolbox

A Truffled Gnudi Lunch in Arezzo · Jul 21, 06:13 AM by James Martin

Summer is not the ideal time to go around tasting truffles. Summer truffles, like summer oysters from warmer waters (say around New Orleans) often approach tastelessness, even though the charge for them remains high.

But we found Osteria da Luchino in Arezzo, and I couldn’t help myself—and darn if both courses of my lunch didn’t come with a rather generous overcoat of freshly shaved truffles. Check out the “pasta” up there on the right. Click the picture to see it large enough to cause your taste buds to stand at attention. What you’re seeing all hidden in the dense overgrowth of truffles are some gnudi resting on a dollop of pear sauce. Gnudi come from around Arezzo. They’re like ordering ravioli without the pasta part. Ricotta reigns. The menu touts them as “gnudi gratinati al forno con purea di pere e tartufo.” Gnudi could be an extension of yesterday’s discussion of Unusual Primi Piatti

They were good. Need you ask? Just look at them! And the minute the plate got 5 feet away from the table we were immersed in a cloud of sexy truffle odors.

Martha’s Pici acqua e farina al ragu biano di coniglio, eggless pici with a white rabbit sauce, looks rather threadbare, doesn’t it? But the taste! Yes, the pici had absorbed everything a rabbit and its associated vegetables could give. Fantastic!

Ok, so could our secondi piatti live up to the primi? I mean, for me we were talking more truffles, maybe an overdose of truffles, this time drifting over a saddle of roast rabbit wrapped around asparagus stalks. The rabbit was moist. So moist I had to go out and ask the cook how he did it. Did he perhaps wrap the fatless rabbit in a bit of lardo before putting it in the oven to keep it so moist? “No,” he told me. He had cooked it very slowly, “140-150 degrees Centigrade.” Even without the truffles it was some of the best rabbit I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve eaten quite a lot of bunny in my day. But truffles never hurt any dish in my recollection. Heck, stewed sweat socks would taste good if they were heaped in shaved truffles.

Martha’s duck breast crusted in herbs and bread crumbs was also perfectly cooked.

So I’m thinking, “wow, this was a great meal.”

The cost was reasonable. The gnudi with the truffles ran me 13 Euros. Not cheap, but we’re talking truffles that actually had that heady taste that’s often missing from summer truffles. And the rabbit was even cheaper, at 12 Euros. Some folks charge that for rabbit that’s not half as good and lacks the generous dose of truffles.

So when I came home I looked on the web for reviews of Osteria da Luchino. I was baffled. There were as many 1 and 2 star reviews as 4 or five star reviews. Folks didn’t like the service, which when we were there was exemplary. True, the food came out as it came from the kitchen, and that often meant that each of a couple’s plates arrived at a slightly different time, but I can easily live with that.

And yes, the restaurant was full of tourists, including two tables of Italian tourists. (You can always tell because Italian tourists oddly seem to have no knowledge of the pasta shapes or types that exist outside their own region. So when an Italian says something like, “What’s pici?” then you know he’s a “foreigner,” someone who doesn’t live or hasn’t grown up in the area.)

So I’m baffled at the negative reviews, but a day later still nearly ecstatic over my truffle lunch. You don’t get this kinda thing where I come from. And I have no idea what those folks are complaining about. I guess I’ll have to try it again to see if I was imagining great food.

Osteria da Luchino
Via Beccheria 3
Arezzo

A Truffled Gnudi Lunch in Arezzo originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jul 21, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Tuscany | Restaurants

Trattoria Mummo & Francesca · Apr 13, 08:50 AM by James Martin

When I saw them building a place wedged between the road to San Stefano di Magra and the river, I wondered who’d be crazy enough to put a house way out in the middle of nowhere but right next to a busy road. It turned out to be a restaurant called Trattoria Pizzeria da Mummo & Francesca when it was finished.

We finally made it there for lunch. Martha had the worker’s lunch at 12 Euros, a quarter of wine and a bottle of water included. I ordered off the menu. I had some pretty nifty food. Martha’s was rather ordinary.

So here:

ravioli

What you see up there, in all its meaty glory, is whole grain ravioli stuffed with braised venison and sauced with a red cinghiale or wild boar sauce. Boy, that’ll stick to your ribs. 5 out of five stars, but it wouldn’t do at all for a light summer starter if you catch my drift.

Then came the pork fillet with porcini sauce, elegantly presented as you see to the right. If you click the picture, it will go to the proper Wandering Italy site and you can see the picture larger, (just sayin’ if you’re seeing this post as stolen property on another site.) This one was more visually appealing than the pasta (perhaps) but lacked seasoning (surprisingly, as this is Italy!). Just so-so flavor, with industrial pork and preserved mushrooms (but at this time of year you’d expect them). Over all, with a big insalata, it was a very good experience. I’d go again.

Trattoria Pizzeria da Mummo & Francesca
Via Saigola, 5 (SS Cisa) – 54011 Aulla
tel – 0187.41.30.17

Trattoria Mummo & Francesca originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Apr 13, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Restaurants

Popular These Days

Sunshine, Clouds, a Castle, and Lunch in the Lunigiana · Mar 29, 08:06 AM by James Martin

We had some sunshine this morning. It was warm. I went out without a coat. Nevertheless, sunshine has been the deviant spring weather of 2011. Needless to say, il sole didn’t last long.

But then again, some big, black clouds overhead can make Tuscany’s most evocative castle look even better, framed in uncertainty and darkness. Click the picture. It will get bigger. You will like it. Many of you will think of stealing it. Please don’t. It’s not yours.

In any case, we ate in a little restaurant under the castle, wondering whether to include it in Tuscany for Foodies. The pasta, on the two occasions we’ve been there, has been just ok. The Pollo al Tegame, chicken baked in a pot with tomatoes, celery and carrots, was darn tasty. The house wine wasn’t bad. The bill? 10 Euros each, everything included, meaning the wine, mineral water, tips, taxes and coffee.

So here’s the thing. If you came all this way to see this sparkling example of a medieval hill town (it’s a very, very small hill; so small it starts under the road level, which makes for great pictures), you might well be hungry. So should I send you to a restaurant that’s far away from here, or would you like to know that if you come way out of your way to see this tiny town, with nothing really inside except eye candy, that there’s this restaurant called Al Castello you can eat at and it will fuel you for more sighseeing nicely and you won’t faint at the sight of the bill?

I think I’m going to include it. Al Castello is very popular with the workers, whose numbers are dwindling these days.

Sunshine, Clouds, a Castle, and Lunch in the Lunigiana originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Mar 29, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: The Lunigiana | Restaurants

Tuscany and Foodie Places--Statistically Speaking · Mar 14, 06:46 AM by James Martin

A recent review of Tuscany for Foodies caught my attention. The reader evidently thought that there should be more resources listed. Fair enough. But then again, when you make a list of fine restaurants, you can’t list all the restaurants in your targeted geographical area—or even a majority. If you are advising people where to go to get great food, food that is a cut above the rest, it follows that you need to be very selective. (Doesn’t it?)

In any case, I went looking around for comparisons. It turns out that Tuscany is just about the same size as the state of New Jersey. That is to say that Tuscany’s 8,880 square miles compare quite favorably to New Jersey’s 8,722 square miles.

Now, joking aside, I suspect that you can find some mighty good food in New Jersey. I haven’t come across the total number of restaurants in New Jersey, but I can tell you that njrestaurants.com, a site that calls itself a directory and tries to list all New Jersey Restaurants (but obviously doesn’t), lists 162—if I’m adding correctly. Zagat, which tries to list only the ones that are worth eating at if you’re really serious about food, lists 33 New Jersey restaurants worth considering. So, if I were being as selective as Zagat on a restaurants per square mile basis, I’d only list 33 eating establishments in Tuscany. Tuscany for Foodies has over 130 listings.

That seems like a lot. It seems to me that one has the same problem with selection criteria as restaurant owners do with quantity of food. There will always be folks for whom absolute quantity beats quality every darn time. But there is a difference between a gourmet (foodie in modern terms) and a glutton; who you cater to determines your course of action. A directory of all restaurants in Tuscany would be of little use; all a person would have to do is to drive into any decent sized town and stop the car in front of someplace to eat, an exercise that I have little doubt would result in a higher frequency of pleasurable experiences in Tuscany than in New Jersey, but perhaps I am prejudiced by all this stewed wild boar and inexpensive wine.

So how many eating experiences would warrant being listed in a guide to Tuscany? Would you favor a large directory of “decent places” or a smaller list of vetted restaurants whose owners who care deeply about what they put on the plate? You can reply on our Facebook page, if you’re interested in furthering the debate.

(The reader also thought that the listings were ad-driven. I have no idea where that idea comes from. Have you ever seen a small, local place like the Lunigiana’s Spino Fiorito advertised anywhere? Or even a bigger place?)

Tuscany and Foodie Places--Statistically Speaking originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Mar 14, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Restaurants

Tacos and Meatballs, oh my! · Jan 25, 05:05 PM by James Martin

If you follow food news, by now you’ve probably heard that what passes for beef at Taco Bell appears to be only a small bit of beef combined with slurry of fillers named by lawyers to obscure their real identity and provenience. (So what’s an “isolated oat product”, anyway?) Here’s the list:

Beef, Water, Seasoning [Isolated Oat Product, Salt, Chili Pepper, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Oats (Wheat), Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Spices, Maltodextrin, Soybean Oil (Anti-Dusting Agent), Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Caramel Color, Cocoa Powder (Processed With Alkali), Silicon Dioxide, Natural Flavors, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Smoke Flavor], Salt, Sodium Phosphate

An Alabama law firm is suing Taco Bell for deceptively calling this mixture beef, as beef, their sample testing is alleged to show, makes up only 36% of it. And to some people, let’s say reasonable ones, that ain’t enough.

According to Grist here:

Evidently, what Taco Bell identifies as “seasoned beef” has so many binders and extenders that it fails the minimum USDA labeling requirements for beef products

What’s interesting is the public reaction to all this, half of which runs along the lines of, “I like this stuff, so what’s the problem?”

And nobody ever replies with the obvious: “Then eat all you want of it!”

Because whether you like it or not, your liking or disliking isn’t part of the equation. Deceptive advertising is. You see, the problem is that an honest guy trying setting a realistic price for his honest beef taco can’t be expected to compete with a corporate monster with an enormous ad budget who’s lying about what he’s slapping on your plastic plate—and that, ladies and gents, should seem basically wrong to anybody human who possesses a brain (and it explains why there are so goddam many industrial crap restaurants in “let ‘em lie, they’re richer than I” America).

But let’s be clear: if Taco Bell wants to sell $1 oatmeal tacos it has every right to.

Because, really, fillers aren’t the problem. Ever tasted a sublime Italian meatball? I’m not talking about one of those hard-as-bocce-ball “meatballs” you get at a fast food joint hidden under a writhing mass of overcooked spaghetti, but a real meatball, a polpettone made by an Italian grandmother.

If you manage to get the recipe from said grandmother, which is not likely to contain any reference whatsoever to amounts, you might still be amazed that the secret to the dish is bread. Yes, pure filler. This is cucina povera after all.

The bread is not just something to fill the space and deceive you into thinking you’re sinking your molars into pure beef. It is an essential structural element in the dish that keeps the meatball from taking on that bocce-ball character. Besides, the best polpettone absorb sauce (or you can use the more romantic “marry to the sauce”) like no “pure beef” meatball possibly could. And they are delightfully soft.

So, what I’m telling you is that even filler is not a problem if somebody has thought things through and is not trying to deceive folks.

Let’s get this one fact straight: A free market is only free if consumers know what they’re buying. Otherwise it’s a thieves market. And that is the simple problem.

So journalists, let’s not go overboard and polarize the masses by gushing “The list of ingredients is gruesome” when it contains water, like gizmodo did. Let’s just report exactly what’s in there so that people who don’t particularly want to load up on “Natural Smoke Flavor” and “Isolated Oat Product” can, with the information provided, choose to consume or not. And then, if all goes well, the guy with the great idea to put real beef in his tacos can prosper too—and we can have a choice.

And finally—can we get some more Italian grandmothers in here? I’m gosh-awful hungry.

Filed in: Food | Restaurants

Lucca and Fall Colors · Nov 5, 12:36 PM by James Martin

If this isn’t the best time to come to Lucca, I don’t know what is. The trees planted along the walls are bursting with color.

We spent the night in Lucca after a tour of some artisan food producers in the Garfagnana with Wish Versilia, including lunch at the amazing Vecchio Mulino in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana (Pictures available on Tuscany for Foodies). I figure it’s gotta be the best restaurant in the world without a stove of any kind. Wooden platters come out with all the local specialties: Cheeses, meats, fish, a bit of salad to cleanse the palate, and more. If you like lots of small tastes of traditional food and great wine, go there. I mean it.

At night we had enough room to finally try the guidebook champ of Lucca restaurants Buca di Saint’Antonio. Good food. It didn’t blow me away.

But you gotta admit, Lucca is beautiful. Just click that picture and tell me you’d rather be in your cubilcle instead of walking along the wall that separates ancient Lucca from the industrial crap that might have invaded if it weren’t there! Go ahead, I dare ya.

Filed in: Food | Restaurants

Snow and Slabs of Cinta Senese · Oct 27, 10:59 AM by James Martin

After much rain in the Lunigiana, today was bright, brilliantly clear, and there was a dusting of snow on all the peaks, including over the town of Barga in the Garfagnana, as you see over there to the right. You may click it to see it bigger.

What were we doing in the Garfagnana? Well, a lunchtime visit to check out Aurelio Barattini’s restaurant Antica Locanda di Sesto for possible inclusion into our Tuscany for Foodies app started with a drive on the Autostrada. But after some pasta and a great Cinta Senese chop cooked over an olive wood fire, we felt elated enough to take off on the twisty way home to the Lunigiana through the Garfagnana, past the Devil’s bridge at Borgo a Mozzano and through some of the most beautiful country in Italy, now changing to fall colors. Bellisima! A fine day.

If you’re into Tuscan food, take a gander at our Tuscan for Foodies facebook page. Leave me a note on your favorite food, food store, or restaurant.

Filed in: Italy Travel Tips | Restaurants