Made reservations here but was really on the fence since it required a taxi ride and it’s so nice to walk (me being from Los Angeles, where nobody walks [though I always thought the song was ‘nobody walks on a lake.’]) But a waiter at another restaurant recommended we go since it just won some award. So we took a taxi from the hotel to the resto. We were seated immediately. I had been very excited about the headcheese and tripe on the menu, and neither were available! Urrgg! So we went with the tasting menu, and instead of being disappointed, we had the best meal of our trip!
The waitress said she ‘told chef’ that I wanted tripe and headcheese and he was bummed because he was having a hard time getting folks to order offal. (I don’t know if she said bummed, that might be my Californian upbringing.)
There was this delicious looking kale salad on the table next to us, so we ordered that in addition to the tasting menu, but it was way too much food and I should have just trusted the chef, as he provided us with plenty of delicious and fresh seasonal vegetables.
The first item of our tasting menu was something I would never have ordered on my own. Vegetables with an olive oil dipping sauce. The vegetables were incredibly fresh - watermelon radishes, carrots, endive, etc - and the sauce was superb. Italian fondue!
Never heard of that. Many recipes use a mix of olive oil and butter. Some call for cream. Cream and butter were local ingredients while olive oil was a luxury imported from other regions.
Went last night. After spending a while talking about the menu and having trouble choosing we decided to go with the $55 chef’s-choice prix-fixe and that worked out great. Four of us had:
Prosciutto di Parma, arugula, aged balsamic, Grana
White anchovy, radish, egg, bagnet vert, whipped butter
pappardelle? with asparagus, cultured grass-fed butter, and mint
Meatballs, neck bone gravy
White beans, slow cooked greens, chili
Whole canary rockfish, purple potato, salmoriglio
strawberry & rhubarb tart with panna? gelato
Cannoli, ricotta, orange, cocoa, hazelnuts
Standouts for me were the kale salad (wilted with salt, labor-intensive but much better than raw), the tortiglioni, the pappardelle (probably thanks to the butter it tasted like it had more than the four simple ingredients), and the fish (bigger than it looks in the photo, four big portions). This is serious Italian food, the best ingredients combined simply to show them at their best. They make their own bread and ricotta.
We drank 2015 Terre del Barolo Verduno Pelaverga, a light but flavorful red that went with everything. Finished with amari including one I’d never seen before, Amaro Punito, very nice, sort of like Averna but lighter.
It’s actually the shortest part of this recipe. I have to make the cheese ‘crisp,’ the salad dressing and poach the egg. Sorry I hijacked this thread but now I’m in the mood for that kale salad. Tomorrow.
My experience has been that I can’t do it ahead of time. Like over-massaging it, doing it ahead lets the salt render it too limp. So I get everything else ready and then do the kale. As long as we’re so off-topic, here’s a video of my favorite chef:
