Italy- The Food

Obviously, Italy is known the world over for its food. As mentioned in the last post, I was not up for enjoying any food the last time I was there. So I am going to relive those fantastic meals today because I deserve to.

A few people have asked what our favorite meals were. All of them. No, not really. But everything tastes better there because the cheese, tomatoes, and olive oil are FRESH...not to mention the wine that comes from the hills around you.

Joe's favorite meal was a "pub crawl" that we did in Venice. This will be described in detail in the "Alessandro" post.

My favorite meal was at Al Volt, a restaurant we found in The Rough Guide to the Italian Lakes. (Because this book was spot on at every point, we recommend The Rough Guide travel books)

Anyways, Al Volt was tucked away in the old city area of Riva. Think winding cobbled walkways about 10 ft wide lined with shops and restaurants on the bottom floor of quaint, colorful buildings. This restaurant is decorated for Valentine's Day year round:


Red glass tableware and lace table cloths, lit with lamps and candlelight only- it was like a scene out of a fairy tale. Of course we didn't realize before walking in how elegant a place it was and in my opinion were not dressed appropriately. We asked the host before entering and they were gracious enough to seat us anyway. However, I'm sure they were rolling their eyes at the casual dressing American turistas who have no respect for nice places.

I actually had to lighten this picture considerably because the place was romantically lit. Poor Erin had come to dinner with us that night, again, not knowing what type of place it was and so the three of us gazed in each others' eyes during dinner. But she was there to take the above picture.

OK, back to the food.

This was our first course, some type of squash soup. They said it was pumpkin, but something was lost in translation, because it wasn't exactly pumpkin.
It was, however, very yummy. In fact, Erin practically licked hers clean and then finished mine.

We had this for the second course:

Beef Carpaccio Salad. I was scared of this beforehand, yet intrigued. It is very thinly sliced beef that has been cured and packed tightly with lots of spices for some amount of time that I can't exactly remember. They wrap it around greens and add shavings of grana padano cheese.

Oh, wow. I was a fan and had this dish no fewer than 4 times in the days to follow.

Then came the main course:

Spaghetti with Castelmagno cheese and truffles. Fantastico!

And then we got gelato on the way home like we did every night.

A couple other occurrences to note:

-Because of the great number of German tourists, EVERY single restaurant featured Schnitzel or Wurstel sausages. Kind of like the token hamburger for Americans.

- One especially warm evening our group was out to dinner and all but Dale ordered a beer. He rarely drinks alcohol and really enjoys his Diet Coke. Our waitress was an elderly Italian mama and she NEVER let him hear the end of it. Because of the extreme language barrier (she spoke not one word of English) we are pretty sure she thought Dale and Donna were on vacation with their 3 kids. And the fact that the man of the house was not drinking a beer while everyone else was- Mamma Mia!

-In the summer every meal is eaten outdoors. In fact, some restaurants don't have any tables inside- what a treat!

- Even though the food is amazing, there is no variety to speak of. All the restaurants are "Italian" and the one Chinese place we saw appeared sketchy.

Next post we'll move on to fashion!