Italian food

Coffee Art

January 10, 2010

A cappuccino at Blue Bottle Coffee, San Francisco Ferry Terminal. Beautiful, and authentically Italian in flavor. These folks know what they’re doing.

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Gallery: Tirano, October 2007

May 10, 2009

I took so many great pictures during our visit to the Sertoli Salis winery in Tirano (Valtellina) that I couldn’t use them all even in three pages, so here they are. Some are fuzzygraphs because I did not want to use flash on the interior frescoes, but I’ve included them anyway to give you at [...]

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Al Cenacolo: A “Last Supper” in Chiavenna

December 28, 2008

Yesterday we had our family holiday big meal out at Al Cenacolo (“at the Last Supper”) in Chiavenna. Having gone that far from home, it was a big decision not to go to our beloved Lanterna Verde, but, because this place had been recommended to us by Dr. Maulé, we decided to take a chance [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Gallery

December 28, 2008

In 2007, I won a deluxe dinner at one of Italy’s finest restaurants, and published several pages about it. Here is the full gallery of photos from that evening.

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Gallery: Venice

August 9, 2008

From our September, 2007, visit to Venice.

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Favorite Restaurants, in Italy and Elsewhere

January 1, 2008

Note: All prices may be severely out of date. Quality not likely to have changed. Lake Como Area Belvedere Il Capriolo Crotasc Lanterna Verde L’Osteria del Viaggiatore These are full reviews – also see brief listings below for some more restaurants. Elsewhere Ristorante Tortella, Castelli, Abruzzo various in Austin, Texas American chain restaurants Vegetarian Restaurants [...]

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Guests of Conti Sertoli Salis: Fine Food and Wine in Valtellina

October 8, 2007

Part 1: Lunch! Many moons ago, spurred by a question on Fodors.com, I wandered the Internets, looking up wineries in the nearby region of Valtellina. Several had sites, some gorgeously produced. Sertoli Salis particularly caught my eye because the site was so very beautiful, and I knew the wines to be good, but the English [...]

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High Water (Not Hell) in Venice, part 6

September 29, 2007

Venice’s Bad Karma > On Saturday morning, I learned what a macchiatone (“big spotted one”) is: it’s basically a caffé macchiato (coffee “spotted” with steamed milk), with a bit more milk – so, somewhere between a macchiato and a cappuccino, served in a cappuccino cup. I had it with a delicious little torta di riso [...]

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Trattoria Al Passo, Venice – Only Fish!

September 29, 2007

While we were all in Venice, Jeet’s friend and Andrew’s colleague, Umberto, wanted to take us to his favorite restaurant in the nearby village of Campalto. The restaurant’s card says Solo Pesce (only fish), and that’s all we had – lots of very, very good fish, most of it local and extremely fresh. Umberto and [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni: Arrival

July 23, 2007

I was one of a lucky group of people to win a dinner offered by San-Lorenzo.com as part of its marketing initiative Il Vino Lo Portiamo Noi (“we’ll bring the wine”). So what if the dinner took place halfway across Italy in le Marche? The Symposium Quattro Stagioni is one of Italy’s top restaurants, and [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – After

July 23, 2007

We sat around for a while and drank more wine (Alessandro, Enrica, and Ernesto shown above), and played with a new gadget that my boss Fabrizio invented (Carlo came up with the wine glass trick). I had brought along prototypes to give everybody, as a market test to see how they liked it. Rossella aka [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Dessert

July 23, 2007

Alessio and Enrico The dessert was also amazingly complicated and took a lot of time to prepare (the staff certainly earn their keep here!). The woman above filled little glasses with a coconut sorbet-and-liqueur. Lacy chocolate cups were filled with ice cream (I wasn’t quite sure of the flavor), and then warm little chocolate muffins [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Secondi

July 23, 2007

For the secondi (entree course), Sara had decided to challenge her guests with a Degustazione di Frattaglie. Degustazione means “tasting” or “sampler”. Frattaglie are… innards. (I believe in English they are sometimes called euphemistically “sweetbreads”.) This used to be considered peasant food: the parts of the animal left over after the nobles had taken the [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Primi

July 23, 2007

The starter was panzanella di pomodoro con scampi di Fano – tomato and bread with local scampi on a bed of arugula. As chef Lucio explained, this is a recipe inspired by the “fishermen of the hills” – those who, while owning a fishing boat down on the coast, live up in the hills, where [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni: Aperitivi

July 23, 2007

Much of the action at Symposium takes place behind the large, curved bar in the dining room, where patrons are welcome to lean over, watch, and ask questions. From the time we arrived, Danilo was busy preparing five different nibbles for the aperitivi di benvenuto. The spoonfuls shown above, designed to be reminiscent of “an [...]

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Italian Restaurant: La Quercia di Rosa

July 7, 2007

On our way down to Abruzzo for my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday, we stopped for lunch near Modena, the home of balsamic vinegar. Quite by accident (although this kind of accident is not unusual in Italy), we found an excellent restaurant, La Quercia di Rosa (the Rose Oak – ?). They make their own balsamic vinegar, [...]

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Italian Garden 2007: July

July 5, 2007

Unintended Consequences Here’s what happens when I leave my garden unattended: I get beautiful wild grains like the above – otherwise known as weeds. A weed I had been assiduously removing (but, obviously, missed one) turns out to have charming puffy purple blossoms. The insalata riccia (curly lettuce) bolted into meter-high stalks with delicate blossoms. [...]

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Italy’s Amazing Summer Fruits

July 1, 2007

sculpture above done by Ross when she attended liceo artistico Summer has arrived, and with it everyone’s favorite fruits – along with the desire to mangiare leggero (“eat light”) in the heat. At this time of year it’s not unusual to see mounds of cherries served as dessert, antipasto, or snack at parties and dinners. [...]

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An Over-the-Top Italian Restaurant in the US

June 24, 2007

I usually avoid Italian restaurants in the US – why bother, when I can get far better Italian food from the grocery store at home? But during my last US trip I did end up going with friends for takeout to an Italian chain restaurant, Buca di Beppo (whose name is already funny to an [...]

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Italian Garden 2007: June

June 14, 2007

herbs for sale at an Italian garden center The garden has been largely left to its own devices in the last six weeks, and is thriving. We’ve had monsoon-like rains almost every day for weeks, so it certainly doesn’t need watering, and the vegetables are large enough now that they’re mostly holding their own against [...]

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