Vivoli Gelateria

Address: Via Isole dell Stinche 7r, Firenze (FI), Italy. 055299334.

Review: Vivoli is one of the more (or most) famous gelaterie in Firenze.

Of course in a town known more for its architectural beauty and intellectual history than food prowess, this might not be saying much. Let's see what this gelato's made of, shall we.

First a word regarding size. We bought the 5 euro cup, and I figured Vivoli would fill it up with quite a lot of gelato. I was wrong. Vivoli filled the cup to the rim, and not much more. Skimping on gelato like this is not especially appreciated by patrons, nor is it a terribly good business practice. That said, size has nothing to do with the taste of the gelato. So, let's shift focus and discuss taste.

We indulged in four flavors: cedro (i.e., candied large lemons from the Amalfi Coast), chocolate with orange, apricot, and pineapple.

The cedro was a very interesting flavor. Cedro itself is incredibly bitter, and candying it only takes away the bitterness to a certain degree. So, at points while eating, I would bite into the candied cedro and get a hit of bitter in contrast to the sweet creaminess of the gelato. Americans usually aren't huge fans of bitter tastes, but if you spend enough time in Europe or Asia, you begin to appreciate what bitterness can add to food. In this case, the citric bitterness livened the gelato and set it apart from almost all other gelato flavors I've tasted. Great idea. Great execution.

Chocolate and orange is a classic combination, and it makes a very good gelato flavor. The chocolate base was smooth, sweet, and deeply chocolatey. The earthiness of the chocolate, but not any artificial sweetness, was center stage. The orange added a fruity flavor and depth to the gelato. Classic. Beautiful.

The apricot and pineapple, by contrast, were more about the sugar than the fruit. This is unfortunate, since apricot lends itself to so well to a fruit-in-the-forefront gelato.

So, two small flavors were very, very good, and two small flavors were just okay.

Rating: 6.5/10 (5/10 is average).

Trattoria al Principe

Address: 52100, Arezzo, Localita' Giovi, 25. 390575362046.

Review: As I was passing through Arezzo to other destinations in Tuscany, I followed a recommendation and stopped at Trattoria al Principe in a small town called Giovi.

The location for Trattoria al Principe is deceiving. You first drive through a suburb of Arezzo that appears like any other Italian suburb. However, just before reaching Principe, a Medieval piazza envelopes your eyes. Its diminutive size does nothing to detract from its aged beauty.

You couldn't pick a better location for a restaurant, IMHO. The natural beauty of the place almost imposes itself on the food, enhancing flavor as if by magic. And now, on to the food.

I ordered the anguilla al caccio (eel in tomato sauce), and verdure grigliate (grilled vegetables). The eel came in a scalding hot terracotta bowl with the sauce bubbling away.

The eel came accompanied by crusty grilled pane toscano. (Pane toscano is a non-salted bread eaten regularly in Tuscany. Without salt, the bread is bland and unpleasant alone. Ultimately, it is designed to be eaten with other salty items.) The eel was served bone-in, as it were, which is about the only way eel can be served because its more spine than meat. This make for a fastidious eating process, because, after taking eel from bowl to plate, all the meat must be carefully removed from the spine and the skin before begin eaten. Once it is though, eel has a very mild white flesh taste. It is only on the very back end can you taste any hint of the eel's nature as a water-dweller. This meant my eel was fresh from the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea. Crusty, hearty bread was the perfect accompaniment to the light meat. And the tomato sauce was hot and spicy and salty and full of basil, which added flavor to what could have been bland dish. Quite good in all.

The grilled vegetables were a bit drab by comparison.

They were grilled through but a bit mushy. They were also entirely unsalted. In the end, I wish they had come to the table with some flavor enhancer. Vinegar, salt, herbs I could taste. Anything.

In the end, if you are looking for a good seafood experience in a beautiful setting, Principe is your place.

Rating: 7/10 (5/10 is average).

Pizzeria Il Monte

Address: Via IV Giugno, 2, Serravalle, Rep. S. Marino. 0549901302.

Review: We found Pizzeria il Monte after a day of sightseeing in San Marino. In fact, we were pressed for time because we seeing an opera in about an hour, and we needed some place close to the venue. Il Monte fit the bill.

I began with the crespelle radicchio tartufato (crespelle with radicchio and truffles).

Crespelle are crepe-like pastas stuffed with something and smothered in something else. This iteration was filled with spinach and ricotta and probably a little parmigiano. (This is the classic filling for crespelle alla fiorentina.) They came bathed in a béchamel sauce that included radicchio (a purple cabbage primarily grown in Treviso) and black truffles. The pasta was soft and wispy, while the filling was gave the dish an anchor and nice body. The béchamel was beautiful. It had just the right amount of truffle taste, and the radicchio was pleasantly bitter and a little crunchy. Really, an enjoyable dish to eat.

Next up was the scallopine ai porcini.

The scaloppine were fork-tender pieces of veal smothered in a cream-based sauce imbued with porcini. Veal is an obviously mild meat, so the porcini really came through in a good way. I could have used a little lemon to cut through the cream sauce, but even without it, this was worth every penny spent.

And then there was dessert. I had the torta di frutta, and my wife and friend has the panna cotta.

The torta had a spong-cake crust, which is certainly different than the standard crostata crust. Having tried both types of crusts with a torta di frutta, I think the sponge-cake works better, and it ended up being my favorite component of this dish. It was light and fluffy and moist, with just the right amount of sugar. The cream portion of the torta, on the other hand, was stiff and somewhat dry. The fruit was seasonal and ripe, but it couldn't save the cream. In the end, it was okay.

My wife and friend's panna cotta (i.e., cooked cream stiffened with gelatin) was a disappointment. The panna cotta itself was over gelatinized and very stiff. The toppings were industrialized toppings from a bottle. Honestly, just skip the desserts and eat some more food.

So, like most places, Il Monte had some high and low points. If given a chance though, I'd be back tomorrow for the crespelle.

Rating: 6.5/10 (5/10 is average). The desserts really lowered the score.

Pizzeria Il Buco

Address: Via Ruggero Grieco, 7/b, 40133, Bologna (BO), Italy. 051430128.

Review: First things first: yes, I ate pizza. I know I said I wouldn't, but my Bologna friends picked Pizzeria Il Buco for dinner, so I couldn't rightly not eat, could I? Anyway, it's difficult not to down some pizza in Italy because it's so completely ubiquitous.

So, a word on Il Buco's decor: it's Mexican-inspired, with crazy sombreros and the whole bit. Never seen anything like it in Italy before.

To complete the Mexican theme, the appetizer, which was a sampling of three "dips" and some oven back flat bread, included a spicy tomato salsa. Perhaps not surprisingly, the salsa was the weakest of the three dips. The other two were a tapenade and a tuna salad, both okay but nothing special.

After the appetizer came the main course: big stinkin' pizzas. I had one with tomatoes, mozzarella, gorgonzola, speck (a smoked prosciutto product), salami picante, and a circular swirl of mascarpone.

This was, without doubt, the largest pizza I've ever eaten in Italy; unfortunately; it wasn't the best. The dough (i.e., the most important element) was okay, but the toppings really didn't bring that much flavor to the party. I couldn't for the life of me distinguish between the mozzarella and the gorgonzola. The speck didn't impart much smokey flavor, and there was only a very few pieces of salami picante. Ultimately, the tastes were sufficiently indistinctive that I could have ordered something different and it would have tasted about the same. The one real bright spot was the mascarpone, which lent an interestingly slight sweetness to the pizza. It's the first time I've included mascarpone on a pizza, but it won't be the last.

And on to dessert.

This braided behemoth is called treccie con la nutella. (Treccie refers to the dessert's braided look.) Essentially, it's a pastry filled with nutella and topped with powdered sugar. Simple, simple, simple, and good, good, good. You realize early on in the eating process that a treccie is everything you wanted to eat as a child (bread, chocolate, sugar and sugar), but your parents would let you because it would ruin your appetite. Thankfully, now you can ruin your appetite as you please. Upon knifing yourself a generous portion, the warm nutella begins oozing all over kingdom come. The first bite is a gooey, wonderful mess. The pastry portion has just enough butter and milk baked in to stand up to the richness of the nutella. The second, third, forth, fifth, ad infinitum bites are just as good as the first. Ultimately, it's completely addictive, and you find yourself embracing the addiction with abandon.

In fine, pizza, okay, dessert, yum.

Rating: 6/10 (5/10 is average). The treccie saved this rating from somewhere in the 5/10 range.

Ristorante Saffi

Address: Via Saffi, 61015, Novafeltria (RN), Italy.

Review: Today's lunch was taken at what my wife referred to as the "hidden restaurant," and it turns out that name is pretty accurate. Here's the front door.

(Note: as you can tell, advertising in Italy is all about word-of-mouth, not mass marketing.) See the little sign to the left of the "ristorante" lettering? That's where the name of the establishment is located. It's Ristorante Saffi (named after the road on which it is located: "via Saffi"). Saffi is ten or so meters off the main piazza, and is only open for lunch.

I began with the maccheroni with meat sauce.

Pasta was al dente and the meat sauce was rustic with a meaty texture, although it didn't actually have that much meat in it. It was a little more watery than I'm used to, but it was quite pleasant.

My wife had the insalata di riso, a summer rice salad filled with ham, olives, squash, tomatoes, and some other ingredients I am undoubtedly forgetting.

This is an Italian summer staple since it is (1) cold, and (2) contains all the vegetables you need for a day. For whatever reason, I'm usually not the biggest fan, but this was a treat on a hot summer afternoon. The meat is countered by the acidity in the olive and the tomatoes, which made the dish feel lighter than it was. The flavors worked nicely together. Good, solid stuff.

Next came the spiedini and bietole. Spiedini are kabobs of meat, in this case pork and sausage.

Bietole (bietola in the singular) is a member of the chard family. It is often used instead of spinach in ravioli stuffings.

The spiedini were perfectly cooked. The pork was cooked to a nice medium, with some beautiful pink still in the middle of the meat. (Yes, pork should actually still be pink in the middle when cooked. If followed, the US government recommendations for cooking pork make it dry as a bone and tough as leather.) The sausage was salty but not much spiced, which is good because the pork flavor shines through.

The bietola was something I had never tried before, and it was very pleasant. It was a less aggressive flavor than spinach, and I was informed by Saffi's proprietor that it has less iron but more vitamins than spinach. Its water content is a bit higher, and you end up eating quite a lot of the long stalk attached to the leaves, but that's fine. The stalk breaks down and is not fibrous. It's just a lovely, mild, green leafy taste. With a lemon juice, it's a great side dish.

After the meal, I talked to the cook. She is an old Italian woman in a small kitchen filled with fresh pasta and long-roasted dishes of meat and potatoes. Home food made by a home chef. Nothing better.

Rating: 7.5/10 (5/10 is average).

Osteria Madama Do Rè

Address: Via Marecchia, 49 - Novafeltria (RN). 0541.926369 or 339.769107.

Review: I heard good things about Osteria Madama Do Rè from a local, so we decided to give it a try. It did not disappoint.

The proprietor, Danny, took our order. We began with the antipasto madamadorè, which as you can see is loaded with all sorts of goodies.

Here's what we got, starting on top and going counterclockwise: green salad with local strawberries, salami, prosciutto crudo, soppressata, a farro salad with fresh vegetables, mushroom crostino, bruschetta with tomato and arugula, and, in the center, a mushroom souffle. Highlights: the meats, especially the prosciutto, which had a mild flavor and quite a lot of silky moisture to it; the souffle, which had a great mushroom flavor; and the strawberry salad (more on the strawberries later).

We also had beef carpaccio with formaggio di fossa, olive oil, and a splash of lemon.

The beef was of the chianina breed, which is the largest, and one of the oldest, breed of beef. Chianina is raised just up the hill from Novafeltria. Formaggio di fossa is a local cheese aged in underground pits surrounding Novafeltria, is semi-hard, and has a quite aggressive taste. It all went together swimmingly. The beef was among the most flavorful I've ever tasted. It alone would have made the dish. The formaggio di fossa added that great local flavor combination Italian food is so famous for. (Italians try to pair items from the same locale because in dishes because these items come from the same ground, and tend to share similar tastes.) And while I could have done without the lemon, it was a nice thought to cut through the richness of the meat and cheese. Absolutely superb.

Next came the primi piatti, or the pastas. I had the spinach ravioli with artichokes and dried pieces of chianina beef.

The most pronounced flavor here was the artichokes. I could have done with some more spinach taste, but the dish worked on the whole. The use of dried chianina beef was a nice touch that added some texture. Good.

And then there was what my wife ordered: tortelloni with ricotta and parmigiano filling and a butter, sage sauce.

I know, it looks completely innocuous, sort of blah even. Don't let looks deceive you; it was incredible. The light green hue to the pasta is spinach incorporated in the tortelloni dough. And the dough was soft and tasty, and just barely thick enough to hold the filling without breaking. The filling was a mixture of house-made ricotta and parmigiano. The parmigiano added salt and depth, but the ricotta's small curds were supple and creamy. The sauce was simple, just as it should have been. The sage complimented the spinach and ricotta, and the butter added body and a coating of fat that brought everything together. These were, arguably (and very probably), the best filled pasta I've ever eaten. Simple. Brilliant.

And for dessert there was mascarpone with strawberries.

Mascarpone with a sweet dessert cheese, and you might be inclined to think this dish is too simple, and heavy, to be good. On the contrary, the hose-prepared mascarpone was light and almost frothy. (Danny shared the secret to the texture after I finished, and it is exceedingly simple, as are all good things Italian.) The strawberries were locally harvested and were not very sweet. In fact, they almost had a savory component to them. Ultimately, they were perfectly ripe and wonderfully complex. Together with the mascarpone, it was a great experience of sweet and light.

And, because we engaged Danny about his food (where it came from, how it was made, etc.) he charged us a total of 33 euro for the meal --- a ridiculously minimal amount. Honestly, just a great dining experience.

Rating: 8.5/10 (5/10 is average).

P.S.: I don't normally compare restaurants to each other because I think each should be rated on its individual merits, not how it compares to another joint I might happen to like. That said, I will now suspend this rule to make a point. I went to Cucina Toscana in Salt Lake City on my last birthday. I gave it a rather high mark of 8/10. I now realize that rating was a mistake and must be lowered. Cucina Toscana publicizes itself as a high-class Italian restaurant making high-class, authentic Italian dishes. It does okay, but Madama Do Rè --- a little nothing osteria in the middle of a small, nondescript town in the middle of nowhere Italy --- is a far superior establishment in every conceivable way. For one example of a possibly many, the beef in the beef carpaccio at Cucina Toscana lacked flavor. While the meat was nicely marbled, it was rather tasteless. In contrast, Madama Do Rè's beef was very well sourced and bursting with flavor. Additionally, Madama Do Rè's dishes utilized ingredients that were (1) unrefined, and (2) unabashedly local. This allowed them to fit together seemlessly in dishes and create an amazing experience. And all this was accomplished for a third the price of Cucina Toscana. Thus, is the magic and beauty of true Italian cuisine.

Italy

Alright, so anyone who read this blog on a regular basis (i.e., all three of you) knows that I don't speak often about personal matters. This post will be an exception to that rule. My wife is performing the lead role in Rossini's "Cinderella" in Italy right now. She auditioned for this part months ago, and when she did, I hatched a plan. The plan was to lie to my beautiful wife for months by telling her I could not spare the time to visit Italy and see her sing. Without giving too much detail, the plan worked perfectly. I arrived yesterday and she was duly surprised.

And since blogging about food has become my wont, I will regale you with my meals during this vacation. But first, some rules, and here is why. Because I visit Italy often, I have my favorite foodstuffs. This time, however, I wanted to force myself to branch out and eat items I've never tried before. Hence the following:

1. No pizza

2. Every dish ordered must be unique (as in I've never eaten that particular dish before)

3. Eat the dishes typical to the city in which I am eating

And without further ado, let's get our grub on.