Osteria Francescana

The same day we had lunch in Ermes, we dined in 3-Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana. Perhaps as different as two restaurants can be in terms of style and presentation, and yet still both reflecting certain aspects of traditional Italian, and specifically Modenese cuisine.

In a little side street just off one of the main roads in the centre of town, a simple sign and unadorned metal door are all you see from the outside. Once inside the usual flock of besuited staff waited with smiles and “Buonasera”s to take our coats and guide us to our table.

The setting is fairly sober, albeit with the occasional startling and incongrous piece of modern art. There’s nothing like three pigeons and a bin bag to put you in the mood for haute cuisine, right?

There were three tasting menus available, of differing lengths. We chose the one in the middle: “Classics”.

The first starter: freshwater fish (“aula“) tempura topped with fish (“carpione“) ice cream. The coldness and crunch combined perfectly to make a confident and surprising amuse-bouche.

Next, what looked like a simple, even uninspiring piece of white fish. Baccalà, in a tomato and caper broth, topped with thyme-infused breadcrumbs. Beautiful, delicate flavours and firm yet yielding flesh. Definitely more than meets the eye.

The next dish was presented as a journey along three different canals into Modena. Adriatic eel with some kind of strong teriyaki-style lacquer, polenta on the right and apple jelly on the left. The black dust in the foreground is burnt onion.

The next dish was listed on the menu as simply “Think Green”. What this meant on the plate was a selection of mushrooms, truffle, radish and chlorophyll, all raw, and presented in such a way as to suggest (according to the waiter) the hills around Modena. The subtly earthy flavours were a nice contrast after the previous dish.

Now this was perhaps an unusual moment for the cheese course to appear, but it wasn’t really your conventional array of slices and nuggets. It consisted entirely of Parmigiano Reggiano, all of different ages and strengths, and all prepared in a different way: liquid, soufflé, mousse, foam and cracker. A lovely, tasty idea, although it’s probably just as well it was a small portion.

Another strange presentation next: a glass containing (bottom up) veal, pancetta, parmigiana, beans and rosemary. It supposedly represents, via its ingredients, a journey through France, Spain and Italy.

For the main meat course we were back to something more recognisable, but no less tasty for that. Slow-cooked guinea fowl, truffle potatoes, chlorophyll, balsamic vinegar. And just before we tucked in the waiter gave it a shot from an aerosol spray made from the bird’s bones, which was intended to give it that “roasted” flavour. It worked.

What was even better was the little mouthful served as a side dish: a crunchy slice of the bird’s skin, with white chocolate with garlic, dark chocolate with liver, and toast flavoured ice cream. This may have been the most interesting and stimulating mouthful of the whole evening.

Pre-dessert, and another break with traditional menu formats: foie gras. On a stick. Covered in caramelised almonds and containing a large blob of balsamic vinegar in the centre. I wish I could persuade Magnum to market a large version of these.

After the foie gras the dessert proper was a very mild disappointment. “Broken” lemon tart, capers, zabaglione, chili pepper. Not the best end to meal but a better use of the smashed plate idea than we’d seen in ‘t Zilte last year.

Finally, a word about the wine, most of which was exceptional and some of which was quite strange. As usual we asked for a selection of wines to accompany the various stages of the tasting menu. Perhaps most notable was the Zibibbo Serragghia, a naturally cloudy, unfiltered white which to the nose gave the impression of being a sickly sweet dessert wine, yet in the mouth was dry and acidic.

At the end of the meal we asked for a list of the wines we’d tasted and the next day they emailed us this PDF with the full menu:

Let’s put it this way: I found Modena as a town to be of limited interest, but the five-hour round trip from Genoa to visit Osteria Francescana was worth it.

Trattoria Ermes, Modena

We’d arrived in Modena (a two and a half hour drive from Genoa) just before lunchtime. We’d read in the guidebook about a couple of traditional trattorie which sounded appealing, and when we asked at the hotel they recommended “Ermes”, and phoned on our behalf to make a reservation, as this was the kind of place which sold out fast, and where people queued outside for the chance of a table.

Our place secured, we set off immediately and five minutes later made our way into a tiny, packed room off a nondescript street. Our eponymous host placed us on a table next to another young couple (her: Tuscan, him: Modenese) and quickly and rather brusquely informed us of the dishes available. This being a home cooking kind of place the options were few and simple. You pay a flat fee of 20 Euro regardless of what you eat, but you have the right to three courses, water, bread, wine and coffee.

I didn’t want to interrupt the experience too much (and was maybe a little intimidated by the close quarters and proximity of the other diners) so I only took a few iPhone photos of the dishes. A longer post (in Italian) with more pictures of the room and Ermes himself can be found here. My wife chose the cavatelli in brodo as a starter:

I went for the maccheroni; oven baked pasta with a very crunchy dark crust on top. Good, moreish comfort food for a cold February lunch time.

For the main course I had rabbit with boiled potatoes. Nothing groundbreaking, and rather starkly presented, but the meat was tender and well seasoned and tasty.

We finished with a kind of light, sweet pastry which is traditional at Carnival time and goes variously by the name of bugie, frappe, or chiacchere among other regional variants.

So, the food was simple, honest, tasty fare. Nothing spectacular, but popular with those who like traditional regional specialities prepared in the same way their grandmothers used to do it. But perhaps what made it a more memorable experience was Ermes himself. He’s quite the local celebrity and he probably exaggerates his moods swings and outsized personality at least a little in order to keep his clientele entertained. A few examples: at one point his elderly aunt stopped by for a bite to eat. He dumped her at the end of a large table full of strangers and they bickered with each other sporadically throughout the meal. During our main course someone on the table behind ours wanted to know what a particular dish was like, so Ermes picked up my wife’s plate, as she was in the middle of raising a forkful to her mouth, held it out in front of the other diners for them to glance at, then plonked it back on our table.

On the wall there’s a chart indicating his mood that day. The text at top left says “For those of you who drink to forget, please pay in advance”.

This was undoubtedly good for a few laughs, and the warm atmosphere and conversation we shared with the other couple on our table meant that the social aspect of the meal was at least as important and enjoyable as the actual food. There are a lot of press clippings on the walls and I wondered whether Ermes’ celebrity was overshadowing the restaurant itself. Had it turned into a magnet for the tourist horde (of which, of course, we ourselves were a part) who wanted a caricatured Italian shouting and gesturing and flinging plates of hot pasta around?

But on the other hand we were the only non-locals there that day, so I don’t think his popularity can be put down to catering to foreigners’ expectations. The “character” of the place is certainly a little self-conscious, maybe even a little exaggerated and theatrical, but no less genuine for that. And I did enjoy the food. Of the reviews on sites like Trip Advisor the negative ones expressed mainly disappointment with the food itself, which they felt didn’t match the restaurant’s reputation, and the flat 20 Euro fee which applied even if all they ate was a plate of pasta. But if you’re in the mood for something simple and tasty and filling, and don’t mind a bit of noise and bustle and shouting, it’s a bargain.

And by the time we left a queue was starting to form outside…

Grotta Gigante

I have a love-hate relationship with caves. They’re beautiful to look at, but they’re also cold, dank, and sometimes claustrophobia-inducing. So when I discovered that, during a recent stop in Trieste, we would have the chance to visit Grotta Gigante, the world’s largest show cave, I was intrigued. Pretty cavey rock formations in a pleasantly spacious, relaxing environment? Sounds good to me.

This warning sign outside the entrance both amused and concerned me, especially since I had to spend much of the visit carrying my stairs-averse three year old. I was also amused to see that the translation of “grotta” for the benefit of the German tourists was “höhle“. Big höhle in the gröund.

The steps led down, and down, and still down, but after a few minutes at the end of the initial descent a view of part of the main chamber became discernible.

After a while we emerged into the main chamber, which was pretty breath-taking. It’s 99 metres high, which is almost as tall as St Paul’s cathedral in London. My photos completely fail to communicate the scale, but to get an idea, that zig-zagging line across the top left is the path we walked along through the cave. The vertical lines are part of a geodetic pendulum for the study of “earth tides“.

The pendulum reaches up to the cavern roof.

Temperatures inside were indeed the advertised 11°C, which was a full 20 degrees cooler than outside, and yet I didn’t even need the light sweater I’d brought with me. Maybe the effort of carrying my boy was keeping me warm.

We spent a while in there, partly because the guide was giving a quite detailed explanation in Italian. Some of the German members of the group lost patience with this and, having obviously had their fill of geological wonders, stormed off on their own towards the exit.

Asshöhles.

In the photo below we’re looking back across the cave towards the stairs we descended at the start (the iluminated zig-zag at top left).

 

And then we started to climb. This section was actually pretty vertigo-inducing, and we went all the way up to the point where the pendulum meets the ceiling.

And looked back down at where we’d come from. Well, I gingerly held my camera over the edge, anyway.

Definitely worth a trip if you’re anywhere in north-east Italy (or western Slovenia).

The performer and the audience

A summer evening in Trieste. We wandered through the beautiful open space of Piazza Unità d’Italia.

We admired the statuary.

And then our attention was caught by a group of young Hungarian dancers over in one corner of the square. Their energy and skill were captivating, and their white shirts were almost transparent with sweat.

Some bystanders were a little too keen to participate, almost to the point of spoiling the performance for the rest of us (the boy’s mother was very slow to intervene).

Around the corner we came across another dancer. This time a ballerina accompanied by a violinist.

Ballet’s less interesting to me than young men kicking and slapping their legs, so my attention turned instead to the ballet show’s audience.

Venice

Recently I spent around 20 hours in Venice. I’d been twice before, but always during winter, so this time it was a lot more crowded, also maybe due to the fact that the film festival was on at the time (no, I didn’t spot any famous movie types). As we were with our kids we didn’t spend much time in galleries, churches or museums, but just wandered, letting them get a feel for the place and keeping an eye out for oddities. Here are a few photos. By the time we reached St. Mark’s square the skies turned dramatic and created some interesting light effects, as you’ll see further down.

 

The Cook

Passing through Liguria over the summer, we decided to try The Cook: a relatively new restaurant located in the town of Nervi, just along the coast from Genoa. Awarded one Michelin star, it offers playful and innovative variations on classic local dishes.

We chose the tasting menu, and were presented with a selection of seafood amuse-bouches, mainly involving small slivers of fish with unusual toppings: shrimp with white chocolate, baccalà with caramel, others with porto or salsa verde. We’ve encountered this combination of shrimp and sweetness before at the excellent Ristorante Palma, farther along the Ligurian Riviera in Alassio, and I think it works very well (in small doses).

Next came something a little unexpected for August: the classic Christmas dish cappon magro. To my mind the flavour of the salsa verde was a little overpowering, but it was otherwise an enjoyable and well-constructed miniature (the traditional version is much larger and is cut into slices).

Next came a broth containing rouget, lupo di mare, oyster, shrimp from Santa Margherita (where we got married, by the way) and sea asparagus. I like broths; the liquid is delicately flavoured which still allows the ingredients to stand out.

Not many Michelin-starred restaurants I know would put pasta carbonara on their menu, and I was a little puzzled when we were served with this small portion (the fork handle at bottom should give an idea of the size), but it was beautifully creamy, and contained a surprise inside: squid ink. You can see a little spot poking out at the top.

The wines, by the way, were excellent, and the next course was particularly well matched with a strangely caramelly Verdicchio: gnocchi, beetroot and smoked scallops. I could gladly have eaten a much larger bowl of this.

Then we switched to a Pinot nero from Trentino which had an amazingly velvety bouquet but was slightly more fruity and acid taste than expected in the mouth. It accompanied fried baby cuttlefish with balsamic zabaglione. Fantastic flavours.

And so to dessert: nespresso ice with caramel (chef Ivano Ricchebono seems to have a soft spot for caramel).

And some final sweet nibbles served with an interesting dessert wine from Sicily called Ben Rye. The biscuits in the foreground are canestrelli; another Ligurian speciality.

All in all a lovely meal in comfortable and intimate surroundings, but the cherry on the cake (well, three cherries, I suppose) were the staff. The chef, his wife and their waitress were extremely friendly and very willing to spend as much time as we wanted them to at our table (although not so much that we felt crowded) chatting, explaining the dishes and telling us stories about how the restaurant was born and developed.

Definitely worth a visit if you’re in or around Genoa.

Hermit

“You never leave the house?”

“No, not for years. At a certain point I made precise calculations: if I leave the house to seek the company of an intelligent person, an honest person, I am confronted with, on average, the risk of meeting twelve thieves and seven imbeciles who are there, ready to inflict on me their opinions on humanity, the government, the municipal administration, Moravia…do you think it’s worth the bother?”

“I guess not, no”

Leonardo Sciascia, A ciascuno il suo (my translation)

20 hours in Italy

Friday, 16h45. Get on a plane at Brussels airport with my daughters, bound for Milan.

18h20. Wait half an hour for luggage handlers to bring my case a few hundred metres from the plane to the terminal.

19h00. Spend an extra half an hour, on top of the usual two hour drive to Genoa, in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Milan.

19h30. Unscheduled pitstop in an Autogrill. Forced to use one of the most disgusting toilets I’ve seen this side of the Mediterranean.

20h00. Chatting to my father-in-law, who is driving. Usually my wife is in the passenger seat while I sit in the back with the kids, but this time she’s back in Brussels with our son, so I sit in the front. Notice for the first time how her father’s fingers twitch, flutter and dance as he holds the steering wheel.

21h30. Arrive in Genoa. Leave my daughters with their grandparents for two weeks as I head to our apartment for the night. Stop off at the pizzeria opposite. I order a 56 rosso bis (spicy sausage and rocket) and sit waiting for my pizza, watching the pizzaiolo in the strip of mirror just above his prep area.

22h30. Read a couple of chapters of my book and go to bed.

Saturday, 08h30. Head down the road to the forno to buy a kilo of fresh focaccia; some for personal consumption, some for the party that night in Antwerp (where, as it turns out, the host jealously hides it all in a kitchen cupboard and declines to share it with any of the guests). The package in my rucksack warms my back for the rest of the morning.

09h00. Wander a few favourite streets in the old town, passing by the tiny barber shop where I had a haircut once when I used to live here.

09h30. Stumble upon the street-writing project I remember reading about earlier this year. Start reading, following the text as it winds around the old town. Story tells of a Russian Jew from Odessa who flees during World War II, first to Hamburg, then to Prague, and finally to Nervi (a small town along the coast from Genoa) which was a special zone protected by the International Red Cross. She falls in love with an Italian fascist. At this point the text has entered a more central, more frequented area, so footsteps have rubbed away key sections of the text, and I lose the thread.

10h00. Wander through the Mercato Orientale. Always interested to see the fresh fish displays, and this specimen catches my eye, particularly the colours and scratches along its side.

10h30. Second cappucino, just on the edge of acceptability for an Italian. Any later in the day and I’d reveal myself as a clueless tourist. Scanning the newspaper I notice a small square cut out from the back page. The cafe owner complains that the Chinese shop owner from next door always come in and cuts out the sudoku puzzle. Also says that a regular lady customer cuts out the birth announcements section to take home to peruse at her leisure. What remains of the paper is familiar. Predictable stories about traffic accidents (a ten year old in a coma) and continuing controversy over the location of Genoa’s first mosque.

Cappuccino is fantastic: perfectly velvety smooth foam.

11h00. Catch bus to Genoa airport.

11h45. Finally make it to the front of the World’s Slowest Check-In Desk (despite the fact that this is a Ryanair flight, so everyone already has their printed boarding pass).

13h15. Take off.

14h15. Descend through the clouds, and the grey roofs and green gardens reveal that we are unmistakably back in Belgium.

Meme time

Kathleen tagged me for a meme, asking me to write about five topics of her choosing. I can give you five words if you ask in the comments.

Italy

First visited in January 1999. Lived in Genoa for nine months in 2000-2001. Got married there. Go back at least once a year. Have been to Liguria, Piedmont, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Veneto and Sardinia. Need to get round to visiting the deep south some time soon. Speak the language, like the food, hate the politics. Favourite memory: sitting on the back of my wife’s Vespa, driving along the coast somewhere near Quarto, at sunset.

Children

Never wanted any. Now have three. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? They’re amusing, and have taught me some things about myself (the limits of my patience, for example).

Career

No plan. Have drifted around from one thing to another. Current employment is safe for as long as I want it (assuming the entire EU doesn’t implode). CV? Freelance camera assistant on various film & TV productions, communications consultancy researcher, manager of digital department in a camera shop, teacher of English as a foreign language, EU affairs consultant, EU civil servant. They give me money, plenty of perks and time off, and unlimited high speed internet access, and regular opportunites to change job and move around, so I can’t complain.

Shoes

I wear slippers indoors. I never wear flip-flops. I can’t wear any shoe that doesn’t have a back to it: they just fall off. I have three or four pairs of nice shoes for work and formal occasions, a similar number of casual, a couple of pairs of sandals and hiking boots. When I went into a shop in Genoa to buy a pair of Fratelli Rossetti for my wedding the shop assistant took one look at me and said “Getting married, are we?”.

Contentment

What makes me content? The usual, simple things. Relaxing with friends and a drink. Book browsing. Watching the kids play, when they manage to do so without arguing. Toast.

Silence, please

Visiting Lake Orta over the holidays, we took a trip out to the Isola San Giulio, home to a Benedictine monastery and very little else apart from a few houses and a gift shop.

As you get off the boat a sign welcomes you to the island and reminds you to shut up and be spiritual.

A path circles the island, offering you little other than views of the walls of the monastery and occasional glimpses down slipways to the water’s edge. But then I started noticing the signs. At first I thought they were simple “shut up” reminders.

But the message varied each time.

Considering that there wasn’t much to see or do there, my attention latched on to the metal plaques as the sole point of interest, and I found myself rushing from one to the next, eager to see the latest pearl of wisdom.

I even discovered that they had different messages on the reverse side, but my travelling companion didn’t take kindly to my suggestion that we go back to the start and check the backs of the ones we’d missed.

And then it was time to leave.