GASTROMONDIALE

PIAZZA DUOMO IN ALBA

RANKING:  14/20

DATE VISITED: Nov. 29, 2009

ADDRESS: p.zza risorgimento 4. Alba

TELEPHONE: 0173 366 167

SUMMARY:  Chef Enrico Crippa is one of the most highly regarded chefs today in Italy, and he was recently crowned with the second Michelin star.  While it is true that he is a promising chef, his cooking is uneven and sometimes it is too fussy and unfocused.  On the other hand, the highs are also quite high and even the failed dishes attest to the intelligence of Crippa.

The restaurant consists of only five to six tables and its decoration may not be to everybody’s taste. The service is formal and attentive, but one is surprised by the absence of a knowledgeable sommelier.  I ordered the 2005 Silex Dagueneau from the list, but the sommelier brought the 2006 and was genuinely surprised to hear that the difference mattered. He would have opened it had I not been careful.

I was also surprised by the lack of communication between the dining stuff and the chef.  One dish, spaghetti cacio e pepe, did not contain a detectable amount of the promised cacio.  I asked twice to the waiters to inquire the chef about it, but never got a response to my inquiry.

On the other hand, when the bill came, I noticed that the two glasses of Barolo we had ordered with the partridge and the cup of champagne we shared were offered by the restaurant.

This restaurant probably deserves one Michelin star and the two stars may have been a bit premature.

La Pergola and Vissani

In a past post I had inquired whether Da Vittorio and Le Calandre were the two best restaurants in Italy, awarding both 18 on the gastroville scale.  This was before I had dined at La Pergola. In my last year’s post I had also lauded La Pergola and awarded it 18.

La Pergola in Rome

Last May I had a memorable meal in this celebrated two Michelin star restaurant at the end of my five day stay in this amazing city that I had not visited since my college years.  Thanks to some good advice from my friend Francesco, we had some authentic meals in Roma, and I became quite partial for various preparations of offals which are an indissociable part of traditional cooking with roots in the so called cucina povera.  I still lick my lips thinking of some of the best offal dishes I have had anywhere:  a  Rigatoni con la Pajate at PERILLI in Testaccio (bowels of the veal which have not been weaned), some mixed fritti of animelle (sweetbreads) and cervello (brain), as well top notch Trippa (tripes) a la Romana at the superb trattoria MATRICIANELLA, and also an equally successful Coratella of lamb (all offals) at the SORA LELLA which traces its origins to the Jewish-Roman tradition. All of the three restaurants were good, but if I choose one, I especially recommend Maticianella.

Trip to Venice

The sheer utterance of this name conjures up images of romance and beauty, but not culinary treasures. This is strange because the Venetian lagoon is a very special place to have some of the world’s best seafood. One can feast on simply prepared superb seafood in Venice that cannot be found elsewhere. At its best, the molluscs, crustaceans and fish are sublime in Venice, and even if you feast for several days only eating seafood it is still not possible to taste all that is unique to Venice. The best of seafood is now scarce and costly, but, eaten fresh, it is delicately textured and incomparably sweet. In fact, those small creatures (such as local baby squid, soft shell crabs, tiny gray shrimps, bay scallops, etc.), are so tasty because of the peculiarities of the lagoon. As R. W. Apple of the NYT remarked: “The city’s fish and shellfish are sublime…especially those from the outer lagoon’s shallow, brackish waters, which are rich in plankton, fish egg and other foods, and regularly scrubbed by salt-water tides”.

Da Vittorio -- Revisited

I have previously written a glowing review of Da Vittorio, awarding it 18/20 and calling it one of the very best, possibly one of the two best restaurants in Italy.  I very much wanted to go back. Hence when opportunity came up last March, when we spent three days in Venice, we made sure that our return flight to Paris was late enough to give us a chance to rent a car in the Venice airport and drive to Bergamo.  We needed to be at the airport around 7 PM, and we figured that we had time to have a long and leisurely lunch from 1 to 5 PM.  Normally I like to spend more time in a restaurant at this exalted level (about 5 hours is my average), but the promise of a second meal at Da Vittorio warranted the sacrifice.

Alla Testiere -- Venice

The seafood of Venice and the Adriatic coast to the south is one of the very best and unique in the world, but it is not always easy to find authentic restaurants which make best use of fresh and local ingredients. One restaurant that had been recommended by some frequent visitors of Venice who are also discriminating palates is restaurant Alle Testiere. This place was on my radar screen for a long time, but we have never had a chance to get to Venice. Finally the opportunity came up when we were spending three days in the beautiful Venetian town of Verona, where one of my favourite contemporary writers, Tim Parks lives.  (I recommend very highly his non-fiction “Italian Neighbours” for those interested in Italian culture.) We drove to Venice from Verona, parked the car in Piazzola Roma and then happily walked to the restaurant as the public boats or vaporettos were on strike. Alle Testiere is a small trattoria with only 6 to 7 tables, and the room is charming in a natural way without any artificial attempt to make it look “cozy” for the outsiders.  These tables fill quickly, and one needs reservation even for lunch.  Dinner reservations are very hard to get, so the restaurant does have multiple seatings for dinner during high season.  We were seated by a young waitress in a nice corner table, and then a friendly (but without artificial excess) and easy going person came to take our order and recited the daily specials. His name was Mr. Luca, and it turned out that he is the co-owner (the other owner is Bruno, the chef) and also the wine buyer. Luca speaks both English and French fluently, which made communication easier.  A few months later, in a more recent visit, we would learn that Luca is a consummate professional, and he discovered Bruno’s cooking as a client, and when the two joined hands, he as the manager and Bruno as the chef, they turned a cute neighbourhood trattoria into arguably one of the two best restaurants in Venice (the other being Da Fiore) and into one of the very best Italian seafood places. Although there is a written menu posted outside, Alle Testiere buys its seafood daily from the open-air fish market near the Rialto bridge and, therefore, the menu changes daily depending on the availability of fresh and seasonal products.  So when Luca recited the six daily antipastas, or entrees, it turned out that they are all favourites of mine and some of them can only be had in the Adriatic.  We ended up choosing five out of six beauties.

Le Calandre and Da Vittorio: The Two Best Restaurants in Italy

Following our Alba trip we had 4 more outstanding meals in Italy: superb fresh seafood at Alla Testiere in Venice, some of the best charcuterie from cinta senese pork products at Pompiere in Verona and two unforgettable meals at the 3-stars Michelin Le Calandre in Rubano near Padua and at the 2-stars Michelin Da Vittorio in Bergamo. Le Calandre has been a favorite of mine for some time. I had my third meal there about 2 weeks ago on November 30. A friend put Da Vittorio on my radar screen, and our December 2 meal there was stunning. At the outset, I will make the strong claim that, of all the 2 and 3 stars Michelin we have been in Italy in the last 3 years (the list includes Dal Pescatore, Miramonti l’Altro, Perbellini, Cracco-Peck, Da Caino, Don Alfonso, Gambero Rosso and Flipot), Da Vittorio and Le Calandre are the 2 best, although none of the above have disappointed me.

Recent Trip to Alba: Not Only Good Truffles

It is a very reassuring feeling to begin to be known in a locale. This was our fourth trip to Alba and always the same hotel but miraculously we seem to graduate to better rooms. We are also getting quite good in driving from a small town to another and distances that seemed to be an hour driving took only 25 min. or so this year(such as driving from our hotel in Alba to Albaretto della Torre or to Cervere).