Fast Meals and Home Meals

A few pictures of travel meals, quick breakfast items, and the use of cold cuts that needed to be cleared out of the refrigerator before leaving the apartment. It's amazing what you can do with three different salumi and dry pasta.

It is now TRADITION since my first visit overseas, to eat exactly one McDonald’s hamburger.  I thoroughly enjoyed it for 1eu while transitioning through Florence.

Florence Train Station...1 McDonald's Hamburger please.

Florence Train Station...1 McDonald's Hamburger please.

Pathetic Chicken Sandwich. I needed a fix frankly. Something quick, something to remind me of the gas station complex in Ripon off Highway 99 in California. The picture below was from one of the bar places in Lucca on the way to the train station. I wouldn’t do it again, go find Caffe Monica for a take-away.

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Caffe Monica in Lucca just inside the gate wins for best sandwiches so far. Bread was outstanding and the meat and cheese quality were high. 2.50eu (look for the darker bread sandwich from the train station)

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Truffled Eggs, Truffled mortadella. My mortadella sandwich aka bologna sandwich for my 8+ hour train ride to Puglia was all I needed.

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Fusilli with truffle butter, sage and prosciutto. Nearing the end of what's in the refrigerator things get more simple. Version 2.0 was Fusilli with artichokes and sage. I think more representative of what might be seen in a restaurant.

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Lots of prosciutto, cheese, and bread for dinner at the apartment in Bologna. Breakfast tended to be eggs, toast, juice, coffee. Although my eggs with truffle butter took top marks in Lucca.

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Pizza in Three Cities, Lucca, Bologna, Lecce

Plenty of pizza was consumed for Tour d'Italia 2017, from Lucca to Lecce. Pizza at all the places I'm highlighting are sold by weight (you determine how much pizza you want to buy, they cut it and weigh it) Here's the highlight reel for the trip.

Forno Casale, Lucca
In addition to the bread they make each day (which is the best in Lucca), they do have cookies and pizza. I’d never had the pizza, so it was time for some take away. It was a classic sheet pan pizza I’ve had most of my life in Fresno, cooked by either my mother or grandmother. It was good at room temperature and the next day for breakfast. And it has an eye for the camera. I will stress the real highlight at Forno Casale is the breads. Outstanding and the best in Tuscany.

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Pizzartist, Bologna
Stumbled upon through a random walk back to the apartment. Delicious stuff.  Bought three different types, fungi, sausage with rapini, and smoked ham with tomato. All the crusts were great (translation:thin, not doughy, seasoned, crisp), the guys slinging the pie were excited to be there and they happily accept take out. Looked it up after the fact and it's one of the top restaurants in Bologna by TripAdvisor. Happy accident walking past the place.

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Pizza al Taglio, Lecce
Night 1: Three different pizza choices, filetto di Manzo with rucola in a stuffed pizza format, mushroom and sausage, and a light creamy Gorgonzola style but real light flavor with mushroom. Paired it with the Rosa Del Golfo Scaliere 2014 Negroamaro; which I ended up drinking for the next couple days and a match made in heaven, easy to drink and eat with the variety of pizza on the table.

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Night 2: Truffle cheese was outstanding, two pieces down before I made it home. Stuffed mortadella and provolone was richer than the filetto di Manzo. The salt on the crust really came through on round two and paired better with the wine.

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Day 3: Mushrooms and a stinky Italian cheese. Like the rest of the pizza I’ve had here, another winner. No I didn’t get the name of the cheese, but it had truffles in it. Pizza goooood.

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Morning After Pizza: For each night of pizza you see, there was a breakfast of pizza the next day. I generally would get ‘planned overs’ with each night of pizza. I have no problem with not having to cook breakfast when high quality cold pizza will do, next to my double shot out of the moka pot. 
 

Bologna’s Battle of the Markets

There are four markets that come up in the guidebooks for Bologna. Naturally, all the guides tell you how great they are and I'm going to tell you where to not waste your time.

Mercato di Mezzo (recommended)
Probably not by accident, the Eataly, Bologna is next door and all access from Eataly directly to the Mercato is closed. The Mercato is a series of independent food stalls serving various Italian items. Cool place to be for apertivo. Plenty of wine selections and food to eat. Lots of action and vibe in the place.

In the area around Mercato di Mezzo, there are plenty of choices for apertivo and a wide variety of things to eat. Yes, there are plenty of places to get mortadella and prosciutto, but there are other casual places serving their take on the apertivo time, both inside and outside on the street.

Typical apertivo style snacks

Typical apertivo style snacks

Fries with Eyes, also known as anchovies were being served as a special at the fish vendor. Along with some apertivo items served on bread, soft cooked pumpkin, wilted greens, and some cheese thing on bread, along with cold lasagna, for 8eu per glass of wine, one could eat their entire meal without technically purchasing food, only drinks.

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Tortilloni with pumpkin in a sage butter sauce and topped with parmigiano was another winner and at 8.50eu for the plate

Mercato di Erbe, no pictures, forgot to charge phone (recommended).

Cool hangout for lunch, either sit down or quick take and eat. I had a typical dish of pasta with sausage in a light cream sauce. My friend had fried chicken and fries. Both were great. If anything, getting a quick fix of chicken fingers was the highlight, 10x better than a cotaletta sandwich, those suck. The dessert was a yogurt cream spiked with honey and something else. Thick and rich and slightly sweet, but no way it was all yogurt, it had to have either sour cream/creme fresh/whipping cream in it somehow. 

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Mercato di Pizzaolo (not recommended)...is the Ramate, not a market of food stalls. If you need a cheap scarf, hat, bag, etc. come here on a weekend. Otherwise, don't bother.

Mercati della Terra (not recommended in Winter) isn’t that big of a deal in winter. It may be the coolest market in Spring and Summer, but in the Winter, it’s just ok. There is an adjacent open lot with food vendors and beer, which could get lively.

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Il Brindisi, Ferrara

Il Brindisi has been in the Gambero Rosso Guide for many years. It's old. Real old. Plenty of dusty stuff all over the walls. Even has a squat for a toilet. Yea, that old.

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Il Brindisi seems touristy, from the moment you walk up to the door, with every global guidebook sticker you can think of, some certification on table, and some other certificate on a eisle. But, it’s Sunday in Ferrara, so choices are extremely limited.

Walk in and there are plenty of visual clues telling you about the history of the place (besides the dusty stuff), from pictures to ancient bottles of wine to somehow make you love the place just because it's old. I can almost see my Mom watching Rick Steves on PBS telling me about Il Brindisi in the heart of Ferrara, (dub in Rick’s voice) "legend has it this is the oldest continually operated restaurant in town"...blah blah blah.

I started off with pasta in brodo or broth, a classic and hard to screw up. The dish was warm, filling, and salty. Belly filling. But there isn't that much to it. I've made this dish and had it in other places, it's a classic regional dish served here with irreverence and disrespect. In most cases, the simplest dishes can be the hardest to get right. 

Boring broth with salty pasta lurking underneath the surface

Boring broth with salty pasta lurking underneath the surface

Moving on to the second course, cotechino with mashed potato was exactly as billed, no frills and cooked like it has been for the last 500 years.

500 year old cotechino sausage

500 year old cotechino sausage

My friend ordered the pot roast with mashed potato. This dish could have been cooked by my mother. One doesn’t come 6000 miles to eat a pot roast that can be duplicated by your mother.

Hey look, Mom's Pot Roast 10,000km away from Fresno

Hey look, Mom's Pot Roast 10,000km away from Fresno

The wine? It tasted like the stuff they served at the Fresno Basque Hotel in 1989. The wine was 3eu a glass. If it wasn’t served chilled, it might not have been palatable.

Was it bad food? No. Was it knock your socks off? No. It was home cooked comfort food, nothing more...but it was open on a Sunday and saved me from having to get a sandwich or bad pizza.

Ferrara has three reasons to go back to: 1 Rizzati Gelato. 2. A walk around its ancient wall. 3. Find a better restaurant to eat in (don’t go on a Sunday).

Where to stay in Emilia Romagna, Italy

Is Bologna a jumping off point for Emilia Romagna? Or should you stay in Parma or Modena or even Ferrara?

Bologna is a big city. You can easily fly in from Paris or Frankfurt and be at your apartment/hotel in 20 min. The main train station, Bologna Centrale is part of the downtown and you can be in Parma or Modena within an hour by train. 

Bologna's secret canal network

Bologna's secret canal network

Bologna has everything, high-end shopping, a nightlife, Michelin restaurants. It also has a lot of students, hordes of tourists, and plenty of trinket dealers. The town is big. You could easily explore a quarter of the town and not get bored. The guidebooks can detail walking tours and sites to see. Bologna is a culinary focal point, so there are plenty of cooking classes and schools you can attend to fill your time.

Parma and Modena by comparison have much less in the way of tourists, students,  or hordes of people. They are quaint towns compared to Bologna. You can walk the entire city center of Parma around the edge in an hour on a fast walk. Modena, is even smaller if you don’t venture out of the old center.

Where should I eat next? 

Where should I eat next? 

By train, Parma is an hour to Bologna, Modena is 30 minutes. If you want a Gucci bag, take the train to Bologna and go back to Modena. Modena has very well regarded restaurants, one of the best in the world actually. Parma has a great apertivo culture.

While I’ve never stayed in Ferrara, I visited. It is north of Bologna on the same train line that would take you to Verona/Vicenza/Venice. The city has an intact wall, similar to Lucca, although much larger. The town itself is also bigger than Lucca, but with charming streets. I could see an extended stay in Ferrara if you wanted to get both Emilia Romagna and some day trips in to the Veneto.

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It’s a give and take, Bologna or the outlying towns? I think it depends on you and your personality. You want slower, eat lunch within a 10 minute walk, take a nap, don’t wanna fight a busy Main Street or smell the stank of yet another student’s cigarette smoke? Parma/Modena are your places.

If you just want to trophy hunt and say you “saw the sights” stay in Bologna and day trip everywhere. There’s always a train passing through Bologna to take you somewhere else for the day.

Tour d'Italia 2017

As I did in early 2016, I visited Italy at the beginning of 2017. I explored new territory in Emilia Romagna, (specifically Bologna and Ferrara), returned to familiar ground in Tuscany, (the walled city of Lucca) and re-explored one town in Puglia, ) the Florence of the South, Lecce). 

On this blog, over the next couple weeks, I will try to summarize some of my experiences in Italian travel, food, and wine with both specific reviews of restaurants and wines to general travel writing about the regions in Italy I explored.

Like all travel stories, there were themes and story lines, plot twists and turns.

You'll see a lot of pasta, a theme I'm happy to explore, it's Italy after all. If there was a primary dish to sample, it had to be tagliatelle with meat sauce. While a flat ribbon noodle was sampled most, a stuffed pasta with basically the same ground meat sauce was a close second. A meat sauce with pasta is reliable, it will not let you down, and there's really no translation necessary, most people know what a ravioli is. The variables with pasta and meat sauce are salt level, sauce thickness and pasta thickness. Salt can make or break the dish and salt level seems to vary widely in this dish. Secondly, do the chefs finish the pasta in the sauce pan to absorb any pasta water? Thirdly, how thick is the pasta and to what level of al dente are they cooking it? A lot of variables for a simple dish.

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The story line of Puglia had to be baccala or dried salt cod in English. It’s on every menu in some fashion. I would have gotten on my pizza if I saw it offered, which if I had looked into al Taglio in Lecce every night, I probably would have found it. Sautéed, deep fried, brandade.

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The winter theme of nearly every restaurant in Italy was artichokes or carciofo in Italian. I ate a lot of artichokes this trip. Raw, boiled, sous vide, stewed, you name it, I had it. Inspiring really. So often, artichokes don’t pair well with wine and are left off of many menus. Secondly, artichokes are difficult to clean and prepare. Thirdly, artichokes tend to either get boiled and then grilled in much of the Central Valley and Central Coast of CA and then served with mayo or some kinda Ranch style dip.

artichoke_mastro_scheidt

The plot twist this year was being able to dine with someone regularly. Rarely do I have the opportunity to dine with others, not so on this trip. Dining with just one other person doubles the amount of wine and food I can try. So, when you see 6 or 8 pictures of food and wine in a single restaurant review, I was not dining alone. Even with my rather formidable eating skills, I can't plow down 8 dishes and two bottles of wine in one sitting.  

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I hope you enjoy my 2017 Tour d'Italia!

December Feasting

Fresh sea urchin in Santa Barbara, right off the boat. Whole roasted, bone in rib-eye cooked by yours truly only to be followed up by braising the bones and pulling the meat for Bolognese the following night. Lobster tails on Christmas Eve. Hand-made pasta at Cousin Vince's house paired with one of the first wines I ever made, a 2007 Dry Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. Freshly made cannoli by Mom.

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I lost track of how many times I had rib-eye over the month of December. House to house, night to night, city by city it seemed rib-eye was being served. The only break in the rib-eye action was on Christmas Day when Cousin Jeff brought over some antelope (outstanding) and wild duck breasts from three different types of ducks, canvasback being one of them. Delicious (please ignore the unceremonious plating job). Wild ducks are not what most people are used to being served in restaurants, there isn't much fat on these, but the breast meat has a depth of flavor that rivals almost any beef. Cabernet is still too harsh for duck, but Pinot shines with duck, and I've always got some Pinot on hand.

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From the Cellar a 2007 Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

From the Cellar a 2007 Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

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It was a fantastic December of family, friends, food and drink. A great way to end 2016.

Crushpad and harvest food in Healdsburg

Several early mornings, late lunches, and progressive eating evenings are the norm during the harvest. Eating a cup of chili or Cup O'Noodles on the crushpad spiked with one of the many hot sauces was a daily occurrence.

One of the surprise dishes was the duck fat popcorn. Hot duck fat was poured over a sage infused popcorn; add some salt and you're in business. Not a bad way to start the night in Healdsburg.

Chicken tenders and Selling Wine

The life of Owner/Winemaker is one that sounds glamorous, but with the amount of highway miles I travel, I'm often confronted with food choices that are less than spectacular.

Chicken tenders from a highway gas station are one of those less than spectacular choices.

For every picture on Facebook that gets posted of me eating a incredibly well prepared meal, the balance in the universe is restored by eating one more chicken tender. Perhaps, I should do a chicken tender pairing with my Proprietary White Wine and perhaps my Sangiovese...goals for 2016.

Lucky for me, I have a incredibly well developed palate, seeking out only the best road side chicken tenders in California. A freshly fried chicken tender from Popeye's located at the Travel Center in Livingston is very different from the McDonald's in Lone Pine. I'll take Popeye's chicken any day. 

There are some big upsides to chicken tenders over other highway food . Tenders only require one hand to eat; therefore, one hand is always on the wheel. Tenders do not ooze grease, mustard or ketchup the way an In-N-Out burger would, thus removing accidental stains on clothing and automobile interior. The downside to chicken tenders in the car while driving, no special sauce. If you want BBQ or Honey Mustard, you're best to dip at the pump.

Frequency of Visits for Chicken Tenders

Outside the Guidebooks, Italian Travel

Let me help translate what the guide book refers to as European charm, quaint surroundings, or living like a local.

Dog crap on the sidewalk. Enjoy it, it's everywhere. Parma had the most, Lucca was a close second, with Florence reasonably clean on main tourist areas, but in the less frequented areas, poop. Siena is relatively free of dog poop, except in outlying neighborhoods. Verona, Padua and Vicenza were much like Siena, with lower percentages per square foot. Dog poop is everywhere, pray it's raining and raining hard at night.

Random Smells. If you AirBnB as I did, some apartments have smells coming from the outside at certain times of day. Depends on the neighborhood. Beware heavy student populations, lots of close quarters living. Parma was fine, other than dog poop. Lucca had zero smells where I rented. Siena, positively wonderful. Florence, near Santa Croce, on the other extreme, a combination smell of burning garbage, boiled meat, a hint of sewer, mixed in with diesel exhaust and perhaps that 2pm and 11pm waft of cigarette smoke from the flat next door. If the house was locked up all day without the window open, yep, your pillow was gonna smell like burnt garbage, boiled meat, cigarettes and diesel fumes. 

Ancient streets can wear on you. I love the charm of an ancient city and its streets and alleys. I like the old streets, cobblestone, roughed stone, etc. However, one needs to pay attention when walking, firstly for the aforementioned dog poop, secondly for loose stones and protruding stones. Dog poop hides in these nostalgic, ancient street cracks like a moray eel waiting to attack. This may be why Europeans walk slowly. Less issue with becoming unbalanced or tripping on a stone when walking slowly and greater reaction time to avoid dog poop. If you're in a hurry, you may experience knee and ankle problems or a complete wipeout.

Cold floors in your apartment or hotel. Regardless of where one stays, even a four or five star hotel, your floor will be concrete or tile and it will be cold. Period. If the owner bought a rug, consider it a bonus. Bring slippers.

Your floors will be cold. Wear slippers. 

Your floors will be cold. Wear slippers. 

A shower that sucks. Sure, everyone has a bidet, but the offset is a low pressure, coffin sized shower, that barely has enough room to turn around in and the water may or may not get hot. Hotels aren't much different. Or better yet, a bath tub with a long shower head attachment but no shower curtain and no pole to hang the shower head. 50/50 chance on reasonably consistent hot water. Learn to deal with it. These shower inconveniences fall under the same category as No Air Conditioner in Summer.

Ambient heat radiators. It may be a mortal sin if an Italian increases the heat in their apartment to 19c which is not 70 degrees. Of course the thermostat is located near a heating unit, not actually where you sit down to eat or watch tv, those locations are 7-10F degrees cooler than where the thermostat is located. The advice is usually, wear heavier clothing inside. My advice if you need to warm up? Go to one of the 83 clothing shops down the Main Street that are using all the electricity in the town to crank their heat up so they can leave their doors open for tourists to come in a shop. If you want to be warm, go shopping, the heating rules obviously don't apply to retail clothing or shoe stores in Italy.

This will totally heat up my apartment. Not! But it will dry my socks. 

This will totally heat up my apartment. Not! But it will dry my socks. 

Washing machines? Sure! Clothes Dryer? No chance. I know I just bashed heating units in Italy, but they do haveanother use besides heating the wall it's attached to and preventing the thermostat from registering an accurate temperature. Ambient heat radiators are great for drying socks, underwear and jeans. Throw a spun dry pair of denim over a wall mounted radiator unit, flip a couple times, you'll have bone dry jeans in a hour. How am I supposed to dry my clothes in a house that's 60 degrees and the outside temp is 38 with no sun in winter time? By the way, this little washer will take in upwards of 2 hours to wash your clothes, so wash your clothes the night before you travel.

This washer takes 2 hours to wash my clothes and doesn't dry them for me. 

This washer takes 2 hours to wash my clothes and doesn't dry them for me. 

Sitting at a restaurant bar is near impossible in Italy. As a single traveler for most of my business career, I've been seated at many a restaurant bar, it's the norm. I generally don't think Italians like people to sit at their bar. Italians seem to want everyone seated at a table. I was lucky enough to snatch a seat at one bar all night long, while others were simply turned away, like beggars.

This is a No-Joke security door.  

This is a No-Joke security door.  

A couple positive thoughts:

On the upside, Italian security doors are awesome. 100% metal. Multiple contact points and bolted or screwed into the concrete around them. There would be less breaking in from perps in the US, if we installed doors like these. In order to get to one apartment flat, it took 3 keyed doors to get in and up 3 flights of stairs. Try stealing a 60 inch plasma from my flat perp!

Summer versus Winter Travel?

 It's a lot less busy in city centers and train stations during winter, even at the busiest stations like Milan and Florence. Now, it hasn't rained much, so I haven't been inconvenienced, and it is cooler, much cooler. Sweating constantly in the humid Italian summertime climate can be challenging. No air conditioning is no fun. Yep, winter travel in Europe is better.