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Savoring Southern Italy.
Escaping the winter in New York, my good friend Massimo was visiting his family in Sicily and we decided to take some time on the roads of Southern Italy. We ventured off the island by car. In a new Mercedes with GPS, we headed North to Messina, boarded a boat and hit the high, hilly roads of Southern Calabria to Massimo's former hometown of Castrovillari. In Castrovillari there is a wonderful restaurant and small hotel called La Locanda di Alia. The restaurant is famous for being the most visited landmark in Castrovillari. And legend has it, more tourists and Italians outside of the Calabrese eat at the restaurant than the native Castrovillarians. Maybe it is because Calabria is the poorest region of Italy or maybe the restaurant is only a reflection of what everyone in Castrovillari is eating every night; and, therefore, they don't need to dine out. If the latter is true, I am moving to this small town. At Alia we dined on local produce and recipes that date back hundreds of years, but served with the chef's carefulness in sidestepping tradition. After dinner, we sat with the chef and his wife and drank grappa and smoked Tuscan cigarillos. Gaetano Alia hates to talk about food. He says that he can't express himself better than he can actually prepare the food itself. And since he only buys food in season or ripe for the picking, and has a self-proclaimed faithless memory and disdain for writing anything down, it is possible that a dish is never the same two nights in a row. However, I would be sad not to return to the restaurant and eat again the dishes we savored over the course of a two-hour meal. Starting with the potatoes that were boiled and mashed with a puree of roasted red peppers. The potato mixture was molded like a cupcake and fried and then covered with a pecorino cream sauce. Following the appetizer we had our first dish. Ravioli with buffalo ricotta cheese and broccoli rabe in a white sauce with fennel seeds. Three large raviolis filled the even larger plate. I could have stopped at that moment, forever content. However, following the pasta was a pork chop in a spicy, tangy, honey Asian BBQ sauce with a refreshing mandarin orange salad with just enough citric tart to play off the pork chop sauce. With dinner we drank a Calabrese wine by the region's most famous producer, Librandi. The wine called Gravello was a Cabernet and Gaglioppo (an indigenous grape) blend. Silky smooth tannins and dark berry fruit this was a full-bodied, round wine that worked well with both the pasta and the pork. For dessert, we had the pleasure of the Sous Chef, Gaetano's wife, join us and serve us the most refreshing mandarian orange marmalade puree with dark chocolate shavings served in a tea cup. Following the teaser dessert was a semi-freddo with chocolate sauce. To finish the meal, we drank some "Rosolio" - aromatic herb and spice liquors made at the restaurant. The Rosolio is noted as the centerpiece of the restaurant. On a wooden table in the center of the rustic dining room, two trays of twenty ornate bottles filled with glassy colors in orange, blue, red, clear, yellow and gold. One clear liquor was distilled coffee and the other orange, and there was the ubiquitous mandarin accented with red pepper. By the end of the meal, and after the grappa and the cigars, it was time to find our beds, because Thursday we were off to a wine tasting at the cantina of Feudi di San Gregorio. Feudi is located in the Avellino region about an hour west of Naples. The GPS failed to find the small town of Sorbo Serpico and thankfully we were early because we drove around for about 40 minutes without directions on hand. Upon arrival, it appeared that the winery was just another factory stuck in the hills of another Italian town. But inside, you are quick to realize the superior craftsmanship of a winery built with the help of a Japanese architect whose linear use of space takes Frank Lloyd Wright into the 21st Century. Three offsetting levels, with the cellar in the basement under the restaurant's herb garden. Inside the cellar there is an elevated glass conference room that doubles as a private dining room for the restaurant. The dining table that was also designed by the architect had braids in the middle to allow for a fold to make the room smaller or larger based on the size of the party. The chairs were also designed by the architect - simple, short back, comfortable in red leather and produced by the premier Italian furniture depot, Poltrona Frau. Running down the cellar between the rows of French oak barrels is a man-made Japanese river, which was built to bring good fortune to the wine making process. Oh, the wines. Feudi was founded in 1986 and bottled its first vintage in 1991. Just 15 years later, the winery is producing 3 million bottles annually with superstar grapes from Campania known as Aglianico (red), Fiano and Falaghina (whites). The winery also makes a Merlot Cru that rivals some of the right bank Bordeaux. During lunch at the winery's restaurant, Marenna, we started with the Falaghina (wine name: Serrocielo), which was a creamy blend of tropical fruits that smelled of ripe bananas. Followed by the Fiano (named Pietra Calda) which was a little lighter and reminded me of Pinot Grigio. I would have preferred to taste it before the Falaghina whose weightiness left an overpowering sense of fun flavors in the mouth. Two reds followed. Rubbato - a thin, woody Aglianico that was dry as particleboard. But the red was redeemed with what was next, a wine named Efesto from Feudi's sister vineyard, Vigne di Mezzo. Another Aglianico red, the aromatics were wonderful and worked well with the Cornish hen that was served as our main course. Finishing the meal, which started with large, hollow, candella ("candle") pasta with a "Genovese," meat, carrots, onions and celery sauce, there was a dry chocolate cake and an apricot burst of flavors in a Fiano based Passito dessert wine (named Privelegio). Delicious. We finished the meal in the tasting room with a glass of Sorbo Serpico, Feudi's Tre Bicchieri ("Three Glasses") awarded red wine. Three Glasses is the highest award given by the magazine Gambero Rosso to a fine Italian wine. [ The story behind the award of "Three Glasses" is that a bottle of wine contains six four ounce glasses. No one is expected to drink a full bottle in one sitting, but when shared, three glasses over the course of a meal is the perfect amount; hence, a perfect wine.] The Serpico was full of black berries and soft tannins. The finish lasted through the rest of our stay at the vineyard that accounted for the thirty or so minutes of deciding and processing our orders to take some of these wonderful wines home. Full of two wonderful meals in less than 24 hours, we were off to Naples. Naples is the one Italian city that I cannot get a good vibe from. It must be the scary-coffee fueled eyes of the people who spoke a language I was not ready for. Not Italian, not Sicilian, but something dark and dirty. Naples is a beautifully city filled with degradation. The city has an underbelly of mystery that spews from the streets to the soles of it inhabitants, filling their souls with sewage from ancient aqueducts. This place has got a lot of good things going for it. If only the Camorra (Napolitano Mafioso) would just let the city breathe between bites of some of the finest fast foods. The Pizza was the best damn thing I have ever eaten. Thursday night in the rain, we took our wait-list number and stood outside the small pizzeria, San Michele. Inside we watched locals sitting at thin-legged metal tables eating $5 pizza and drinking $1.50 Italian beers. Twenty minutes later, we sat down to eat and the order was processed and the 15-inch pizza was put in front of us. I know Naples was the birthplace of pizza, but I didn't realize throughout the world, that we have not been able to reproduce the beautiful delicacy of the hometown favorite. Maybe it is the buffalo mozzarella, the sweet, chewy dough or the perfectly displaced, ripe, chunky tomato sauce. This is "Michelin" worthy treat following two days of fine, haute cuisine. The next stop before calling a close to the gluttony was coffee and dessert. At a coffee shop off Piazza Republica, we drank what is heralded as some of the world's best coffee - and it lived up to its reputation. Bragging is a birth rite for Italians. But you must be able to read through the fine lines what is true or what is not, and you must taste for yourself, because Italians are famous for arguing on behalf of their allegiance to their hometown artisanal treats. So, I was reluctant to believe it, but came away impressed. The coffee is thick and blackish brown, with Arabic aromas and no sugar is necessary. The coffee followed the sponge cake Baba Maraschino, whose light airiness is only weighed down by the sweet liquor it is drenched in. And at this hour we were food weary and ready to sleep... [And Eat]
Post 22 - March'06 Back to home...
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