Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Lunch at Mencuccio, or Why Giving Second Chances Is Often a Good Idea

In Trestina (a little town not far from where we live that we’ve spent a good amount of time in, as it’s near some other Amici Villas we stayed in, on past visits) there’s a hotel/restaurant pretty much in the middle of town. For some reason (it has an odd German-tourist-town feel, or looks like it’s trying to be fancier than it needs to be) we’ve always skipped eating there, from our first visit onwards. We finally tried to go for lunch when we first moved here on our pre-tirement, because it says “pizzeria” along with “ristorante” and “albergo” and we wanted pizza. When sitting down we were the only ones there, and then also found out they had no pizza for lunch (now we know that’s regular), and felt, well, weird. So, we didn’t go to Mencuccio again. Until last week, when we were starving and at the end of our ristorante rope. It ended up being lucky for us, as the experience was completely different. It was bustling with lunchtime activity, the staff was nice, and the food, well, it was dandy. We started with a delicious salad, called La Campagnola, which had radicchio, lettuce, mushrooms, and cheese:
One of the finest, tastiest, salads I’ve had here so far. From there, we moved into pastas. My choice was the homemade spinach and ricotta ravioli, topped with butter and sage. The pasta was very good, with the creamy filling mingling with the bright butter and chewy pasta:
Nat had the tagiatelle with porcinis, also picking it because it was marked as homemade, and also loving it (luckily, we always share) due to the al dentely-awesome pasta and the huge amounts of forest-y funghi:
Maybe even more fun was our contorni: Anelli Cipolla. If you’re not sure what that is (it took me a second to figure it out on the menu), just look below:
Onion rings! The first I’ve had in Italy, and not bad at all, very crisp and the onions were very fresh. Of course, after savory pastas and fried goodness, a little sweet is necessary. We went for profiteroles Nero, or chocolate, and it about knocked me out:
A nap was definitely in order after lunch, and a pat on the back for our second-chancing at Mencuccio.

*See more Italian restaurants: Capponi, Nestor's,Nonna Gelsa, Le Capannine di Sommavilla, Calagrana, Trattoria Il Saraceno, L Enoteca Wine Club, Mastro Dante, Bar Fizz, Da Cesari, Calagrana Lunch, al Frantoio, La Balestra, Lo Strattoio

*See all Italian restaurants

3 comments:

  1. Do they have an italian kind of funyun, too?

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  2. That wouldn't be as good as an Italian version of Combos.

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  3. The finest is the Italian version of bugles. Best ever. Especially with Campari. As a dip.

    ReplyDelete