Modena and Hosteria Giusti

While in Bologna, I had planned to spend a day in Modena, which is about 30km north of Bologna and having heard of a restaurant called Hosteria Giusti I really wanted to try it out. Now, the story with Giusti is one that you need to know about before you can get to it. You really need a reservation, so I tried to book it for my last full day in Bologna, but unfortunately it was booked out (it only has 4 tables), but they had a spot for me on the day I was leaving Italy from Milan. Now Modena is between Bologna and Milan and since my flight was departing at 5:45pm I figured that if I had no trafic problems I could still manage it. I really didn't want to miss out.

I headed to Modena a little earlier so I could take a look around town and wondered into the market, and I'm glad I did. The Modena market is almost at the centre of the town and has some sensational looking produce.


Even though Modena is in the middle of Italy, the fish and seafood look extremely fresh and great quality.


The produce is vibrant and colourful, I'd love to spend hours looking around, but I have a lunch to get to.

Now to get into Giusti, I had to find the Salumeria Giusti, which was closing it's shutters already. They close the shop, like almost all other shops during the afternoon, but you can get in if you have a lunch reservation by knocking on the shutters. After entering this tiny room full of some of the best meats and preserves, I was led through a door at the back into another small room with only four tables. This is the entire restaurant and they only open for lunch. I wanted to try as many dishes as I could, and luckily almost the entire menu is also available in half portions (mezza porzione). For Antipasti, I chose the Baccala Mantecato con pane (Salt cod whipped into a puree with oil, salt and pepper).


This was very nice, the texture was perfect and the flavour was delicate and great for getting the appetite going. For Primi, I tried the Tagliatelle al sugo di Guanciale (Tagiatelle with a sauce made from veal cheeks).

The pasta was perfectly cooked, with just a little bite to it and as you can see, the sauce just sticks to the pasta and the meat was tender and melting. Secondi I decided on the Maialino freddo con cipolle all'Aceto balsamico Stravecchio (cold suckling pig with onions caramelised with balsamic vinegar).


Wow. The suckling pig is first roasted with aromatics and then placed in cold olive oil and left for 10 days. The resulting pork has a texture very similar to tuna preserved in oil, but denser and with a stunning amount of flavour. I was wishing I ordered a full portion rather than a half. The caramelised onions were sticky, sweet and sensational. How could they not be with balsamic from Modena?

At this point, I was very happy with the meal, and starting to get nervous about making the more than two hour drive, but after three amazing courses, I just couldn't leave without dessert. Asking the waitress which was the quickest dessert, I was offered a selection and chose the chocolate mousse. Now many of you may know I am not a big chocolate fan, but I do like dark, bitter chocolate, so when I heard that this was made with dark chocolate I had to try it.

This was a very dense mousse and unfortunately I forgot to ask for a half portion and got the full one instead, but I managed to struggle though and it just the way I like my chocolate, dark and rich with just enough bitterness to cut through the sweetness.

Hosteria Giusti is a dinin experience I would recommend to anyone, the price is on the higher side but worth every cent. Just make sure you book.

Bologna

Bologna has given its name to perhaps the most famous pasta sauce in the world - Bolognese. Spaghetti Bolognese is possibly the best known Italian dish in the world, but the funny thing is you wont find it in Bologna. Here the sauce is called Ragu and is served with tagliatelle, not spaghetti. Another very famous product of this area is Bologna Sausage, which Amercans call Baloney and Australians call Mortadella.

One of the restaurants I that decide to try is called La Trattoria del Rosso, which has a very reasonably priced lunch menu and is almost always full. I started with the antipasto of mixed salumi served with a fresh creamy cheese and fresh fried dough crostini.


This was a great selection of four different salumi, including prosciutto and mortadella. The cheese was creamy and mild.

Of course had to try the ragu, but since the menu had both tagliatelle and tortelloni with ragu, I decideded to try the tortelloni.


The meat was very finely minced, even though different restaurants have different ragus, some chunkier than others. The pasta was very nicely cooked and I was full at two courses, a great lunch.

After spending several days walking around the town looking at all the chruches and sights of Bologna (it's a beautiful city and many of the sights are within walking distance of each other) and doing a bit of research on the internet about which restaurants to visit, I found some discussion of a restaurant called Ristorante Pappagallo, a very old school place (90 years old) which is very proud of it's history and has photos all over the walls of famous people eating there from many decades ago. Located under the shadow of the Two Towers (a major landmark near the centre of the town), Papagallo serves high-end Bolognese cuisine. I wasn't anywhere near hungry enough for a full meal, but I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to eat here, so I decided on entree and dessert. To start, the risotto with prawns, apples and zucchini flowers grabbed my attention.


These flavours worked very well together and the rice was perfectly cooked and seasoned, I was very happy with this. For dessert I had the strawberry mousse with balsamic vinegar reduction.


The mousse was light, without being too airy, the flavour of strawberries was delicate and the blasamic balanced the sweetness with its acidity.

Bologna is an amazing place to visit and I would love to come back here again.

Perguia - The hills are alive

Driving north through Italy from Rome couldn't have been easier, the roads are clearly marked and the speed limit on the highway is 130 km/hr. I was heading for Perugia, which I had read about as being a beautiful mountain town with great views and good food, especially known for their truffles and the fact that the Baci Chocolates are made there.

Arriving in Perugia, I discovered that it is a warren of tiny streets with almost no parking, but the hotel was able to give me a permit and I basically parked the car as close as I could get to the hotel (about two blocks) and left it there for the one night that I was staying there. Everything in town is within walking distance and it is a gorgeous buzzing town. The centerpiece of the main part of town is a fountain in a piazza with several large sets of stairs nearby. These stairs are the major meeting place in town and every time I walked past them, they were packed with people just sitting and chatting.


Walking past the stairs, I entered the main street, which was full of people enjoying the evening and having appertivo.


Appertivo is a fantastic experience in Italy, it is usually the time between the end of the working day and dinner, when everyone goes out for a couple of drinks. The thing about Italy is that even the drinking is about eating here. During this time, which is their Happy Hour, most bars offer a buffet of finger food to the people who are there having a drink. Even though the idea is to have a little snack to get your appetite going for dinner, you can basically have enough to fill up for the price of one drink. The toughest part is choosing which bar has the best looking selection of foods. Some common ones are cold cuts, parmeggiano reggiano cheese with balsamic vinegar, bread and dips, antipasto, etc.


As the sun had not yet set, I decided to walk to the end of the main street to check out the view. It seems that you can almost see forever and everywhere you turn is a different, spectacular scene.


As the sun started heading down, I headed for a restaurant I had spotted earlier which caught my attention, Caffe Di Perugia. I ordered a Negroni (a bitter cocktail, often served for appertivo) before my meal and was also given a selection from the appertivo buffet which I didn't ask for, but was gladly accepted. I skipped the Antipasto and selected the Tagliatell con Tartufo Nero (Tagliateli with Black Truffles) and was not disappointed by the amount of truffles used as you can see.


This was quite tasty and simple, I really enjoyed it.

The dessert selection didn't really grab my attention, but I decided to try the Semifreddo Nocciola (Hazelnut Semifreddo).



This was way too sweet for me, but I'm sure all you chocaholics out there would like it since it had a chocolate center.

I loved this town and if I were to come here again I would definitely stay longer, but since the next day was Monday the many of the better restaurants are closed on Mondays, I decided to move on to Bologna.

When in....

“When in Rome…” they say, but I tell you what, it’s hard to keep up.

Let’s start with the driving. I hired a car for the duration of my stay as I’m planning to drive up through the middle of Italy to see some of the countryside and knowing that driving alone would be complicated enough, I also hired a GPS so I wouldn’t have to be constantly checking maps. This was probably the best money I have ever spent as it saved me enormous amounts of time, but I suspect it cost more than I think it did since I’m not sure if it took into account all the areas of Rome (which I may or may not have driven into) which require special permits (which I’m fairly sure I didn’t have). So, if anyone at home is reading this and there is a pile of official looking mail from Italy, I don’t want to know about it ok? Romans make their own rules as they drive and the roads reflect this. In most cases lanes are not clearly marked and a road that would normally be three lanes wide contains five lanes of traffic all cross-crossing without indicators and it always seems to be peak hour. Surprisingly though, I very quickly felt comfortable driving in this environment and as the Lonely Planet guidebook puts it “As a general rule, worry about what’s in front of you, leaving those behind you to think about your rear!”

Breakfast in Italy is more about coffee than food. The traditional espresso is usually had standing up at a counter with a pastry, perhaps a cornetto (Italian croissant-type pastry often plain but sometimes filled with jam or custard) or a ciambella (doughnut), but the selection in many pasticcerias is far more extensive.






One important thing to note about Italy is that almost everything closes for several hours in the afternoon; this includes many churches and attractions, so if you’re a late riser you might want to consider changing habits while here. During this time, most people have lunch or a siesta or both. Lunch in Italy can often be three or four courses, consisting of Antipasti (Appetiser: Often cold), Primi (First Course: Carbs mostly – Pasta, Risotto, etc), Secondi (Second Course – Meat, fish, etc) and Frutti e Dolce (Fruit and Sweets). Dinner is the same, but who can do that twice in one day, or even once unless you don’t have anything else all day? So what can you have for lunch on the run that isn’t going to take 2 hours or make you lie down in the first available shady spot for a siesta?

One of the lunchtime staples is the perennial favourite – Pizza. Almost a never ending variety is available by the slice, but the main feature is simplicity and freshness with many having only two or three ingredients. One place I found, while obviously targeted to tourists showed quite a bit of pride in itself and I had to take this photo. As many of you know, if this was a sign in Melbourne I would have a great time picking on all the spelling mistakes, but this is Italy.

While they don’t have over 180 different varieties available at all times, the selection of the day is still impressive:

Since I love mushrooms on a pizza, I decided on the mushroom pizza, which has at least two different types of mushrooms as you can see and was delicious if a little oily.

Another favourite on a hot afternoon in Italy is, of course, Gelato. Every street has a gelateria or two, at least it seems that way. The list of flavours is endless and the quality is outstanding. My favourite flavour was Cinnamon, but I only had Gelato once, resisting the temptation is not easy.

I had the rare opportunity to have dinner with three beautiful women in Rome (met up with some friends from Melbourne), so we decided to make a night of it and head to one of the nicer restaurants. From recommendations and from Lonely Planet, we chose La Baguette, a rooftop restaurant. The La Baguette shop downstairs was closed for personal reasons, but access was available though the next door wine shop. We thought it was a different restaurant, but decided to try it anyway. The staff were very friendly, helpful and spoke English quite well. To begin with they served an amuse bouche of smoked salmon, and since I was having dinner with a vegan, a vegetarian and someone who doesn’t eat fish, this meant more for me.

As for main courses, unfortunately vegans are limited in their selection and will probably have to look to the Contorni (side dishes) instead. Helen chose the Green Salad and the Grilled Vegetables.

Vegetarian options are a lot easier and, in fact, I have been eating a lot of vegetarian food since arriving in Italy, which I guess is not surprising after Serbia. Monica selected the vegetarian pasta.

Nancy had the rack of lamb, which was perfectly cooked.

I chose the Swordfish with green pepper sauce and zucchini and mint sorbet. This was sensational, the coolness of the minty sorbet was an excellent foil for the spicy green pepper sauce and the swordfish, while not a strongly flavoured fish, was cooked to perfection and had a great texture.

For dessert, Nancy chose the crepe.

I chose the Crème Brulee, which was flamed at the table - it must have had some alcohol poured over it – and tasted delicious.

This was a great meal and I would definitely come here again if I come back to Rome. I loved Rome, but to be honest I wouldn’t come back here in a hurry since there is so much left of Italy to see and experience.

New Blog

Welcome to the first installment of the Voracious Grazer! I've been meaning - like most of you out there I'd guess - to start a blog for a long time now. I'm traditionally a procrastinator and would have left this until much later on in my life (probably never) if I gave myself half a chance. There are hundreds of reasons why I should not start a blog today: The name doesn't sound quite right, It will take too much of my time, etc.

BUT....I'm going to do it anyway. I might not tell anyone about it, or I may never make a second post, but I've started it and surely that is the hardest part? Right?

The purpose of this blog is primarily to share my thoughts, experiences and travels with whoever wants to listen (or no one as is more likely). I'm starting it on the eve of my first trip to Europe and one that I hope will be full of great experiences and meals to remember.

The plan is still a little sketchy, but that's the way I like to travel, no planning and just let things happen. I'll be starting off in Serbia, which is where my family comes from and seeing where my parents grew up. From there I would like to head over to Italy, then through France, Spain and Portugal. Now while I don't plan to lock myself in too rigidly to specific destinations and timelines, if anyone out there has some feedback or a list of places not to miss, please post a comment and let me know.

I don't want this first post to stretch on too long, and I'm not sure what internet access will be like in Serbia, but I'll try to post something in the first few days of my arrival.