travelswithalice

August 20, 2006

Orvieto

At the moment, we’re at that most civilized time on the continent when everything closes down for the afternoon. We are in Orvieto, tomorrow we head for Rome and then home on Friday or Saturday, depending on whether we get confirmed on the later flight or not. Our hotel, the Palazzo Piccolomini has wi-fi, so I’m updating my long neglected blog.

At a restaurant around the corner, we just had our first sit-down lunch after a long string of on the road picnics of take away food bought in whatever town we happened to be driving from. Those picnics were some of the most memorable meals we’ve had on this holiday.

Lunch was grilled meats including rabbit and the territorial cinghiale (wild boar,) a green salad, a quarter liter of red wine, and lots of mineral water. We have finally sworn off any kind of pasta, no matter how attractively named or seductively sauced. This we had to do because squeezing into our jeans has come to be increasingly difficult as we cover more miles on this eating and drinking tour.

Orvieto's beautiful striped duomo

Dinner was at Osteria San Patrizio. I have to mention here that we are in Orvieto for two reasons. One is the beautiful striped duomo, which I just had to see again, having fallen in love with it on a previous trip. The other is the caramelled figs at San Patrizio that we had read about in our trusty guidebook.

We dined on Chef Eduardo’s recommended menu and left the wine selection to waiter Ricardo.

Ricardo selected the wine

The food was superb. We had chicken galantina with french beans, baccala-filled ravioli, and lamb chops served with melanzane parmegiana.

Three was the magic number for the finish: honey drizzled ewe’s cheese in three ages (the 2-year old proved too lively for me) and a terrine of three kinds of chocolate in a sherry sauce. The Palazzone Armaleo was even better than Ricardo, a certified enologist, promised. Strangely, there was no one else dining there that evening but us. Well, it was everybody else’s loss.

When Chef Ernesto came out to chat I asked about the conspicuous absence of figs from the menu. He explained that because he could not obtain figs of top quality, he was unable to offer the dessert that day as “we are famous for it.”

This is what I wrote in the guestbook: After traveling for two weeks through Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, and Tuscany in search of good food and wine, this is the highlight of our tour. Waiter Ricardo has been a great guide.

We walked back from dinner to work some of it off and stopped by an open air concert at the piazza beside the duomo.

The Chicken’s Funk wasn’t half bad but Frank Zappa wasn’t really our kind of music. It was a delight just being there though, hanging out with the mostly local crowd. We left after about three songs; we sang and danced in the quiet narrow streets as we walked back to our hotel.

Labels: caramelled figs at San Patrizio, food, italy, Orvieto duomo, wine