One of our most favourite meals during our trip was in the town of Foligno. Foligno is a town that my old Italian lecturer would call “Un po particulare.” Most people rush straight past Foligno for the well advertised delights of Assisi and Spoleto. They are the poorer for it. Perhaps it is the outskirts of tangled light industry that put people off.
I stayed in Foligno for a week once when I was living in Siena. An old monastery had been converted into the most splendid youth hostel and I lived like a medieval princess for 12.000L a night.
We booked lunch at ‘Il Bacco Felice’ as we’d heard it was popular with the locals and only sat about 25 odd people. The restaurant is on the best Italian Osterie list of Slow Food for 2006. We turned up at 1pm to be told they weren’t ready for lunch just yet, could we come back at 20 past? We paced around the central piazza our stomachs growling.
Our stomachs were in for a treat though.
The place (at luchtime at any rate) is run just by the chef and owner, Salvatore Denaro (that’s him at the bottom of the page on the link) and his handy young waiter. There is no menu either as we discovered, Salvatore (this is a sample chapter on him from the book in the previous link) just brings you what he fancies cooking in his kitchen that day.
We had:
A cold plate of local salumi with freshly baked strips of salty foccacia
A huge Buffala mozzarella caprese
Thick Zuppa di Faro with saffron
Organic roast chicken on the bone to be eaten with fingers with spinaci
Still warm and squidgy almond biscuits with caffé
At intervals the chef would come out and chat and pinch any bits of food from your table you had left - how could you leave such tasty morsels!
We drank a Rosso di Montefalco 2003 from Arnaldo-Caprai which the waiter uncorked with no ceremony - and tasted for us - smacking his lips in recommendation. We visited Montefalco later that day and bought the same wine direct from the vineyard shop. They restaurant’s mark up? A whole two euro. The meal cost eighteen euro each plus the wine and water.
Another good reason to return to Foligno.
May 30th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Sounds wonderful. Why aren’t there any place like that here?
May 30th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
I know Snags I know. Since I’ve got back I have been in a food funk. Where are all the markets and little corner shops of small town Italy with their wonderfully fragrant and lovingly displayed produce? Sadly most Brits seem to be obssessed with the price of their shopping and not the real (for me at any rate) concern, the quality and origin.
I did try and get some Tuscan pecorino fresca at Waitrose yesterday but they just had some semi-aged Romano. I bought some Welsh sheep milk cheese instead and had it for lunch with a green salad dressed in a some very fine €14 olive oil we bought in Montalcino (impossibly green) and dunked the cheese in the thick handmade chesnut honey we’d brought back. Heavenly.
May 30th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Wow - it’s like a foreign country!
May 30th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Oooh, that sounds great, I love that he is hands on and enjoying himself, it sounds like it shows in the food!
xx