What about the food?
We would be remiss if we didn’t talk about the food we’ve eaten in Italy.
Jess has already said her piece about her continued love affair with the artichoke so here are Willa Marie and David's thoughts on a few of the favorite things we ate. David will do the savory courses. WM's an expert on deserts.
David: primi and secondi:
Anchovies and mozzarella
I like anchovies. A lot. I like mozzarella. Here in Italy they combine the two.
One of those dishes that takes two flavors and combines them to make an entirely new third taste. It’s been a revelation. From the super down home version we got in Bevagna where they served the anchovies still in the can to the fancy Christmas Eve dinner we had in Venice where the anchovies were at another level and the mozzarella was smooth as a cherub’s bum.
Pigeon does not taste like chicken
In Orvieto I had a pigeon stuffed with figs. A rich, dark meat that was a cross between duck and venison. Polenta on the side. Also cool because (unbeknownst to us at the time) we were sitting above the ancient tunnels under the city filled with 1,000 year old pigeon dovecotes.
Truffles, truffles, truffles
One of our first nights in Italy we went to the White Boar Pub (Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco) in Florence. We ordered an onion flan topped with truffles. Delightful, savory. Rich truffle taste on top of a cloud-like flan. And then we came to Umbria where the truffles are even more prevalent than the artichokes.
Streetfood in Florence
I’ve already written of this but the lampredotto in Florence was amazing. Sliced beef stomach on crazy fresh bread with a green garlic sauce and some kind of hot red oil. Eaten in the cold standing up.
Heaven
Speaking of standing up - I think heaven will be a place where you can walk down a cold street, into a bar, order an espresso, drink it standing shoulder to shoulder with other pedestrians and be on your way within less than five minutes.
Willa Marie does dolci!
I was mostly the one getting dessert here in Italy. My dad sometimes got some after lunch or dinner but usually he was too full. I actually was to full as well, but did that stop me from eating my delicious Italian dessert? Noooooo. I'm just going to make a quick list of desserts that we got and loved. Gelato This one is pretty obvious (my dad got this quite a lot as well, so I wasn't the only one) we got gelato in every city we went to. Now, you have to remember that it was December and January so it wasn't as easy to spontaneously decide you want a gelato, jump up, walk about a foot and buy some. That doesn't mean that there wasn't a gelateria around every corner. My personal favorite was in Florence. We were walking down one of those tiny medieval streets when we came by a small gelateria and decided to spontaneously get some gelato! I got dark chocolate and lavender. It was amazing, the gelato actually tasted like lavender. So yeah, gelato is an extremely good thing to eat when your in Italy.
Number two! On Christmas Eve the Thebus/O'Donnell family went to a beautiful restaurant called Riviera. Very fancy. For dessert they were served....... Ok, I'm just gonna explain it in bits 'cause it's difficult to explain fully, at once. So imagine a cake and then cut off the top so there's only a thin slice of it left and then take a bunch of berries, such as, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and raw currents. Put all of those on top of your thin slice of cake and add a berry sauce thing ( I don't know what the sauce actually was but it had something to do with berries ). So you have all of that. Now imagine a merengue so amazing that it instantly melts on you tongue and form it into a dome shape. Put that dome of deliciousness over the berry-cake thing and....BOOM! a mind blowing dessert.
Pistachio lava And last but not least the pistachio torte. This was a kind of cup made of cake that was filled with this insane pistachio flavored cream sauce so it was kind of like a pistachio lava cake. It was pretty small and the plate was pretty big so they just put some raspberry sorbet with dark chocolate crumbs and mint leaves on the side. Yay! Well, there you go that's some of our Italian dessert that will always be remembered in the Thebus/ O'Donnell household!
Home cooking
And we’ve eaten in a lot. Cooking in AirBnB kitchens. The bread and cheese in every shop - amazing. The radicchio has been particular fresh and sweet/bitter. So many kinds of dried sausage and salami and wild boar next to bins of salted and marinated anchovies and sardines and other fish. Incredible. And the grocers are nice and wear ties under their white coats.
Cool rooms
An old horse stable on the mountain
La Stalla in Assisi (recommended by our friends Matt and Liz) a ways out of town past the city gates and up Mount Subasio. They have a huge grill with a wood burning fire from which they pull embers to cook chicken and sausage and bury whole potatoes in ash. Full of locals, families with kids, and firemen.
Lunch in Bevagna
This weird little place in Bevagna (essentially the only restaurant that was open on a cold Tuesday afternoon) where I got the anchovies in a tin. A funny old couple running the place. Jazz on the stereo. Pictures of Manhattan and Woody Allen and Rasta’s smoking doobies on the walls. Super cool.
We're off to Rome tomorrow. Jess heard the artichokes are good there and we've got some very specific gelato recommendations to explore. Bon appetito and love to you all ❤️
- Willa Marie + David