Cinque Terre, pt. 5....I didn't know I had this many buttons!

4/30/2007
In yesterday's post I mentioned how I had that feeling that, food wise, something had been missing, and how our wonderful lunch at Osteria Bacicio had hit all those yet-to-be-punched buttons. Well, thank the gods who watch over hungry travelers, because last night we had another huge "wow" moment during our last dinner in the Cinque Terre, a meal that was everything the food holocaust at Marina Piccola wasn't, at a place just 100 feet up the main street of Manarola from that mess. We had been by for a snack at Trattoria la Scogliera earlier in our visit. We were charmed by the place, and had planned to go back but it hadn't fit in. Thankfully, last night we made it, and it fit like a hand-tailored suit from Milano. The food was awesome! Here's the short and sweet version: a starter of the best sautéed clams I have ever had, a supremely rich, simple broth of wine, clam stock, a sprinkling of parsley, and butter...lots and lots of butter, a few halved cherry tomatoes. The tiny clams, so fresh tasting as if they dumped them right off the boat into the kitchen, we're meaty, briny little bits that I could have eaten dozens of. All too soon the bowl was empty, I'm sopping up broth like mad before they take the dish away, and we're both just wide eyed with pleasure.

I reluctantly let the remaining broth go, only because our waiter had shown up with our entrees. Mine was simply grilled branzino that had little more than a bit of oil and salt and pepper on it before it hit the grill. The meat was tender, fresh, tasting only of really fresh fish. Perfect. w had ordered their zuppa al mare, a dish that came to the table loaded with super fresh crawfish, huge shrimp, polpo (octopus), and a bit of spiny lobster, all swimming in a brick-colored broth that was astonishingly, intensely good. This was not only the best version of bouillabaise either of us had ever had, for me it was one of the best dishes of food I have ever had...period. It was crazy, the sauce (it was too rich to be merely labeled zuppa), had been reduced down until the layers of flavor had been forced into this wildly good, concentrated, soul satisfying concoction. I think about it now and I’m still blown away.

When you have a dish like that, and the branzino that I tore through, you know the people who are in the kitchen know how to handle fish with all the respect and care it deserves. No fancy flavors, no getting overly creative, doing again what the best places in the Piedmont, all of Italy, hell, any restaurant in the world do when they do it well, which is letting the best, freshest local ingredients, whether out of the ground or pulled out of the sea, speak for themselves. That’s what was great about last night’s dinner, that idea of localness, taken to its zenith. I just have to say, one more time...wow!

Oh, and then we had to finish with what turned out to be the best tiramisu we had ever had, which of course was made in house by the magicians in the kitchen. Another sweet success!






I write this seated on the train from Manarola to Milan, where we are catching a 1pm flight to Paris. And as much as I raved on about the great seafood we had yesterday, after tree days of this enforced fish diet, I am so ready for that first piece of foie gras! I’ll let you know how it goes..........

Cinque Terre, pt. 3...Crashing down

4/29/2007
It had to come to an end. An so it did, this string of delicious, fresh satisfying meals came resoundingly, thuddingly, hectically, and rudely to a halt last night at what is supposedly the best restaurant in Manarola, the harborside Marina Piccola. This gets mentioned in most of the guidebooks and online articles as the place for the freshest, most well prepared food in town.

We wasted a precious dinner, and the most money we had spent on any dinner on this trip. Here’s what we got: A harried floor guy who brusquely shows you to your table. Menus and wine list thrown onto the table. A female server, looking like she had either just had or was in need of her next fix, running, literally, back and forth past your table with food, water, stopping by the kitchen door for a quick drag on her cigarette every chance she got. Very mediocre apps come quickly, but after tasting them you wish they hadn’t come at all. More people show up, filling even more tightly the cramped outdoor dining room. Chaos edges ever closer, threatening to engulf the entire place. Unfortunately our entrees arrive, w’s a barely acceptable plate of roasted sardines in a too thick tomato sauce. Mine is even more ludicrous. I ordered an oven roasted branzino, expecting a finely prepared, fresh piece of local flavor. What I got was a whole fish swimming in a pool of olive oil. Had he still been alive, I swear he could have done laps. All around us, things appear to be spiraling. Waiters rush by with hot plates of food in their hands and confused looks on their faces. Going from table to table, trying to find out who ordered what. Newcomers are seated at tables that haven’t even been cleaned after the exit of the last unfortunate souls who sat there. There’s an air of hostility swirling about. I grab a server, pay the ransom, and we beat a hasty retreat.

What I’m saying is, if any of you should find yourself in the natural wonderland that is the Cinque Terre, don’t ever, no matter what you read or hear, let yourself get hooked into Marina Piccolo. Consider yourselves warned!

Cinque Terre, pt.2... Walk. Eat. Drink. Repeat

4/28/2007
Another morning, another cloudless sky. We can see the weekend sailors plying the waters off the coast from our terrace. We’re planning a lazy day, especially after our 5k “walk” from Manarola to Vernazza (numero quattro in the cinque) yesterday. This was more like a serious up-and-down hike, taking you from sea level to around 1000 feet of elevation in about 2k. The destination was a wireless internet point in Vernazza (again, why isn’t there one in every town...in 2007?!). So up and down we went, well over 2000 steps, lots of sweat, lugging the laptop in my messenger bag through vineyards, olive and lemon groves, scraggly vineyards, looking out over stunning views of the coast far below. Vernazza was a cute...of course...little village. Apparently Rick Steve’s favorite CT village, so you can imagine the hordes. After I took care of blogging biz, we walked to a Trattoria high above the harbor for lunch with what actually was an incredible view and quite good food, and busted out of there on the next train back to Manarola, where it’s busy, but not that busy.

We whiled away a little time in Manarola, strolled back down the path to the bar in Riomaggiore to watch the sun go down, then came back to Manarola for dinner at Bar Aristide. A lovely little outdoor café on the lower town square, where we had earlier checked out the menu. I particularly was hankering after some accuighe di limone, which is one of the classic dishes of the area. It consists of fresh anchovies drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice. We started out with this piece of piscine pleasure, and were not disappointed. The sardines were so fresh, more than likely hauled in that day by the boats that go out of the local harbor about 200 feet away. Served atop a chiffonade of lettuce with a few chopped cherry tomatoes, washed down with a chilled bottle of vermentino....really lovely. For main plates, w had a so-so piece of swordfish, and I had an outstanding pate of frittura mista, fried local seafood...tender calamari, shrimp, sardine, the flavors simple and so fresh with a splash of fresh lemon juice. Really a great dinner at again a very reasonable price.
Accuighe di limone





Frittura mista








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Here's a picture of some bottles on the wall of a wine shop in Corniglia. You may have seen the other half of this on the wall at VINO. Apparently they added to the collection. Those other guys on the labels I get, but who's that shifty character in the upper left???








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later that day.....
So ya know what I said about being lazy. Apparently not in our vocabulary as we are both somewhat ADD travelers. We just got back to the room from a thigh busting hike into the hills above Manarola, to the tiny villages of Groppo and Volastra. Our target was the local wine cooperative between the two towns, which we made it to to taste some just okay whites. So much for the reward. But at least now I have totally justified anything I eat or drink for the rest of the day. That’s Volastra way up on top of the hill, and take into account that we already hiked straight up for the last 40 minutes. Egad....................

Cinque terre, pt.1: it's all true!

4/27/2004
Day two here in the Cinque Terre, specifically the almost too charming village of Manarola (numero due in the cinque), and I have to say the whole CT is just about everything I had expected it to be. I’ve been wanting to come here for close to 20 years, and this was finally the time. Sure, there’s hordes of Rick Steves-toting tourists, stopping right in front of you at every moment to take yet another picture. There are loud German tourists who seem convinced the rest of the world is deaf; Americans fearfully looking at restaurant menus, hoping to find something, anything, that they’ve heard of. Still, it somehow clings to this special aura, this way of life that when you get off the main drag in each town, seems almost unchanged from the way it must have been 50 or more years ago. Better still, you could spend a couple of days just wandering the maze of stairs and hidden walkways in Manarola alone.
The view from our room in Manarola....I like it here!






We got in late yesterday afternoon, checked into our viewalicious room at the La Torretas, had some local vini bianchi, the ubiquitous Cinque Terre Blanc with a small bite to eat at a local trattoria. Unlike the Festa di Carne that was the Piedmont, here it’s all about the sea. All the menus are dominated by two things...pesto and seafood. Our insalata di mare we had for lunch was wonderfully fresh, the octopus, shrimp, and fish a welcome change from all the farm animals we ate up north. The local white grape grown in the vertical vineyards surrounding each village is the perfect foil to this kind of food, going equally well with fish or pesto. After a quick siesta, we did the vineyard walk here (through the vineyards on the left of the picture above), which is one of those mandatory, must-do tourist things. It winds from the top of the town, just below the church that was built around the year 1300, down through the terraced vineyards that have been individually gouged out of the side of the hill, each farmer having a few grape vines, two or three lemon trees, and a small garden plot. The effort to get things to grow must be incredible, and I am absolutely fascinated by the whole process. We started in the early evening, after most of the tourist hordes had departed, and had the trail to ourselves. Coming back into town, we continued walking south for about a kilometer to check out Riomaggiore (numero uno in the cinque). Another postcard perfect village, somewhat larger than Manarola, with a more lived in look (in a good way). We hiked up into the town, stopped for a cold birra, then went back down to the harbor front to see if we could find a place to eat. We didn’t eat right there, but did stop for a drink at a tiny bar with a dramatic view over the harbor where we saw a stunning sunset that looked a lot like this......
Coming back into town, we ended up for dinner at Ristorante La Lampara, where the dining room was surprisingly modern and stylish. White tablecloths, big Spiegelau glasses, nice, casual ambience, and very reasonable prices for what turned out to be deliciously prepared food. We had a pizza al pesto to start, and both of us ordered whole branzini, the Mediterranean version of sea bass. w’s was simply grilled, mine was oven roasted. So fresh and perfectly done.
My roasted branzini....superb!







For dessert w had to have her panna cotta craving satisfied, and this was one of the best panna cottas either of us has had....

Panna cotta perfection!






We strolled home along the Riomaggiore-Manarola path, which in the last few years has been paved and has lighting installed that dramatically illuminated the cliffs down to the sea at select points. In the dark (there are small, unobtrusive lights along the path), it was simply stunning, the sky above crystal clear and filled with stars, the sea rhythmically splashing against he rocks. Can you say insanely romantic? One of those moments impossible to improve upon. La vita dolce, indeed!