The Food Maven Diary
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Restaurants in Verona
These are the restaurants that I took my group to in Verona, and the menus we ate. I can't say I wasn't a little nervous about them. I had made all these meal plans through research and recommendation, talking on the phone, faxing back and forth. I haven't been to Verona in 15 years. Fortunately, I have several American friends who go regularly to Verona for VinItaly, the wine fair. Fortunately, I just bought this year's editions of all the big Italian restaurant guides. Fortunately, I have Italian friends here and there who had to put their two cents in. Most fortunately, I have Iris Carulli as my operative in Rome.
Deep breath.
I had nothing to worry about.
They, the restaurants, all performed admirably, even heroically, given how difficult it is to cook the same food for 40 people, and to serve them nearly simultaneously and well to boot. Not one bite tasted like banquet food, most not even like restaurant food but home food. Every meal showcased the genuine, traditional, home-grown, home-cooked flavors of the place, the Veneto region, of which Verona is its western province and Venice its eastern. (Three days after three days in Verona, we boarded the Crystal Serenity in Venice, for a cruise ending in Athens.)
That's what I am after when I am traveling, the taste of the place. Verona has cutting-edge and fancy restaurants, too. But I haven't finished eating all the old food. On a few days vacation I don't have time for new food.
All the restaurants, except for the risotto restaurant, are in the historic center of the city. I planned menus to focus on the restaurant's specialties, but also so my group would have a taste of as many local products and dishes as possible.
The next diary item will cover the Riseria Gazzani, the ancient rice mill we visited, and Masi, the wonderful winery we toured.
Antica Bottega del Vino (Via Scudo di Franci, 3; phone, 045-800-4535): This is one of the most important restaurants in Verona, as it is where people in the wine trade meet to eat and do business. The walls are covered with shelves of wine, making the gorgeous Gothic style wall paneling a mere backdrop. Wine is the focus of everything. This year, a New York branch has opened at 7 E. 59th St. and Fifth Avenue. (If you are as old as I am, you may remember that this is where New York's Playboy Club once stood, and later a parade of restaurants that never lasted more than a few years.) Our Verona dinner, our first as a group, on Friday night, started with a round of Tomino cheese – a Camembert-like soft-rind cheese that is traditionally from the Piedmont, but is also made in other northern Italian regions nowadays. It was melted – actually grilled -- over a paper-thin slice of pancetta and a bed of sautéed, shredded radicchio -- radicchio being a major crop in the Veneto. I've learned since that dinner that grilled Tomino in various guises is a trendy dish all over the north of Italy. It was served as an antipasto, but it was so rich and such a large portion that I think (I know) that some among us would have been happy to stop there. (Don't get me wrong. Not me.) But on we went to a risotto all'Amarone made with the local Vialone Nano rice braised in the famous Veronese red wine. Yes, the rice was red-brown. For a main course, we had sliced steak with an arugula salad garnished with scales of Parmigiano, plus a plate of seasonal vegetables, including white asparagus, another Veneto specialty and one of late spring's joys. I can't get enough of them. I ate them four times in four days, once aboard the Crystal Serenity, where I cooked them myself into a particularly fine risotto – well, that's what everyone said. And they were risotto experts by then. For dessert: we enjoyed a Diplomatico, an old-fashioned pudding-cake that you never see anymore in New York, although, in the 19th Century and before World War II, it appeared on the menus of many fancy restaurants here.
Al Pompiere (Vicolo Regina d'Ungheria, 5; phone, 045-803-0537): This small trattoria specializes in salumi and cheese, which is obvious as soon as you enter the room. Three walls are covered with black and white photos of local customers and characters, but at the rear is a counter and shelves filled with cheeses. A red Berkel slicing machine – the Rolls Royce of slicers – has a place of honor at one end. It cut the prosciutto, sopressa (local salami), culatello, cured lard, etc., for our Saturday lunch. After a guided walking tour of the city's historic center, we took over the whole restaurant and wallowed in fabulous cold cuts, served with lightly pickled vegetables. We drank a gorgeous Roccoli Valpolicella. For a first course, we had a risotto made with local wild greens called carletti. I absolutely loved it, the taste of the green being a cross between spinach and chicory. Then we had a small portion of bigoli with anchovy sauce, one of the ways the pasta is traditionally served. I wiped my plate clean. A cheese board followed, accompanied by sweet fruit condiments and honey. With coffee, we ate sbrisolona, the crumb-nut cake of nearby Mantova (where we went for a Sunday evening walk). It's actually all crumbs studded with nuts. Everyone loved it so much we got the recipe, but I haven't worked it out yet with American measurements and ingredients. Eventually, I will. Stefano, the most accommodating owner of Al Pompiere, also provided us with a box lunch on Monday, so we didn't have to stop to eat on our bus ride from the Masi winery in Valpolicella on our way to catch the Crystal Serenity in Venice. I should say it was a bag lunch. Stefano packed the sandwiches, fresh fruit, including fragrant, flavorful strawberries, and bottles of water in the most gorgeous textured paper bags. It is so Italian to pay attention to style details like that. I brought my bag home it is so beautiful.
Tre Marchetti (Via Tre Marchetti, 19B; phone, 045-803-0463): My friend Phillip Di Belardino, a vice-president of Banfi wines, considers this the best trattoria in Italy. And Filipo gets around. All I can say is that we ate extraordinarily well and had the best time for our Saturday dinner. We took over the whole front of the restaurant, the large room, leaving only a few seats in a rear dining room for the locals who obviously adore the place. The owner, Roberto Barca, is considered a town character. Some say he is crazy – but in the good, fun sense. He is, indeed, such a presence in Verona that I ran into him several times before our dinner, not knowing who he was, and we talked. He is magnetic. You see him, you have to get to know him. He's a tall, robustly built man who wears huge red-framed glasses and a vest stuck with dozens of souvenir pins – each one to remind himself, he says, of a lover. His 30-something son works alongside him, and besides the physical resemblance, you can see that Junior is also going to become a personaggio himself. Anyway, we again had salumi to start – culatello, sopressa, pancetta, and bresaola -- then moved on to tortelloni filled with Veronese white celery root simply dressed with butter (to die for), and a bit of tagliatelle with porcini (also fabulous). For me, however, the main course was the absolute triumph – veal cheeks braised in Amarone. The meat was so richly, gelatinously textured, the flavor so intense and complex – this not to mention the creamy polenta served as a foil and sop for the sauce – I know I will always regret not having finished it. How could I ever have left some of it over? Given the first three courses, it should be obvious. I didn't touch the platters of miniature pastries.
La Campagna: Sunday lunch was at this trattoria down the road from the Gazzani rice mill. Young and very handsome Marco Soave, owner of the mill, graced us with his presence at lunch, and he explained that two of the risotto we were going to eat were not traditional, but original creations of the chef-owner who won prizes for them at a local risotto cooking contest. One of the creative risotti was made with cuttlefish (sepia) and mushrooms. The other had tiny shrimp cooked into it and was topped with sfilacci, a horsemeat product that is somewhat like smoked jerky, but cut into thread-thin strands or filaments. One of the two traditional risotti was with white asparagus. The other was seasoned with crumbled sausage meat. After the four-risotto lunch, I took a lot of kidding about how we'd have to eat prunes for a week to get back our regularity.
Le Cantine de L'Arena (Piazzetta Scalette Rubiani, 1, at Piazza Bra; phone, 045-803-2849): Looking for a table on the Piazza Bra, the plaza that faces the Roman Arena, I had a light lunch here the day our group arrived. It could not have been more perfect -- the daily special of several fat spears of white asparagus served with poached eggs, drizzled with a little butter and sprinkled with Parmigiano. White asparagus were in season and I couldn't think of a better way to enjoy them. This, and a look around me at what other tables were eating, encouraged me to return on Sunday night for pizza. It was as good as it looked, but I'd keep to the basic Margherita and ignore the more elaborate toppings.
Al Calmiere (Piazza San Zeno, 10; phone, 045-803-0765): My group didn't get to eat bollito misto, the boiled dinner that is a mainstay of Verona and other places in the north of Italy. (Bollito is also eaten in the south these days, but it is an import.) But I did get to eat a grand bollito misto because I arrived the night before, along with David and Carol Strauss, Carol being Travel Four Vacations, one of the sponsors of the trip; Jerry and Irene Davis, Jerry being Alice Travel, the other sponsor of the trip, Joe and Judy Klyde, the good friends of all of us, and Barbara Glassman, David Strauss's sister. I dragged them out of the smack center of the city to this slightly outlying piazza with Verona's grandest church and this restaurant famous for bollito. The room sports a massive charcoal burning fireplace-grill where, when we arrived, a chef was grilling the polenta squares for our first course – the base of crostini di polenta which would be topped with tissue-thin slices of cured lard that nearly melt into the hot grilled polenta, prosciutto and sopressa. I did not like the way Al Calmiere serves bigoli. They bring out undressed pasta on individual plates and serve three sauces on the side in a special metal caddy. The sauces can be mixed together if you like: tomato sauce, ground beef sauce (not really a ragu), and peas. The sauces are not exciting, neither alone nor together, and by the time you dress your own pasta it's cold. The bollito, however was massive and superb. Two big carts were rolled over to our table and they held fresh tongue and cured tongue, chicken, various cuts of beef, including cheek, a horsemeat roast … I know there was more, but at the moment I can't think of what it was. The meats come with various condiments – mustard fruits, which are fruits cooked in a spiced sugar syrup -- not totally unlike chutney, although the Italian fruits are whole or in large pieces -- horseradish, green sauce, and peara, which is a warm sauce particular to Verona, made with marrow. I didn't actually care for it. It could have been better seasoned.
And a horse butcher!
Veneri (Macelleria Equina al Maffei): This is said to be best horse butcher in Verona. Certainly, the shop itself, spic and span, organized and commanded by friendly and informative Giuseppe Veneri, inspires confidence. I bought a take-out serving of horse tartar here, where it is called pesto di cavallo. It is seasoned with capers, mustard, grated Grana Padano, and extra-virgin olive oil. I loved it, and when I got back to the hotel I passed it around to our arriving group for a taste. It doesn't taste much different than raw beef. People say horse is "sweeter" than beef. I don't think sweet is a good word for the difference. I'd say horse is somehow fuller tasting than beef, rounder tasting. And I can tell you this: Raw horsemeat is mostly better than cooked. As a Veronese woman who was shopping at Verneri said, unless stewed for hours, it's a very tough meat when cooked beyond rare. That proved true with the well-cooked boiled horse roast served as part of the bollito misto at Al Calmiere. I didn't have a chance to taste the local stew, pastissada, which is seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. Veneri sells it packaged in vacuum bags. Boil and serve horse stew!
