In response to PH Rodgers, here is my trip report that was so influenced and helped along by him and the rest of the Chowhound crowd. My cousin and I had planned our trip for March of 2020, and we all know how that ended up! She was coming from Albuquerque and me from New York. We met in Paris and spent a couple of days shaking of travel dust (read: jetlag), and then we were off to Italy!
We arrived in Turin, rented a car, on a glorious day and headed to Osteria Veglio for a lunch (later in the week an equally wonderful dinner). I think we both were incredibly moved by the welcome we received, and the food was incredible. We shared appetizers of stuffed onion and vitello tonnato, both had the plin (unmatched in our travels), and we shared a main course roast meat of some kind and mashed potatoes. We had glasses of wine with every course suggested by the our waitress; as it turned out, she was one of the sisters who runs the place! So nice to us. We then went on to check into our flat on the nearby winery, and we were so comfortable in this beautiful spot. Days, redolent with cherry blossoms, greenery everywhere, sunshine but cool temperatures (i.e. not hot), and night skies filled with stars, and the tree shadow overhead. Hard to describe how wonderful our time was.
That night, we had one of two meals at Centro Storico. We both loved this casual spot (went back for lunch on Friday of our week and had two great salads: burrata and sublime tomatoes was one) with only about four tables, depending on how they are set up. We got to peek into the kitchen after lunch on our second visit and cannot imagine how Stefania turns out that food from that space! I am a hazlenut nut, and their hazelnut dessert had to be the best dessert I had on the trip. (I’m not much on desserts usually, but this warm gooey hazelnut torte was very much up my alley.)
In between those two visits, we had lunch at Pane e Vino. This was among my favorite meals of the trip. We got there a little late, but the owner (Flavio?) again an incredibly warm, passionate about food and wine, guy with his shy wife in the kitchen turning out amazing food. We ate our way through the menu, and I would have come back for another meal in a heartbeat. The tajarin here in particular of that kind of pasta we tried was hands down the best, and I came away with an idea of the secrets that make it so (can’t wait to try that out)! I had snails for my main course, and I don’t think I’ve had better anywhere. Again, the welcome we received was extraordinary in my (maybe limited compared with a lot of the now-former-Chowhounders) travel experiences.
We had an amazing Sunday lunch at I Bologna. Lamb chops and some gorgonzola at the end were memorable along with a Barbera ( Bricco dell Uccellone 2018) And a final meal at Guido was pushing my envelope of “fancy,” but it was in some ways so over the top, and the food delicious (despite the kinda touristy story around the different plins they served us). A fine way to wrap up our week of beautiful sunny weather, driving into a different fairy tale postcard every day.
I didn’t love Trattoria della Posta or I Coccinella. Nothing wrong with either of them, don’t get me wrong! Just they didn’t feel as special to us as some of the other places we ate.
Can’t wait to go back!
