From time to time plans don’t work out as expected and so we ended up a second time at La Sciamadda dei Vinacceri https://ivinaccieri.com/en/la-sciamadda-dei-vinaccieri-ballerini-home in Sestri Levante. This time we ordered quite a lot of appetizers so that we were too full for desserts (which is quite unusual for us). Again a great dinner
Antipasto misto della Sciamadda - Variety of local dishes - russian salad italian style “Paolina”, Baciocca cake, cake u preve, rice cake, fried shrimps, octopus and potatoes, salami, anchovies marinated with lemon juice
I saw the yearly Hatch chiles at our store the other day and they don’t look good. Maybe it’s because they’ve been crated too long and shipping spoiled them. I didn’t purchase any.
Portion control! I worked in an art studio in a former life and one of the craftspersons had a stack of TV dinner trays 12’ tall, no kidding. She used them for beading projects. Thats’s a lot if aluminum!
No cooking, no hassle dinner.
Charcuterie-like platter, feta and Parm Regg cheese, stuffed green and Kalamata olives , fennel pepperettes, hot chorizo and marinated grilled peppers which were the star of the show(could eat them by the bucket).
Some homemade garlic crostini on the side.
Salade Niçoise, sun sugars and haricots verts from the garden. Oo&v, garlic, anchovies, capers, parsley dressing. There was a Boulevardier to sooth my pain from a visit to the torture chamber, aka dentist.
It turned out finding good restaurants in Bologna was quite difficult - and not because the city doesn’t have any good ones but we were visiting when many of the restaurants we were interested were closed due to vacations. For our first restaurant in Bologna we picked Corbezzoli https://www.corbezzoli.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=mybusiness which was quite well known for their different tasting menus and takes on traditional dishes. As it turns out they have changed their menu and the larger tasting menu is gone and some others are cut down - still a good dinner (with a seafood focused menu) but not on the level and creativity we had hoped.
Orecchiette with sausage and kale with white wine, olive oil and Parmesan. Quick and easy. I’m not a huge fan orecchiette but Mr Bean had a hankering for them and since I was at the grocery store anyway I picked up a box.
Lovely ladies night wiff a bunch of my bishes. My first drink was a Pride Mimosa with passionfruit (other options were mango and something else I’m blanking on now).
A little sweet for my taste, but I wanted to start with something other than my usual The manager introduced me to a new Vietnamese gin, which made for a wonderfully aromatic martini.
Dinner was a lobster roll when I got home around 11:30pm — a deal our fishmonger had posted on Facebook late afternoon: buy one, get one half off. At $23 full price for one it wasn’t exactly a steal, but a nice midweek treat.
Taco Thursday, birria tacos, cilantro and onions, a bowl of cherry tomatoes, jalapeno, onion, squeeze of lime, Mexican crema and a sprinkle of chile powder. Margarita and sangria.
One of the most well known restaurants serving cuisine from Emilia-Romagna is Trattoria da Amerigo https://amerigo1934.com/ about 40km outside of Bologna. The drive to it is already great through small streets in the hills around Bologna. The restaurant is celebrating 90 years and has a Michelin star for more than 30 years. Beside the a la carte menu, it also has two shorter tasting menus which might be some of the most affordable one anywhere - and the food, service and ambience is outstanding. It’s not that easy to get there but so worth it.
The manager introduced me to a new Vietnamese gin, which made for a wonderfully aromatic martini.
