My time in Italy: Dinner

I was ecstatic!, the day started, as usual, toast as breakfast, leftover as lunch, and vending machine coffee; in a couple of days we were going to return to India and so it was time for us to shop souvenirs and chocolates. But what excited me most was the restaurants, and for the noblest reason - food.

Gli Orsi is the mall of Biella; there are spots in town like Via Italia, and the complex housing Esselunga, then there is also a Saturday market - where we can go and buy many different things in one place, but malls always offer a different experience. Gli Ori has exclusive outlets for chocolates, shoes, electronics, bags, and more, but we usually buy chocolates from Coop, a supermarket similar to Esselunga but offers more discounts.

My first dining experience in Italy was at a place that doesn't serve Italian food but western food. I'm from India, Italy is my west 😄but to Italians - America is west, I understood this as soon as we spotted the restaurant. The place was decorated to look like the hardcore west of USA (read cowboys), and it was aptly named "Old wild west". I have been to this place twice, the place has large peanuts at the entrance, we can pick a hand full and eat it till we are served. I ordered the only vegetarian burger on the menu and second-time order quesadilla. I have not had quesadilla before in my life, but the taste was phenomenal, everyone loved it that they ended up eating half leaving me starving, thank goodness burgers were served with large portions of fries and I munched on them happily.  

OLD WILD WEST: Quesadilla hiding behind the empty wine glass

One day we decided to go out for dinner, but we took the decision very late in the night; most restaurants had already closed. Experienced colleagues enlighted us about the local beer brewery that has a restaurant that functions till mid-night, it was the place for the night owls, not exactly walking distance from where we stay, but the 30 mins stroll to the packed Menabrea was worth it. Most people come for fresh brews, they also serve "bira cruda", the unfiltered beer. Ordered risotto because it said rice cooked with white wine, it was vile, I hated it. I cannot begin to describe my hatred towards risotto I have developed since the incident. I am a South Indian, rice is our staple, this is not how we intended to cook rice. When any Italian complaints about how others cook pasta/pizza put them on the skewer for creating risotto. I wanted to throw it and order something else, but god that dish costs 9 euro and I'm a middle-class Indian. During my subsequent visits to Menabera, I ordered pasta or pizza and enjoyed them, no complaints.

MENABREA: The risotto that no one else wanted to eat

While touring Tuscany we had dinner in Florence twice, once inside the city at Da Pinocchio, the food was good but the overall dining experience was less than desirable, we are not sure if the waitress didn't serve us properly because we were brown or she thought we were tourists who didn't know anything about the usual Italian dining experience. The next day we visited Pisa and Luca, but choose Florence to stay, on our way to the hotel we stopped by a local eatery - Benvenuti a Sud for a quick dinner. It was a pizzeria and I was in no mood to pizza anymore, and hence fired pizza! It was fun to eat, with tomato sauce and cheese packed inside the fried dough, I had to use a plastic fork and knife to find my way into the fritta. It was a bold move considering I had no relative experience with a plastic knife or any kind of knife, goodness nothing funny happened. It had funny decor, I must say.

BENVENUTI A SUD: Pizza fritta

If you have been paying any attention, you'd notice that I have not ventured into what one might call a traditional Italian food. And, that is not to set the theme for the blog post but that is how I rolled if we ate outside breakfast would be pastry, lunch would be pizza or pasta and dinner is something that is not from pizza or pasta or pastry menu. Honoring the tradition to search non-staple Italian food for dinner we found a gem at Biella. 

CREPERIE BLE NOIR: Galettes with roasted nuts and egg on the side

Creperie blé noir, the restaurant that serves french galettes and crepe to Biella. The host was warm and approachable, I am sorry to say but many places made me feel uncomfortable, few even made me felt unwelcomed. But the host tried his best to connect, he spoke English, French man, if I understood well an architect by profession; also manages and serves as host at creperia out of pure passion and it reflected in the food. Show the photos to any Indian, they would be convinced that it is wheat dosa; and they are not wrong by a mile, the base of galettes and crepes is made from buckwheat. Crepe is sweet and we took an instant liking to it, but Galettes were not easy to like, especially with those strange topping, one has to develop the taste to like all kinds of galettes out there.

CREPERIE BLE NOIR: Crepe topped with Icecream

Like breakfast, we venture out a lot for dinner, but for different reasons. We didn't have time to cook or sometimes even eat so we limited breakfast to juice and bread. We have much time at the end of the day so we prepared our own Indian dishes to eat at night, and so less and less of eating outside for dinner. As described either we shop and get tired, or tour, or take resolve to eat outside for dinner it was never incidental. But lunch was a different story, we don't cook lunch, it is mostly leftover from the previous night, so when there is no leftover we'd have lunch outside. And naturally, I have many things to tell about lunch and so I'm going to write about separate posts on each dish, starting with pasta!

My Time in Italy

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