FGF&WBW in the Veneto
Romantic Settings, No Horse Thanks
Verona, 8th-12th May
Verona is a beautiful city, all pink marble and clean. My one issue with the place is that the people seem to have quite a thing for eating horse (cavallo ). I know some people would happily eat horse, and others might question the fact that I refuse, given that I'm so carnivorous most of the time, but I grew up with horses, and so can't bear the idea of eating them - the one time I was served a horse steak, blue, in France, I didn't eat any, and still spent the night being violently ill. Anyway. Our restaurant hunt thus involved lots of recoiling from menus on my part, and lots of understanding on Sam's.
The place we ended up at did indeed have horse on the menu, but only a little, and the rest of the selection looked fantastic. Plus, the setting was beautiful, small wooden tables along the arch-covered walkway near the river. For a sufficiently romantic setting, I can just about forgive their horse-eating...
I am going to write about the actual dinner just as soon as I remember exactly what it was. At the moment I remember cheese and smoked goose. And my first ever grappa...
Please, no more pasta
Padova, 12th-19th May
Padova is home to the first apartment we stayed in, complete with our very own cooker, and thankfully a washing machine too. However, by the time we'd arrived, lugged ourselves from the train station, met our pleasantly crazy landlord and settled, we were in no mood for cooking. So, instead we went out. And found a chinese, or, in Italian, cinese, restaurant. Having had several weeks of pasta by now, this seemed like a really good idea.
The restaurant itself was very cool, with a glass floor under which there was a large fish pond, complete with lots of koi and a small shark, humming the Jaws theme to itself. Unfortunately, the food was of the totally average, non-memorable variety, but did at least provide a change from the consistency of Italian dinners. It also made us both desperately crave yum cha and/or pho soup on Victoria Street (in Melbourne). Looking forwards to noodley goodness in Singapore...
Padova cont: Markety Goodness
To redeem ourselves somewhat from the eating of non-italian food in Italy, we ate from the market for most of the rest of the week. And oh what a market it is!
Fred describes it as one of Italy's best markets, and I definitely have to agree. There are two piazzas, which both fill up with standard removable market stalls during the day, and people and dogs enjoying the passagiata and a spritz or two in the evening. Sandwiched between the piazzas is the large town hall, the ground level of which is actually a continuation of the market, with permanent stall/shops laid out in two corridors under grey stone vaulted ceilings. Quite apart from the beautiful setting and the amazing selection of food, the market feels right - it's got that real bustle that all markets should have.
We quickly found Fred's recommended pasta shop, and over the course of the week treated ourselves to all sorts of hand-made-that-day filled pastas, with tomato or pesto alla genovese, a rolled pork roast stuffed with prosciutto and cheese, then wrapped in prosciutto, little stuffed quails also wrapped in prosciutto, some other pork things that we never quite figured out, but were delicious lightly fried in butter, and nowhere near enough vegetables to constitute a healthy diet. We eventually figured out that the word ripieno means stuffed - we didn't know this when we bought the rolled pork roast, so it merrily exploding with cheese in the oven was quite a pleasant surprise.