Europe Fall 2024 - Second Gastronomic Report from Italy

 Shocking as this may be to some readers, there has been a lot of eating taking place since our last gastronomic post. Maybe as many as three meals a day along with the occasional snack. they have covered the full gamut from formal sit down meals, to snacks grabbed on the run. Let's dive into the last week + of gastronomic activities. As with the prior week's post it has been a mixed bag.

Of course, this is not a 2B type gastronomic adventure. I don't spend months in advance researching all the places we could and should be eating. It is a case of whatever shows up is what we have. Call it more a stream consciousness, live-for-the-moment type of experience.

A Last Meal in Marina di Montremarciano

We were looking for pizza but it is virtually impossible to find other than at dinner time (when we tend to not like to go out as we don't like eating late). We had driven up and down the main local highway (the SS16 which is a national road - not an Autostrada/superhighway - that stretches 1001 kilometers, about 622 miles) from Padua in the Veneto in the north all the way down the Adriatic to Otranto in Pugilia in the south) and saw this kind of large farm house type of building that was a restaurant and had cars in front. 

Wife ordered what she thought was grilled fish...which it was...sort of...it was a mixed grill with a whole fish, a filet of some kind of fish, some shrimp and calamari on a skewer, etc.

I had some grilled lamb chops which were quite good

And we had grilled vegetables which had radicchio in addition to the usual zucchini and eggplant. BTW, the grilled eggplant, I don't know exactly how they do it, but it is uniformly really good.

On the Road to Ortona

This was another, 'we are starving-we're running out of time until the lunch period ends (and restaurants stop serving)-we're driving-we need to find a place AND it has to have parking' experiences. We see this place that looks open and sure enough across the street is a big parking lot. We cross the street. It doesn't look open. But a bit more looking and we find a door open to a bar. We walk in and there appears to be a bakery. we turn a corner and there is a large dining room. AND they are serving pizza! This was one of many experiences we've had where our lack of ability to speak the language and know what is common or not have hindered our eating.

Wife orders a pizza. Was okay, not great, not terrible

We shared a salad

I had some pasta with ragu. The term ragu refers usually to a sauce with meat. In the north of Italy, our experience is that meat is the dominate flavor. This on the other hand was very tomato forward.

It reminded me a lot of the kinds of pasta served at Italian-American restaurants.They also did not automatically give us any cheese, which surprised me as that has been our experience in other parts of Italy. I had to borrow some from the table next to ours as the place was so busy we couldn't get the waitstaff to even acknowledge us.

First Meal In Ortona

After arriving in Ortona and doing our first exploration, we'd stopped in the Tourist Information Office. The lovely woman made a number of recommendations of restaurants. These were clearly delineated between those that were seafood oriented and those that were meat oriented.

We decided to do three courses but split each one between us. We tried an antipasti that sounded very different - it was cheese, with flour, and tomato - at least that was what the translation app said. I'm thinking maybe like cheese, breaded and deep fried?

Nope

It was this spongy, dough thing, definitely with a cheese flavor, but a very different texture than we anticipated.

We went for the pasta with ragu again.

Once again, tomato was the dominate flavor (to my disappointment). It was at this moment that a bit of history came back to me. Abruzzo represents one of the major areas contributing to the Italian mass immigration to the U.S. in the early 20th century. Duh! No wonder this local flavor is reminding me so much of Italian-American.

We had a mixed grill of pork that was disappointingly tough. I only took a photo of some of the bacon on it.

Gelato

"What. You have a problem with us eating gelato?" Too bad. We eat a lot of it.

The Buffet

We were exploring the non-old town of Ortona and again were in a situation where we needed to eat and time was of the essence before things shut down. We found a hole in the wall place that had a counter with a variety of foods. You ordered. They served it up to you on a tray. You bussed your tray into a rack for cleaning up when done. It was very inexpensive and actually quite good.

I had a variety of vegetables - spinach, chard, mushrooms - and a risotto with bacon. Wife had a saute of chicken and a variety of vegetables.

Here was the kicker. It was all room temperature. We were almost done with our meal when we noticed a guy putting his food into a microwave! It's all about do you know how things are done.

Snack

Wife was really in the mood for something sweet. We stopped at a bar/coffee place and had some aperitif with a chocolate nut cake, and some donut like things filled with either orange pastry cream or whipped cream. They were really good.

Escape from the Rain

We were exploring some of the beach towns just outside of Ortano when the rain came down in torrents. I didn't want to keep driving. And it was the magic hour for lunch. The beach town was pretty much closed down. But there was a place advertising itself as Argentine-Italian that was open with a parking place right in front. As the rain showed no sign of stopping, we decided to make a big meal of it. 

Wife started with some empanadas 

I again opted for seafood pasta. It has been reliably tasty. This was one of the best I've had with way more seafood in it than most. That shrimp on the top was particularly good.

Wife went with a fish filet (I forgot the kind). She said it was okay, not great.

I had a swordfish steak. To my shock (because I really had not translated the whole dish explanation), it was covered in green peas and sauteed onions! Not bad, Just not what I expected.

The unexpected star was the vegetables (contorni) which you almost always order separately. On the menu, these were called 'Seasonal Vegetables'. I'm expecting the usual zucchini, eggplant grill. I did not expect this!

The other veg is potatoes and broccoli. We ate all of this. We also ordered fries which were totally unnecessary. But we ate all of them too.

A funny wine story

I wanted a glass of wine with our meal and asked if I could have a glass of the local wine, Montepulciano di Abruzzo. Our waitresses (who were very engaging) bring our four unopened bottles for me to choose from. I did. They open it. Poured me an ample amount which I enjoyed. By the time we were finished, the family that clearly owned the restaurant was sitting down to eat. I noticed the patriarch looking person, pouring out the remainder of the bottle for everyone to try. I guess they figured, no one else was going to ordering wine that day and they might as well finish it. 

A Change of Pace

There was a Cafe/Restaurant close to us that had non-Italian food. We were definitely up for a change. This is the case with us when we are traveling for months at a time. 

Wife had a pulled pork sandwich which she quite enjoyed.

I had a rice bowl with sort of Indian style chicken. It was nice for a change.

Kebab

On our trip to Vasto, we didn't want to eat big because we had reservations for dinner. We'd past a doner kebab place. when we'd arrived which was right by where we'd parked our car. It was open but there was no one in it. But we needed to eat so ordered one. The guy making this had around 10 different vegetables to add to the meat. I took them all. 

It was really, really good. And one was more than enough for the two of us along with some fries.

In Search of Hairy Crab

We'd read that one of the specialties of the area is pasta with pelosi crab (hairy crab) but we'd not seen it on any menu. Contacting the woman who owned our apartment, she searched out and found a place that would serve it to us. According to her, these crabs are endangered, or something like that and therefore, you have to ask someone to get them. We had a late dinner. The whole experience was fun. We had a waiter who'd been to the U.S. I made ended up ordering two antipasti, which was okay ultimately.

There was a plate with stuffed calamari, mussels and a fried fresh sardine

 Then a plate of scallops, clams and mussels stuffed

 

 THEN I got a whole bowl of steamed mussels (these were quite good) but didn't take a picture of them. Wife was eating a salad through all this.

Out comes the tools for eating our illicit crab pasta

Out comes our crab pasta...with precious little crab. The crab tasted good but we were a bit disappointed.

Our waiter suggested a local dessert

This might look like a cannoli but it is a local specialty. The dough is made with the must of grapes (the pulp left over from the wine making process). They are kind of chewy (in a good way) and the cream is very light and orange flavored. Our meal ended up with the owner comping us some after dinner drinks. So all in all, a nice time.

The Pleasure of Eating at Home

We have now moved to a place on the beach just south of Pescara. We did our food shopping and I had a craving for a plain ham sandwich.

With some wine, and the view...delightful.