Corso Buenos Aires, Milan, June 2, 2010—
OSTERIE D'ITALIA TOOK US on a long long walk but it was worth it. Starting out from the Piazza 25 Maggio along the via Ascanio Sforza I immediately noted we were walking past number 5; our destination was number 75. "Hope this isn't one of those streets where each block has a single number," I said; and damned if it didn't turn out that way, or very nearly: we walked over a kilometer.In the end our osteria was tucked away out of sight in a dark courtyard between a couple of unremarkable buildings. (It's always a little amusing that the Italian word for these big apartment-office-hotel buildings is palazzo.)
But ah, the food was delicious. We skipped any preliminaries, having just observed Milan's famous Happy Hour elsewhere, and dove into primi and secondi: for me, tomato-tinted (and flavored) tagliatelli tossed with snippets of fresh green asparagus, just barely cooked al dente, and lamb chops with pesto on a bed of potatoes Anna.
My favorite cheese was on the menu, but when it arrived the Castelmagno was over the hill, neither soft and creamy-white nor streaked with blue but stagionata as if it were a crumbly Parmeggiano, a little ammoniated, and unacceptable. It went away and two other cheeses replaced it, a fine soft goat cheese and a beautiful Pecorino, accompanied by a dollop of chestnut honey.
I had dessert, too, a small chocolate-chestnut flavored cake with apples in it. It was good, but Lindsey's île flottante was better. Fabulous, in fact.
Collio, Ronco dei Tassi, Fosarin, 2008; Barolo, Marasco, 2003
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