Sunday, October 26, 2014

Torino, 5: km 0


Via Principe Tommaso, Torino, October 26, 2014—

WE FELL ON THIS PLACE per caso, at random, while on a walking tour of °our° neighborhood, San Salvario, having taken a day off from the Salone del Gusto. I was intrigued by the name, and by the promiise that the menu was authentically Piemontese.

Yes, it's the kind of place where three generations meet at a table, and one of them is nursing for lunch. Why not? Everything here is so serene, discreet…

I started with an amazing dish: Pan fritto con lardo d'Arnad e miele. This was nothing more than fried bread covered with lardo and drizzled with honey. Sweet, salt, fat, and bread: the complete diet. 

I have no idea how the bread was dealt with; perhaps it was a slightly sweet bread dough that was boiled in oil rather than baked — the pieces of bread were cylindrical, a little thicker than bmy two thumbs together, no more than three or four inches long. The lardo was particularly fine-textured; the honey not overpoweringly sweet, not heavily scented — a millefoglie honey, I would guess.


From there to Arrosto di fassone alla favoirta con puré della casa, a couple of slices of roast veal with the house purée. Again, no idea what was in the purée. Potatoes for sure, but something else: white beans? Rice, even, as Lindsey suggested? 

Don't know. It's nice to have some mysteries in life. The veal was a little dry but nicely textured and beautifully scented — with rosemary, of course.


Dessert: another bonet, my third this week — I work so hard to keep you informed, gentle reader! It occurs to me that bonet is the Russian salad of desserts, comfortable and old-fashioned as the wool overcoat I inherited from a great-uncle when I was fourteen and the family was poor. 

Also, it has a strict identity, though its attitude, its demeanor if you like, can vary. Yesterday's was definitely a pudding, reminding me, as bonet often does, of Royal Pudding, or was it My-T-Fine. Today's was more like a cake, and the requisite crushed hazelnut macaroons that usually serve as flour in bonet were instead scattered on top and on the plate; the cake itself was mostly hard chocolate custard. In any case, tasty and rewarding. We liked this place.

White and red house wines. Arneis, I'm pretty sure; Dolcetto, certainly.

• Dausin Locanda a Km 0, via Gaita 9 (angolo via Galliari), Torino; +39 011 66 93 933

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