Blog from Italy’s Honorable Mention - Platial + Frappr 2007 awards
I got an unexpected email yesterday from Platial + Frappr yesterday telling me that the Platial Map on this here blog had been awarded an honorable mention in the Platial + Frappr 2007 awards Local Guides section. I did not even know I had been nominated!
To show off this award, I’ve added a new graphic down in the right hand column, which is like this one:
I’m quite chuffed about this, and, apparently, I will be receiving my very own T-shirt and a special surprise gift in the post. Good stuff!
Blog from Italy - the Honourable Mention winning blog!
Celanto a settembre, Milan - a great little restaurant
We went out this evening with some friends, and they took us to an interesting restaurant which, it has to be said, is a little out on a limb. This is something of a shame because the place has a nice relaxed atmosphere, and more importantly, great food and wine. Our friends had already been there a couple of times, and on both previous occasions, the restaurant had been virtually empty. What a great shame.
This restaurant, which is modern in style and attractively decorated in white, as you will see from the photos on the site, is called ‘Celanto a settembre‘ and is located about 10 minutes by car from Piazza Loretto in Via Teodosio, 102, Milan. There is a map here - click on ‘Dove Siamo’. For some reason, I cannot see the photos when I access the site via Firefox, whereas by using IE7, I can see them in all their glory…
Although the food served in the Celanto a settembre is based on Italian cuisine, it is not traditional Italian cooking, but it is this touch of originality which made it so fascinating for me, plus the fact that the food was excellent, and the standard of presentation of the dishes being very high indeed. The service was good too, but seeing as we were almost the only people in the place, this was to be expected.
Now to the good part. After starting off with a couple of glasses of a very nice Portuguese white, I ordered a ‘Gelato di parmigiano con pere e uva’, which was parmesan ice cream (really!) with pear and grapes, and it was very good. My other half, Cristina, and friend, Sergio, had ‘Timballo di spada con crema di melanzane’ - a sort of mini-flan made with swordfish and served with cream of aubergine, again very tasty. Giorgia, our other friend, opted for the ‘Timballo di carciofi pecorino e bottarga’, which again was a type of flan, only this time with artichoke, pecorino cheese, and ‘bottarga’, which was thin slices of what I think is smoked tuna fish. It too tasted as good as it looked.
The starter was followed by a first course of Spaghetti with prawns, squid, and clams, served with dwarf tomatoes and spinach shoots, which Giorgia went for. My other half ordered Gnocchi stuffed with baccala, again with dwarf tomatoes and clams. The presentation was lovely and the taste did not disappoint either.
The guys, Sergio and myself, instead chose a main course of the intriguing squid stuffed with sea bass and artichoke, all on a bed of stir fried artichoke and served with scampi. Wonderful. The first and main courses where served together, so no waiting around while someone finishes the first course before the main course is served.
For pudding my other half went for the ‘Crema Catalana’, which is an oven cooked cream dish, whereas Giorgia got the hot chocolate tart which came with a pineapple and rosemary sauce. Instead I chose a more traditional chocolate mousse with strawberry sauce. The desserts where superb too.
Wine? Oddly enough we went for a red with all the fish, and the owner recommended a bottle of wine from the Alto Adige (Trento) area, and it was an excellent, quite light, red, a 2002 Sass Roà, Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact one of the other attractions of this restaurant is the very extensive selection of wines on offer. Over 400 of them in fact!
The price of all this goodness? Just over 200 Euros (about £30 a head) for the four of us, however we did have a bottle and a half of wine and the red we went for was not the cheapest the house had to offer.
The Celanto a settembre is open at lunchtimes and stays open until midnight during the week, although it is closed on Saturday lunchtimes and all day Sunday. They do, however, accept orders for private parties on Saturday lunchtimes and on Sundays at lunch and dinner time, if requested. I don’t know if English or other languages are spoken, but I’m going to ask them for some photos, so I’ll update this post when I find out.
Would I recommend this place? 100% yes. The food is fabulous and the menu is highly original. Everything is prepared by the owner, Carlo. It’s just a slight shame it is a little off the beaten track, although a tram does pass right in front of it. But, I think it is well worth, as is often the case, moving off the beaten track to check it out.
Good food, good wine and good company, which all added up to a lovely evening. What more can you ask?
At last, Top Gear in Italy
Some time ago, I wrote a little post with some suggestions for improving the TV here, one of those suggestions included adding a decent motoring programme, like Top Gear which I got back in the UK.
Well, for a couple of months now I’ve been buying the Italian version of the Top Gear magazine, and it is not at all bad. Then I noticed a few ads, including one whole bus which was covered in an ad for the Top Gear motoring programme.
Finally, car mad Italy gets a good programme about cars, motorbikes and all things motoring, I thought. About time too, even if the programme is part of the Top Gear franchise, and therefore, not Italian in origin.
However, there is a downside. Isn’t there always? The downside is that to see Top Gear you need to have a subscription to Sky, which, incidentally, we almost had, but for some mysterious reason (possibly because I was always a bit short with the Sky telesales people - I hate telesales), our Sky subscription was never activated, even if we now have Cartoon Network and CNN.
What the heck, I can at least read about exotic and un-environmentally friendly cars in the colourful Top Gear magazine. And Italians finally get a magazine that is a) not as dull as ditch-water and b) is not a thinly disguised car manufacturers brochure.
Pasticceria Scarpato - Nice cakes, shame about the website
I won’t say how I found out about the site of Italian biscuit and cake maker, Scarpato, but I decided to check it out. Well, I do like Italian food and one of the aims of this blog is to do a little promotion of all things Italian.
So, off I went to have a mosey around.
What I found was a very interesting selection of Italian cakes and pastries, plus a few other goodies, as you can see in this .pdf version of their 2007 Christmas catalogue. Check out the fun turkey and piggy cakes on pages 16 and 18. Very original. However, although these temptations may well tempt you, there is nowhere on Scarpato’s clean looking site that I could find that actually tells you where you can lay your hands on these scrummy looking delights. Neither within Italy or any other countries.
Not knowing where you can find these things is one thing which lets Scarpato’s otherwise nice little site down, the other thing is that the site is only half in English, and even though you may click on the little US/UK flag, this does not guarantee that everything you will see is in English. Maybe I could rustle up a little translation work from them!
What a great shame - lots of tempting treats all locked behind a virtual window. Another wee problem is that many of the cakes are shown on the main site in their decorative wrappings, but you cannot see what the actual cake looks like.
Yes, I know you could try to contact this company via email or phone, but it would save their and yours if they invested a little more effort in their website. I hope they do.
I might ring the Verona based Scarpato up and gently bend their ears over these little oversights.
PS Please let me know if you have heard of this company. I think I have seen their stuff on sale in the shops here, but I don’t think the Scarpato brand has been etched into my brain in the same way as Barilla, for example.
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