Following are some short notes on hotels, restaurants and a few other topics from a ten day trip in late September and early October. We are a late middle-aged couple who travel independently in Europe at least once a year and have been in Italy many times. We generally stay in three star hotels. At restaurants, we usually share an antipasto, share a pasta, and share a dessert. The prices for the restaurants are with wine.

TORINO

The StarHotel Majestic ($180/ night):a very good business hotel, helpful, English-speaking staff, large rooms, excellent breakfast, and central location.

C’era Una Volta ($80): a very pleasant trattoria plus with attentive but not fussy service; a full range of nicely prepared Piedmontese specialties. Very good.

Toricelli ($90): “informal but classy” they say and it’s true. Excellent from start to finish. Some interesting variations (not too) on Piedmontese classics. Some of the best bread we’ve ever had. Best vitello tonnato ever. A little out of the center, but an interesting neighborhood. Excellent.

Savoia/Micamele ($80). Guides list it as Savoia, but name changed. Seemed to be in the middle of a complete change of staff. Good, food. Nothing special. Quirky, uncertain service. Okay.


GENOVA

City Hotel (Best Western) ($165/night). Generally okay. A four star hotel with three star and two star amenities. (Wouldn’t turn on air conditioning in very hot early October until faced with a near revolt by guests, supplement for eggs at breakfast, other stingy features.)

Da Rina ($85). A noisy fish house. Food was good – not great. The house wine was awful. The one English speaking waiter assumed that we were totally incapable of reading the menu and treated us like idiots.

Antica Osteria di Vico Palla ($65). Great. A very noisy osteria at the port filled with locals. A great range of specialties. Terrific food. Good wine. Nice casual service. A terrific dinner.

Gran Grotto ($140). A good – not great – dinner in a formal dining room. Correct service, but a bit fussy. Business – expense account place. Everything done well – but nothing done differently. Over-priced.


LANGHE

Hotel Ca d’Lupo – Montelupo Albese ($155/night for a suite in mid-week). A very different but overall excellent hotel. The hotel is brand new and in the ultra-contemporary style of its long-standing restaurant. Spectacular views over the valleys from terraces in each room. The English-speaking (Savio – hotel; Stephano – restaurant) were among the most gracious and helpful in all our experience in Italy. Some quirky aspects of this hotel, but still a find. Easy access to Alba, La Morra, Barolo and other towns.

Restaurant Ca d’Lupo. The restaurant at the hotel was one of the best overall in many trips to Italy. Staying at the hotel also gets you half-board at 20E per person without wine - almost embarrassingly inexpensive for the absolutely outstanding four course meal. And the wine list is amazing – with extraordinarily reasonable prices. Outstanding!

Osteria dell Arco ($80). An okay dinner. (Frozen peas and frozen diced carrots?) Not worthy of the hype in several guides and magazines.

Alba or Asti? Alba! We debated which town to base ourselves near. Ca d’Lupo in Montelupo Albese was convenient to Alba (15 mins) and the wine towns south and east. The drive to Asti takes about an hour and it is busy and ugly. Asti is much less pleasant than Alba.

Alitalia. Alitalia apparently flies and sells out Boeing 777s until around Oct. 1. However, they switched to 767s – leaving us and many other over-booked customers to NYC and Boston standing in line for hours while two harried agents, working with antiquated software, wrote paper tickets – while flights with empty seats were leaving. We’ve flown them before. If everything goes okay, they’re okay. If not – forget about it.

PaoloCast,

Thank you for this priceless information. As you probably well know, it is almost impossible to find ANY independent information about Genova, and Piemonte is so dense with choices (and hype) it hard to know what to do. I am very grateful.

Anything else you care to add will be gold for me.

I'm curious about whether the wine you drank in Genova and hated was Vermentino. That wine -- which is white and distinctly salty -- is an acquired taste and goes extremely well with some Ligurian specialties, but really clashes with many other dishes.

Great descriptions. Thanks for the information.

Thank you Paolo for your excellent report, but I disagree with your statement "The drive to Asti takes about an hour and it is busy and ugly. Asti is much less pleasant than Alba"

Its less then half an hour from Asti to Alba, maybe an hour from Montelupo, and IMHO I don't think Asti is ugly, especially the old medieval town. Both Alba and Asti are surrounded by aprartment buildings and some light industry as are all cities in the world (have you ever driven into Florence?) but I honestly find Asti the prettier city and much more attractive in buildngs and history then Alba.

Asti is IMO an excellent base for touring all of Piedmonts wine areas, not just Barolo, and is 1/2 hour to Turin making it also ideal base for visiting that city.

Alot of people seem to have a difficult time finding their way around Asti at first and think it is not attractive and then are really extremely surprised when they find the beautiful areas.

I like both cities but favor Asti as well.

The ride between Asti and ALba is not that attractive if you stick to the 456 and 231. There are other routes which are less unattractive.

The supplement for eggs at breakfast in Genoa is frightening!

Thanks for the tip about Vico Pala. Will try it the next time we drive down to Genoa.

Did you have a chance to head out to the outer areas of the Langhe and the Monferrato?

bookmarking

I hope this is not out of line, to post this on a thread on which it has no specific relevance (other than being in Langhe, or at least I think this falls in Langhe - - kinda southeast of Bra)...

...but I just found this "Castle Hotel and Restaurant'... and WOW...

http://www.hotelcastellodisinio.com/restaurant.html

Look all the way at the bottom of the page...

"White truffles can be added to appropriate dishes for €3 euro per gram, weighed at your table."

Must feel like eating with a cocaine dealer... with the little gram scale, right at the table!

LOL!!

Best wishes,

Rex