tomarkot

Hi LowCountryIslander, just caught your TR and are enjoying it. Interesting that we were in the Dolomites around the same time that you were in Torino. Having read your previous great TRs of travels in Italy, it's a real compliment to Torino and the Piedmonte that you describe it as one of your fave areas. (We had to look up "tajarin"!)

We're in the throes of writing a TR of our mid-Aug./mid-Sept. trip, mostly to the Alps. We had similar experiences to your flight "vexations", only ours were at the end of our trip.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!

flygirl

Hi LCI!

Glad to see you starting your report.. nice to see you this weekend!

indyhiker

What a beautiful caffe! Is that typical to the area?

So glad you and your bags made it!

johnnyomalley

Looking forward to the rest of the report.

LowCountryIslander

I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it was about Torino that has me "head over heals" for the city (and I'm pretty sure my mom feels the same way). It may be due to hearing about the city as a child, and maybe I had very high expectations, but those expectations certainly were met and in many instances exceeded.

I have to say, there were by far a lot fewer tourists then in other Italian cities we've been too, but we kind of expected that. Torino was very easy to navigate with an excellent public transit system (loved their subway/metro!). The wealth of history was astounding to us and the museums were terrific. As I mentioned up-thread the people were wonderfully friendly, not that we feel Romans, or Sicilians, or Abruzzese aren't friendly, they are, but we just seemed to really connect with people in Torino and Piemonte in general.

tomarkot...I'll have to look up your trip report!

flygirl...yes, great seeing you too!

indyhiker...yes, there are several very famous cafes in Torino along the lines of the one I posted above. They've been operating for hundreds of years in some cases. I understand there is some rivalry between Torino and Milano about were the aperitivo started, each city claims to be the originator. But vermouth was invented in Torino, along with the guanduja, which is the original chocolate spread that is now made famous by Nutella.

But I am getting ahead of myself here...all will be forthcoming in the trip report.

Of course, the food and wine, a major reason why we travel (and we get a lot of pleasure experiencing those two things) was consistently excellent (for the most part, only one disappointment).

LowCountryIslander

Monday, September 1, 2014

First on the agenda today was a visit to the Torino tourist office in Piazza Castello, which is conveniently located around the corner from our hotel. When researching this trip I came across information about the Torino + Piemonte Card and I’ve got to say this is probably the best tourist card deal in any city I’ve ever visited. We bought the 3 day gold card which included a 3 day transit card for travel on all buses, trams and metro. The card was €38 and for that you get free admission into almost every museum in Torino. The brochure says free admission into 200 museums, monuments, exhibitions, fortresses, castles and Royal Residences in Torino and Piemonte. We definitely got our monies worth out of it, especially when we went out to La Venaria Reale, a Royal Palace, 15km outside Torino, but more on that later. The card also gives discounts to the Hop-on/Hop-off buses and a tourist boat, which we didn’t use.

My plan was since we purchased the cards on Monday and many of the museums were closed we would buy the cards, but not activate them until Tuesday. This worked out perfectly because Friday we had plans to go to Milano for the day. So we would have the three days in the middle of week to use the card. I was happily surprised with the woman at the tourist office when we purchased the cards, she made sure I knew many of the museums were closed on Mondays and that it would be better to activate the card on Tuesday when most places were open.

With our tourists cards tucked away in our bags we set off to visit the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist to see the replica of the Shroud of Turin. There were several other people there and there was a video loop in what had to be 10 languages set up next to the shroud display. When the docent saw mom and I sitting there waiting to watch the video in English, she came over and asked what language we wanted and advanced the cycle to the English version, just another Torinese who was being very kind to us.

Our next stop after the cathedral was the Porta Palazzo Market. The market is said to be the largest covered market in Europe and I believe it, although Monday probably wasn’t the best day to visit because some of the food stalls (the seafood vendors for instance) were closed up. This makes sense, because I’m assuming they are most busy on weekends. But we did get to meander through the flower, fruit and vegetable stalls which is always fun for us.

It was getting to be early afternoon and we decided to set out on a mission to find Cafe Bicerin where we could sit and have the cafe’s namesake drink the Bicerin. This is a coffee and chocolate and whipped cream beverage that after one sip I thought I heard angels singing, it was the perfect combination of chocolaty goodness with strong coffee. Of course, with the sun splitting the sidewalk and the temperature in the 80’s, maybe the weather wasn’t conducive to this warm beverage, but we enjoyed it all the same. Here’s a link to the Café Bicerin website: http://www.bicerin.it/eng/

While sitting outside at Café Bicerin we noticed the church across the piazza. It was the Santuario della Consolata (you can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santuario_della_Consolata ). Once we were finished with our caffeinated beverages we ambled over to the church to have a peek inside. Oh My Goodness! The interior just took our breath away, it was very ornate, which you would never guess from the outside, but we find that to be the norm with many of the churches in Italy. Along with the ground floor alter there was a stunning underground chapel. We thought the elliptical shape of the interior was very interesting.

Next up: Our afternoon buying stamps, more of the Shroud of Turin and quite possibly the best meal we've ever had anywhere!

tarquin

Low country, I went to all Bicerin in Oct too. I loved how tiny (and famous) it is.

kleeblatt

LCI: Have you seen my short trip report on Torino? I went at the beginning of November and loved it. It's so walkable, manageable and nice on the eye. The food is fantastic and the cafes very inviting. We loved the different markets and just really enjoyed the city.

jmct714

following along and enjoying your report as usual

annhig

Hi LCI - nice report! Turin is on my list too.

i had to look up tajarin - the recipe i saw talked about using 40 egg yolks per kilo of flour - I should think that you'd be waddling around after that.

keep it coming.

jmct714

this might be of interest

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/tr...rugal-way.html

LowCountryIslander

tarquin...Café Bicerin is a tiny jewel box!

kleeblatt...just took a look at your Torino trip report and you are spot on about the city, your words were exactly how I feel about the city too!

jmct714...thanks for following along and that NYT article is great! Along with Stu's photos it makes me want to plan a longer visit to Alba!

annhig....although we could have easily eaten tajarin every night, there were so many other delicious things we wanted to try that we restrained ourselves!

ekscrunchy

Loving this report!!

tower

Hi EK..long time no hear from you.
You started this Piemonte craze with that extensive report of yours a few years ago. You also gave us the Villa Favorita which is a winner.

Hope all is well with you two..I'm now living in a galaxy far away..in an artsy town of 8,000 called Ojai (Ca.) and loving it. Full of artists, writers, musicians, and the usual Hollywood crowd! My family is all around me and that is so wonderful....they don't let me feel lonely.
stu

LowCountryIslander

ekscrunchy...thanks, you have always been one of my travel/food/wine inspiration. Glad you are enjoying this report.

Now for the reminder of Monday, Sept. 1st:

Next on our agenda was a visit to the Museum of the Shroud. But first we wanted to get stamps. Yes, even in this age of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram mom and I still send a few postcards back home. We had about an hour to “kill” waiting for the museum to open at 3pm and as luck would have it there was a post office just down the block from the museum.

With my previous experience in Italian post offices, I figured it may well take us an hour to buy stamps! I continue to try and understand the ticket-taking system in effect in Italy’s post offices and I think I’ve got it down now, but part of my difficulty is I can never remember which letter on the ticket machine is for the stamps only window and not being fluent in Italian I almost always have to “puzzle-things-out”. So I usually stand around for a few minutes to watch how this finely orchestrated process works. Inevitably I still get it wrong on the first try, but eventually I manage to get the correctly coded ticket number for the stamp window. When I’ve tried asking for help in the past I usually got an “eye-roll”, so sometimes I feel it’s better to observe before proceeding!

Once we have our ticket we wait for our number to be called. I’ve got to say, we have purchased plenty of stamps in Italy at post offices and we have never been treated so kindly in all of our experiences. We stepped up to the counter when our number was displayed on the screen and the woman helping us was a pleasure. I managed to ask for the number of stamps we needed for postcards to the U.S. and she acknowledged she understood what I had requested. Then there was a “conference” between her and another woman and lots of smiles and nodding of heads at me and mom. More confirmations the stamps were for the “Stati Uniti”…Si, Si, Si. Then she proceeded to lovingly tear off the number of stamps we needed. More conversation with her co-worker and then scanning the barcodes for the stamps into the computer to come up with the amount we owed.

With our stamps now tucked into our bags next to our tourist cards we were ready for the Museo della Sindone, known in English as the Museum of the Shroud. (Here is the museum website: http://www.sindone.it/#band_en&LL=en ). Since we didn’t want to activate our tourist cards just yet, I paid the €6 entry fee and mom scored the senior citizen discount, I think it was €4.

Although small, this museum was very interesting if you are into the story of the shroud, which we were. The museum is operated by the confraternity of the shroud and the men and women working the day we visited were very proud of the museum they are entrusted with operating. We were given a handset which was queued up for the English language audio and ushered into a large room with a video screen. The video of the shroud was fascinating and after the video was finished we were directed down to the basement level to a large room set up with displays of the history of the shroud. We took our time looking at each display and after about one hour we had made our way completely around the room.

We went up to the ground level to return our handsets and thought we were done, when the nice woman working asked us if we had seen the adjacent chapel? Oh, my, how did we miss that! She walked us back to the entry for the chapel happily chatting away about the history of the building. Of course, our Italian isn’t the best but we could understand every 8th word or so. The chapel was lovely and I’m glad we were re-directed to go see it. During our visit there were only 4 of us in the museum.

By the time we exited the museum it was getting close to our favorite hour of the day…Aperitivo! I had a recommendation from a wine-loving friend in Rome of an enotecca called Banco, so mom and I strolled over and took a seat at one of the tables outside.

Banco Vini e Alimenti (Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/bancoviniealimenti ) is the “little sister” of Ristorante Consorzio, where we would be having dinner. But just because it’s an “off-shoot” doesn’t mean it’s inferior. Quite the contrary, the wine list (more like an encyclopedia) is excellent with a depth of wines from Italy and also France and Germany. The by the glass list is limited, but the choices are excellent. I chose to have a local Gavi wine and mom had a Riesling. We were both very happy and would make repeat visits to this spot over the week.

Since we are big-time aperitivo lovers after our glasses at Banco we decided to pop over to Piazza San Carlo again and try out another café. This time it was Neuv Caval’d Brons (website here: http://www.cavallodibronzo.it/en/ ) We settled into a table outside on the piazza and enjoyed glasses of the local Piemonte Arneis wine. There is a wide spectrum of Arneis wines, and we tasted many ranging from average to exceptionally delicious. The glasses at this café were average, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying the little snacks brought to our table. You could say our motto is any wine tastes good with a little food…LOL!

As the sun started to set we knew it was time to walk over to Ristorante Consorzio for our 8:30pm dinner reservation. The restaurant website is here: http://www.ristoranteconsorzio.it/home_en.html . From the moment we walked in I knew this was our kind of place. Very rustic atmosphere, wooden tables covered with red and white striped tablecloths and on a Monday night every table was full. Finding this restaurant was not pure luck, as I had read about it from Rome blogger Elizabeth Minchilli and since its location was within walking distance to our hotel the choice to dine here was simple for us to make.

We were greeted warmly when we entered. The staff was very accommodating in helping us decipher the menu, although we did manage to understand much of it without help. If nothing else, we do knew our Italian food words! Mom and I decided to both have the degustation menu and we let the owner select a wine to go with our meal. There was an amuse bouche of rabbit in a savory marinade and of course, being Piemonte, there were grissini on the table, this region’s version of breadsticks. The first course was carne cruda, now we’ve had steak tartar before, but it never came close to this. Yes, it’s raw meat, but it is so delicious we hardly realized we were eating raw meat, it simply melted in the mouth. The next course was an egg croccante (it was fried goodness on the outside and creamy, eggy goodness on the inside) with spinach and cheddar cheese sauce and pancetta. Mom proclaimed this her favorite course. The third course was agnolotto gobo, which was a local ravioli stuffed with pork, rabbit and beef. The pasta was cooked to perfection and the meat stuffing was delectable. The last course was brasato di fassone with seasonal vegetables. This was local beef cooked to perfection with a sauce that had so much flavor I wished I had more vegetables to sop it up with. With 2 espresso and 2 glasses of the dessert wine, passito we could not have been more satisfied with this meal. Everything about it was top-notch. The flavors, the portions, the wine, the service. I will heartily recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Torino. The cost of the meal was €110. We liked it so much we went back later in the week and our hotel concierge really came through for us with getting a reservation for us there on a Friday night with very little notice. As a side note, just a few weeks ago, I noticed this restaurant has received 3 Gamberro Rosso, which is a high accolade in the Italian restaurant world.

sandralist

Not that it makes any difference to the person eating the meal if they find it delicious, but dedicated foodies might want to know that what is generally regarded as the top prize from the food editors of the restaurant guide Gambero Rosso is dealt out in forks, not red crustaceans (gamberi rossi).

The food editors give out 2 types of prizes to distinguish 2 different classes of eateries in Italy, and judge them by different standards and expectations. Forks go to restaurants that achieve what the editors deem to be artistry in cooking and presentation Red shrimps go (more or less broadly speaking) to those delivering superior execution of traditional plates. Consorzio won 3 gamberi rossi to indicate it is "best in its class" for traditional regional cooking. There are only two restaurants in all of Italy that have been awarded 3 forks -- Osteria Fracescana in Modena and Casa Vissani in Baschi in Terni (Umbria).

Most people would say that 3 forks is the highest accolade an Italian chef can receive. However, many diners actually do not like the "3 fork" restaurants, just as many diners do not enjoy 3 star Michelin restaurants. Still, rankings from the viewpoint of the restaurant world put forks higher than shrimps.

On an even more minor note, you need to add one more "b" to that angolotto gobbo. A "gobbo" is a "hunchback" in Italian, as in the "il gobbo di Notre Dame."

Just thought you might like that added info.

sandralist

Wait- I need to correct my own post. I should have said there are 24 restaurants in all of Italy holding 3 forks from Gambero Rosso. (I was thinking of something else!) But that list doesn't include Consorzio -- which does have 3 gamberi in the "best trattorie" class.

LowCountryIslander

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Originally we planned to stay in Torino this day and see some of the museums, but the weather was beautiful so we decided to make our visit to La Venaria Reale (website here: http://www.lavenaria.it/web/ ). This complex is a former royal palace of the Savoy kingdom. It is located approximately 15km from the center of Torino and easily reachable by public transport. It’s included in the Torino + Piemonte card and with a regular admission price of €25 having the card really paid off and because the tourist card also included a 3 day transportation ticket the usual €6 roundtrip bus ticket was also covered. Depending on traffic it takes about 50 minutes to get from the center of Torino to the gates of the palace complex.

La Veneria Reale is sometimes referred to as the Versailles of Italy and we thought it was truly a spectacular site. It was built in the mid-17th century as a place for royalty to hunt. It fell into disrepair over many years and in the 1990’s became a large restoration project. In 1997 it was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Not only is the palace interesting to walk through but the gardens surround the complex are lovely and the backdrop of the mountains on the clear, cloudless day we were there made it all seem simply breathtaking. I should note that although there were other people visiting the palace and grounds it felt like mom and I were the only ones there. Several times we found ourselves to be the only two people meandering through the labyrinth of rooms, or crunching our footstep over the gravel pathways in the gardens. Some of the space is used for temporary exhibits and when we visited, there was an exhibit of opera and theater costumes by Italian designers, which was entertaining to see.

At around 4pm we caught the bus back to Torino and were ready to enjoy our aperitivo. We stopped back in at Banco for a glass of wine and then made our way around the corner to catch a bus to the neighborhood where we would be having dinner, just a 15 bus ride away.

We were too early for our 8:30pm reservation but I had the name of another enotecca in this neighborhood I wanted to try and it was strategically located right across the street from the bus stop we got off at. I love Google maps when reaching and planning trips, to scope out what’s in areas I know we’ll be visiting and that’s how I found Enotecca Rossorubino. It’s a well-stocked wine shop in front and a nice little wine bar with a few tables in the back.

As we walked in, I could see the rear of the space was crowded, but there were a few empty table so we sat down and let the nice server recommend a local white wine for us. We were pleasantly surprised with the wine, which I now realize I neglected to write down the name of, but I know it was not an Arneis, or a Gavi, but the server did say it was a local grape. When she first put the glasses down I was a bit hesitant because the color seemed dark to me, and in the past I’ve been wary of dark golden colored wines, but one sip and both mom and I were in heaven, it was delicious and so were the wine crackers they served with it.

When our glasses were empty we knew it was time to walk to dinner at Scannabue (website here: http://www.scannabue.it/ ) Not knowing anything about this area, I would have to say it felt like an “It” neighborhood. The street we walked down to get from the enotecca to the restaurant was full of crowded restaurants with customers (mostly the young-ish looking set) spilling out the doors and onton adjacent patios and sidewalks.

Scannabue was another recommendation from a friend and I’m glad we followed her advice. It was a rather warm night and we sat outside under the restaurant awning. I’m glad we did, because as pleasant as the interior looked, even with the floor to ceiling doors open it seemed like the diners sitting inside were pretty steamy.

We took a look at the menu and it offered the typical Piemontese cuisine, which we were more than happy to see. After selecting what to eat we decided to have a bottle of local Arneis white wine, which quickly became a new favorite for us.

For a starter I had the vitello tonnato, which is veal with a tuna sauce, I’ve had this before but never like this, I found it to be delicious. I will say it was the best vitello tonnato I had in a restaurant on this trip, we also got to experience several homemade versions during our time on the wine tour and they were outstanding. Mom selected the tart tatin with onion and gorgonzola which was tasty, but even she said the vitello tonnato was the “winner” of that round. For my main dish I had gnocchi with a local cheese sauce, this gnocchi was pillow light, unlike some versions I’ve had which can be like little lead balls. Mom had the amberjack fish with hummus and caponata for her main dish. We ended the meal with 2 espresso and 2 glasses of the dessert wine, passito. With a bottle of water the total cost of the meal was €80. This was a great way to end a lovely day.

HappyTrvlr

I really liked every version of vitello tonnato I had in Piemonte, delicious. Enjoying your report.

LowCountryIslander

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

It was another great weather day, in fact, during this entire trip we only had rain twice and each time it was at night, when we were tucked away fast asleep. Maybe this contributed to why we loved Torino and the Piemonte region so much. We were told by many people we encountered the summer was a very wet one in Piemonte and by early September the nice weather arrived, just when we did!

We spent today visiting several museums and the first was the National Museum of Cinema located inside the Mole Antonelliana. The website is here: http://www.museocinema.it/index.php?l=en . This building has an interesting history and has an unusual square dome with a thin spire. It’s Torino’s landmark building (it was emblazoned on tee shirts all over the city). We decided to take the elevator to the top of the building to see the panoramic view before going through the cinema museum. The elevator whisked us right up through the interior center of the building which was a fun experience. Once at the top and outside the views over Torino and to the Dolomite mountains were gorgeous.

When we had our fill of the beautiful view we took the elevator back down and took a spin around the cinema museum. There were several interactive exhibits on the history of film, which were amusing to play around with, it made us feel like kids again.

It wasn’t a far walk from the cinema museum to the Palazzo Reale where we spent some time walking through the rooms and soaking in the history of the House of Savoy royalty. The museum website is here: http://www.ilpalazzorealeditorino.it/ . More on the Palazzo Reale can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Turin

We were starting to hit morning “museum overload” so we took a walk over to a café recommended by a friend. This particular café, called Il Gusto Giusto, is known for their Sicilian specialties. Although we didn’t indulge in cannoli or cassata (which they had), we tried cremolata, which we never had before. The consistency was creamy yet it wasn’t quite ice cream, but it sure did taste good. We both had a scoop of pistachio and a scoop of chocolate. Both flavors were delicious and we sat outside enjoying the sunshine.

After our short break we walked over to Piazza Castello and into the Palazzo Madama, another royal palace located in the center of Torino. The museum website is here: http://www.palazzomadamatorino.it/?& . If there were 10 other people in this museum, there were a lot, mom and I had the place practically to ourselves. There were beautiful majolica pottery pieces, lots of china and silverware and even a special exhibit on women's hats from 1930's - 1960's. We spent a few hours looking at the displays and soon the aperitivo hour was approaching. We found a nice little café were mom could have a glass of wine and I could have an Aperol spritz. In this city of lovely cafes, it’s not hard to do!

We had a dinner reservation at L'Acino, which was conveniently located just down the street from where we had our aperitivo. As many of the restaurants we’ve dined in on the trip, L’Acino has a small dining room, maybe 10 or 12 tables, and they also have seating outside, which was about another 8 tables. The food here was very much home-style, and it was delicious. In fact we liked it so much, upon leaving we made a reservation for our last night back in Torino before flying home.

Both mom and I had the same dishes at this meal, which is unusual for us, because we each like to order something different and have a taste of the other dish, but our taste buds were really in sync and we went with what we each wanted. We started with porcini flan, which was creamy and full of mushroom flavor. We then split an order of Tarjarin pasta in a red sauce. I’m glad we did this (at the suggestion of the owner/server) because it would have been too much with the flan and then our main course. The main course was beef cheeks with roasted potatoes. The beef was so tender we didn’t even need a knife to cut it. We thought the meal was excellent and had a Barbera d'Alba wine to go with it all. We finished with espresso and limoncello, which we know is not Piemontese, but we like it and it made for a nice finale. The total cost was €84. The owner, who served us was just terrific and very kind to us.