White truffles, tear inducing sous vide veal and a mozzarella with an identity crisis

Some incredible food I had in Torino.

Last December I travelled to Torino to spend time with my family at Christmas. As I have mentioned before, my family comes from Sicily on both sides, but like many others, they migrated north in the 70’s in search of a better life and working conditions. So as a child I spent most of my time in Torino, an underrated beautiful city that is very different from Sicily, but that is also know for its culinary delights. This time around I had two friends visiting for a few days, so I had to put on the food tour-guide hat and bring them to some of my favorite restaurants in the city.

We started with an institution, ristorante Consorzio.
This very small place is more like a bistro that offers a quirky take on traditional Piedmontese cuisine. The staff is young and very friendly, and as we entered the establishment, we were greeted with the amazing news that they had a white truffle in the house!
This was exciting news indeed, as mid December is usually very late for white truffle season. I am going to make a post about these truffles soon, but all you need to know for now is that white truffles are the rarest, most expensive truffles and they mostly come from the Langhe region (an hour south of Torino). Unlike black truffles, the white ones should not be cooked or used in culinary preparations, and are best enjoyed freshly shaved over some simple traditional dishes. In most restaurants they will bring you the plate you ordered, and then they will come with the truffle and a scale. They weigh the truffle “before”, then they start shaving until you say stop, then they weigh it again “after”, and they charge you by the gram. Just to give you an idea, the current price of white truffle in Piedmont is about 4000 euro per Kg, which means that 4 grams (0.1oz) of shaved truffle is about 40 euro surplus on the cost of your dish (!)…but once in a while, you gotta do it, it’s worth it!

So I decided to go all in, and ordered knife cut raw veal (Battuta di Fassona) with a little bit of truffle on it (pics 1-2). This is super traditional and the Fassona breed is known for having very lean very meat, which is lightly dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper (unlike the heavily dressed french tartare). It was sublime!
I was trying to stay away from carbs and dairy (because of a diet I was on), so I also ordered a brasato, which is braised beef in Nebbiolo wine (pic 3). This super traditional Piedmontese meat is cooked for hours and it melts in your mouth, the wine glaze is also incredibly delicious.
One of my friends ordered tajarin (these are traditional very thin yolk-only tagliatelle) served with a heart ragù (pic 4). This restaurant is well know for its offal recipes and this one was truly incredible, the ragù was actually quite light and the buttery sauce was delicious (I only had a bite to try). Amazing meal overall and everyone was super happy!

One of the following days we visited what is currently my favourite traditional restaurant in Torino, Caffè Scannabue. This place is just incredible…I say traditional because they offer all the Piedmontese classics , but they also have a selection of other southern and sea inspired dishes. I have eaten traditional Piemontese food all my life, so usually I stay away from it, but in this place they cook it with an “extra gear”. It’s really the only place where I am happy to order classics such as Vitello Tonnato (pic.1). This quite extravagant dish is made of thinly sliced veal (here cooked sous vide to tear inducing pink juicy perfection) and served with a sauce made with hard boiled eggs (although these days many people use mayonnaise as a base), tuna, anchovies and capers. It might sound a bit weird, but if you have had it, you will know it’s incredibly delicious and this one here was particularly amazing!
I also ordered a more southern looking dish, a squid ink home made pasta served with tender squids, cherry tomatoes, capers, olives and fried breadcrumbs (pic.2). It was as good and umami packed as it looks.
If you have only one place to visit in Torino go to Scannabue, it’s also very reasonably priced, a whole 5 course traditional tasting menu comes at 37.50 euro p.p.

For the next day I had picked a new restaurant that I had never tried, but that received a “bib gourmand” distinction in the Michelin guide, Magazzino 52.
This is a quite quirky place that looks more like a fancy enoteca (wineshop) with some tables, and in fact it’s renowned for its wine list. It has a very small menu, and that day we weren’t very hungry, so we only had one dish each. I opted for these tagliolini (or tajarin, see above), in a fresh artichoke sauce, finished with a generous amount of freshly shaved mullet bottarga. The light wasn’t great so I apologise for the pic, but needless to say, it was delicious, with the bitterness of the artichoke strangely enhancing the pungentness of the bottarga. I will definitely come back here when I am a bit more hungry as I am curios to try some of their other dishes.

My sister invited me and my friends to go out for dinner at a new-ish place called ristorante Uliveto. She had read about in the Turin food guide I cento di Torino (a yearly publication about the 100 best food places in town).
The place advertises itself as a fusion Calabrese - Piedmontese cuisine, quite opposites at the spectrum of north-south, so I was intrigued.
We were not very hungry, so we opted for sharing starters and bites and most of the food we ate you can see in the picture below.
We had the Gia’ndujotta (that red thing on the left), which is a clever pun on the spicy calabrese soft sausage called ‘nduja, served in the shape of a gianduiotto (the celebrated chocolate from Torino). It was pretty much straight ahead ‘nduja, spicy spreadable chilli meat basically, tasty but not something I can eat a lot of. The best bites were those aubergine polpette (meatballs…I wish english had a word for these that doesn’t include the word meat!) and the classic grilled polenta with baccala mantecato (whipped salted cod, which usually comes from Venice). I had high hopes for the Figliata, which is that giant mozzarella you see in the middle. The idea is that this enormous mozzarella casing is filled with small mozzarelline (the kids, figli in italian) and I had seen videos online of the dramatic cutting into one of these . It is sold as a buffalo milk mozzarella, so I was expecting the firm tanginess that I love so much. I also have been off dairy for a couple of months, so I just wanted to have a little taste of deliciousness, but the result was quite different. As soon as I put a little morcel into my mouth I tasted only one thing…Burrata. I was a bit surprised and did a little research on the spot, only to find out that this type of mozzarella is basically filled with cream, so to all effects it’s a Burrata. I will save you my Burrata rant for another day…
Sad and confused I let that go and moved onto that plate of prosciutto crudo which was delicious. Overall an enjoyable meal.

I had promised my two friends one of the best Italian breakfasts of their lives, so I brought them to my favourite ever spot Caffe San Carlo.
I have talked about this historical cafe, which is located in one of Torino’s main squares, many a time. I promised them the best pastries and they didn’t disappoint. The pain au chocolat is truly a work of art, even aesthetically. The pastry is somewhere in between the french style and the Italian cornetto style, keeping the best of both worlds, it’s crunchy and flaky on the outside but also soft and pillowy on the inside. The croissant alla crema (the custardy filled croissant) is also incredible, with a wafer thin striped light glaze for added crunch, and a huge amount of delicious vanilla crema gialla. Coffee is also really good here, and they even serve some specialty espresso (rare enough in Italy). If you are in Torino, do yourself a favour and visit this beautiful spot for breakfast, but avoid peak times as the lines get long…also remember, you are always gonna be able to eat and drink al banco (standing at the counter) without doing the line.

I find it impossible to visit Italy and not eat pizza. I am kind of obsessed with it and if it was up to me (with no consequences) I could eat it everyday.
This time around I ate 3 pizze in 2 weeks, which is pretty meek for me…I was supposed to be on a diet, lol.
I met a friend for lunch at Da Zero, a pizzeria I had never tried before. The people behind Da Zero have restaurants in 4 major cities in Italy and they originally come from Cilento (and area south of Naples towards Calabria). The pizza is therefore in the general direction of Neapolitan style (pic 1), ie a light soft dough with a very pronounced fluffy and airy cornicione. The pizza I chose was one of their “Cilento” specials and it was called Forestella (pic 1). This beautiful pizza came with datterino yellow tomato passata, mozzarella, spicy sausage, grated cacioricotta (like sicilian baked ricotta salata basically) and basil, and it was so delicious, I can still feel the flavour of those perfect ingredients on my tastebuds, on top of a perfectly executed melt-in-your-mouth dough…what a treat!

The second pizza (pics 2-3) was eaten at my all time favorite pizzeria Sestogusto. I love this place so much and I have talked about it before, as it’s the place that blew my mind years ago when I first visited it. Here Massimiliano Prete runs a super high level pizzeria with almost every form of contemporary Italian pizza represented. You can even have a pizza tasting menu, where you try all of his doughs and creations.
This time I went for their classic pizza dough, here dressed with tomatoes, stracciatella, olive taggiasche and some cavolo nero. This pizza was delicious and their dough couldn’t be more different from the previous one I had. I am guessing it’s a fairly high hydration and a rather long fermentation period (neither very classic for Italian pizza tonda). It’s super crunchy and at the same time the cornicione is high and with an amazing crumb structure (look at pic.3!). The ingredients were also really high quality but the masterful dough really did it for me.
The last pizza (pic 4) was, believe it or not, eaten at Turin’s airport! There is a restaurant by Garofalo (the Neapolitan mozzarella company) and they have a proper woodfired oven! I went for my all time favorite Salsiccia e Friarielli and it was not the best pizza I have ever had, but it was the best pizza I have ever had in an airport…by far!

One of the things about Italy, is that people mostly eat Italian food only…all the time.
Luckily things are slowly changing and it seems that Italians have a huge passion for Japanese food these days. Unfortunately most of them think that Japanese food is sushi, and especially the “sushi” you get at cheapish all-you-can-eat joints run usually by Chinese restaurateurs…
I have to say that Turin has one exception to this rule, with this adorable tiny little 5 tables restaurant called “Takoyaki Minamoto”. The Japanese chef here makes a menu revolving around famous Osaka street food Takoyaki (basically octopus fried dough balls). It is my daughter’s favorite place to have lunch in Torino, so I try to bring her whenever I can, for a real Japanese experience. This time around I didn’t order any takoyaki, but had some karaage (fried chicken), an onsen tamago (slow cooked egg) rice, miso, some green beans, pickles and hojicha tea. What a delightful meal!