While in Italy, I lunched at the customer’s canteen. These are not just little sandwiches or such, these are straight up full meals, with courses even. You can pick whatever you want, and because I can’t eat too much, I actually control myself. But really, you can eat like a king, and it’s free. Some penne with bacon and ham and a few spices, and tons of oil. A salad and an extremely gargantuan portion of some fresh soft cheese called primasale. They really like to load you up here. And they keep wanting me to take some of everything. The canteen workers are like drug pushers and are putting peer pressure on me.

This day I had the chicken cutlet. It wasn’t straight up chicken breast, it was some kind of formed chicken, but it tasted excellent. Another gargantuan portion of a side, this time some fennel. I’ve never eaten fennel in my life. Other than a few bites that were a bit too anisey, I quite enjoyed this! A roll, whose shape is a specialty of the area. It’s funny because this roll is actually quite hollow on the inside. It’s reminiscent of a kaiser roll, but crustier, and hollow. I got a hunk of a brie type of cheese. And a banana. And of course, frizzante water.

My last work lunch day, I had some pork with a tomato and onion based sauce. I also got some cold green beans, which I loved, and some slices of emmentaler cheese. I’ve been totally digging the variety of the lunches. I already miss it!

This night’s dinner was on the water, at Terrazza Monzotti. It’s along the river Adda, and has plenty of outdoor dining, which I’m sure is lovely during nicer weather. Right across from it, you can see a building designed by da vinci. Yeah, that da vinci. Uh huh, this Italy thing is pretty cool. They have this amusing replica of “Sunflowers” inside, made with pasta.

Right when you walk in, they have several plates of appetizers for you. You just eat what you want. What restaurant just welcomes you with free snacks?

There are several dining areas and when you’re walking through the place, you pass by the salad cart.

And speaking of carts, there’s also the dessert, or dolce, cart!

This menu was slightly bigger, but particularly only because they serve pizza here, so the pizza portion of the menu was quite extensive. Here, our service charge included olives, breadsticks, and potato chips.

C ordered the focaccia. It comes out looking like a naked pizza. It’s thin dough, crispy, and delicious. This is the same dough used for the pizzas. It’s made in-house, and cooked in a wood-burning stove. How does the dough end up this way?

Like this! Here’s a happy pizza dough thrower, if I’ve ever seen one. Ok, he may have been hamming it up for the camera a tiny bit.

And here’s a look at the pizza, this one with spicy salami, in other words, pepperoni. It’s got the same crispy thin crust, and it has a very light sauce. It’s pretty much not like pizzas at home, but I think I like this better.

As for me, I got the sea bass ravioli. Who serves ravioli made with sea bass as the stuffing? I’ve never seen it before, which is one of the main reasons I got it. It was served in a light orange sauce with shrimp. So the sauce wasn’t orangey at all, it was mainly just rich and creamy with a slight seafood taste. And if you thought real hard, you may have tasted a teensy bit of orange, but not really. These little things were delicious! It was reminiscent of lobster ravioli, but better. This was a great meal because C and L are regulars, so we were treated like family. Plus, our server spoke english, which makes everything much easier!

I love being here and having the customer decide where I eat every night. It’s the bane of a food blogger’s existence. Because you blog about food, everyone expects you to decide where to eat. So when I don’t have to do that, it’s a luxury that I enjoy. So this night, we went to the Hotel Trezzo in Via Sala. Inside, there’s a restaurant called La Cantina. It was quite busy there this night. There was nowhere to park and the proper restaurant was full. But we were able to get a seat sort of in the hallway.

In Italy, they give you bread and such, or other little bites to eat with your meal, but you get charged for it. It’s all part of “service” and this includes the bread as well as the service charge. It’s a flat fee per person, so it doesn’t matter how cheap or expensive your meal is, you get the charge regardless. This is another restaurant with quite a small menu. A little pasta, some rice, and lots of meat dishes. Oh, and another thing, I love all the frizzante water here.

S got the lamb dish, which came out in little skewers. Lamb and potatoes, quite palatable for anyone, foreign or native.

I got the chicken dish that was listed in their “specialty” section. It was thinly sliced chicken breast with a sauce made with whiskey, wine, prosecco and porcini mushrooms.  It was served with a “cornmeal porridge”, but it just seemed like polenta to me. In the english menu, it said porridge. But I’m not really sure if it was indeed polenta, because really, if it was, they should have just called it polenta, right? It had little bits of fried bacon on top! Whoo! The dinner was lovely. I can’t stop saying that since I’m working with Scots all day!