By the time dinner rolled around my first night in Italy, boy, was I starving. My last proper meal was the dinner on the plane, and after that, it was my sad breakfast of juice and fruit, and a few crackers and snacks throughout the rest of my work day. I was so hungry I had a headache. Ok, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but in any case, I was tired, pained, and needing real sustenance. So we went to a castle. You know, like you do in Europe. Just hop down to the neighborhood castle for some grub.

This is a family run restaurant housed within an eighteenth century castle. It’s pretty damn cool eating in a castle, I must say. They serve regional cuisine, a la carte, and they have a pretty extensive wine list. There’s bottles everywhere. It’s rather impressive and insane.

There’s also old furniture in there, tons of it nineteeth-century. They also use this drawer set to hold bread. Open up a drawer, pull out a loaf, and cut. I need me a magical set of bread drawers at home.

To get to the dining areas, you have to meander through corridors and hallways in this said castle, where they just have tons of stuff everywhere. Furniture, stacks of stuff, wine, food, whatever. It’s truly rustic.

Luckily, they have english menus, or else I would have been screwed. It’s a small menu, with starters, firsts, seconds, sides, and desserts. It’s more of a risotto and meat heavy menu, not pastas. Breadsticks and breads from the drawers! No butter with your bread here!

L and I shared one of the antipasti – the trout. It was some pieces of marinated trout, along with some rocket, a couple slices of tomato and some balsamic syrup. As L said, it was lovely (she’s Scottish)! And I also enjoyed the presentation, as I didn’t expect it to be so pretty!

This was the wine that we ended up picking, after many indecisions and help from the server. A 2005 chianti, I totally loved it! It also helped me sleep. The ratatouille was delicious. I let me taste some of his. It was really oily though! They definitely don’t skimp on the oil here.

He got one of the steaks that are cooked on a hot stone. C also got the steak as well. She got hers butterflied. She made us try some of the steak too, and damn, it was extremely tender and had an excellent flavor, even without anything on it. She also got simply prepared potatoes.

L and I both got risottos, which is a regional specialty. L’s risotto had some sausage in it and was made with a wine. You can see how different it looks from mine.

I got a saffron risotto with chicken livers. Ok, when I ordered this, in my head, I was thinking chicken gizzards and not chicken livers. But I know what liver is, and that I don’t like it. But for whatever reason (I blame it on lack of sleep), I was thinking this would be like gizzards. Well, no, it was definitely chicken livers, in all their extremely strong livery glory. I wasn’t digging it. It’s funny because it actually looks like mushrooms. But mushrooms they definitely are not! But that’s ok, because I just ate around the livers, and the arborio was strong and delicious and not mushy at all. They know how to make their risotto here.

This was a good meal and a nice way to ease me into this week-long italian gorge fest. Even with the app and the risotto, sans livers, I was still really stuffed. The prices here are also extremely reasonable! The risottos were about 11 euros or so? That’s so cheap! And especially for european, that’s pretty much a steal. Prego!

L’Altro Tempo
Piazza Generale Perrucchetti, 3,
20062 Cassano d’Adda MI, Italy
0363 65095

Modo Mio is a beloved BYOB in fishtown. I don’t really know anyone who hasn’t liked the place. It’s been open for a few years, and I have no idea why I waited so long to go. It was worth all the hype. [Apologies in advance for the worse than usual photos, but the lighting in there is terrible for non-flash photos!]

Since it was a BYOB, M made us some pre-dinner gin cocktails. We b’d plenty of our own b’s. We even offered a drink to one of the waitresses, but she refused! We all decided to do the turista menu, which allows you to pick anything from the antipasti, pasta, secondi, and dessert menus.

The bread was unbelievable. It’s served with a porcini olio, which was also beyond delicious. The bread is incredibly dense and wet and chewy on the inside. Things were starting off well.

Before the food started coming out, we got a little amuse bouche, which was a bruschetta with tuna puree. The bread was a bit too salty on the crust, but overall, it was a great little taste.

For the antipasti, a few of us got the cervello, the fried calves’ brains with walnuts and pickled fennel. Who knew fried brains would be so good?

I ordered the Polpo, the balsamic grilled octopus, crispy potato cake, with arugula pesto. Wow. Just wow. The octopus was tender and delicious, and the crispy potato cake, although not crispy, was so surprisingly good. People are afraid that octopus could possibly be rubbery. This octopus was the furthest from rubbery as anything possibly could be.

For the pasta, M got the Caramelli, fresh pasta candies (look how cute they are!) stuffed with buffalo milk Taleggio and hazelnut brown butter. The cheese was super creamy and delicious in here. So rich!

R and I both picked the Mlinzi, toasted fresh pasta with a rustic rabbit ragu. So good! The pasta was extremely firm, I guess that comes from the toasting. The ragu was made with sweet peppers so it had a surprising sweetness.

F’s lamb dish, the Agnello. It’s typically a braised lamb chops dish, but this night, it was a giant lamb ball, served with porcini and apple fritters.

Three of us got the Guancè, the veal cheek served chef’s choice style. The menu says “trust him”. It’s a good idea to do so. Delicious! Again, this is a bit on the sweet side. I think E would have preferred that it was less sweet. The cheek itself was nice and tender.

I was in the mood for something on the lighter side for my entree, so I went with a fish dish and picked the Razze, seared skate wing with apricot brown butter, almonds, capers, and lemon. It was exactly what I wanted! The fish was perfectly cooked and the whole dish was light. I don’t like capers so I ate around them, but I loved everything else. The apricot chunks were a really nice touch.

For desserts, the options included tiramisu, a flourless chocolate something, an italian style crepe with nutella, and I forget what else. A few went with just cappuccino or espresso. Because I’m into fruits in my desserts, I got the apple pastry. It was somewhat like an apple pie, but one that had shavings of cheese on top. It was nice and light and a perfect way to end this meal. Really, the entire meal and experience exceeded all of my expectations. The service was also good, provided by our very actorly waiter, Steve. The place is small, and you’re all definitely squeezed in. It’s also quite loud, so don’t expect a quiet and serene place that is romantic. It’s boisterous! But the food is some of the best I’ve ever had. I implore everyone to visit! I’ll definitely be back!

I love any party that has shrimp cocktail, don’t you? I had the honor of attending another party by the ever gracious R, and this party had a theme. It was a holiday pollyanna, but the opposite of “healthy and clean”. I’ll let you all figure that out on your own. Shrimp cocktail. I could eat this all day. Grapes… and a lovely salad that A brought.
This bean dish was definitely the appetizer hit of the evening. A mix of pinto, black-eyeds, pimentos, white corn, onions, vinegar, sugar, etc… it was the perfect topping to the chips below. I could have eaten this whole thing. In fact, I probably did eat most of it. Sorry!

A variety of cheese and crackers, as usual, along with some other tapenade type stuff. Did I mention how many chips I ate?

This is where I always go wrong… I stuff my face with appetizers so that I’m already practically full when the main course comes around.  Here we have some roasted tomato and fennel soup (seriously, who makes this kind of stuff?) and a three meat lasagna. Both were excellent, as always with R’s gourmet cooking. He puts the rest of us to shame!

In keeping with the theme of this little party, E created a special dessert. Let’s just use our imaginations to figure out what this dessert is shaped like. It is banana wrapped in bacon (yes, this dessert had bacon in it!) with two scoops of ice cream. :-) And this whole thing was flambéed! Using cognac, we lit these puppies on fire to burn off the alcohol. The fire looks fake in this photo, but it is totally real! I saw it! I felt it! It was so fun! And even though the dessert sounds odd, it was delicious! Thanks for another great party!