Cacciatori

Ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients, ingredients; ten, a hundred, a thousand times, ingredients, in their most expressive form. A mountain restaurant in which nature expresses itself by serving up celestial regional delicacies, as humble as they are authentic. Sitting at a table in this simple, Spartan restaurant is like entering a time warp and going back 100 years, as much with the ingredients as in their form. The chef, Carla, works in a wood-fire kitchen, unchanged since her forebears built it in 1952. And she does so over low flames, at low temperature, expressing with each dish the sentiment that those heroic “mammas”, who brought so much to the history of gastronomy, impregnated their recipes with; dishes overflowing with sensibility and care. Atavistic, ancestral, and wonderful. Each item lovingly caresses the palate. Refinement is expressed in the simplest, the most popular…in the most trivial. The Milano family—father, Giancarlo, and son, Massimo—are in charge of the management and the dining room and embody the authenticity of the land and the heart of its men.

This traditional country restaurant evokes the home cooking of more than half a century ago. Have a few morsels of succulent, juicy cooked salami from the area’s best sausage maker. Experience the sensibility of one who is capable of roasting yellow peppers for seven hours and serving them with a few noble salted anchovies and the magical lubrication of a ribbon of extra virgin olive oil from neighboring Liguria. One of the best moments comes with the fine, very fine, so fine that it only has one sheet per side, and quite a bit thinner than one millimeter, artichoke tart that tastes utterly of these. The fresh spaghetti with tomato do not disappoint anyone. The onion frittata is absolutely wonderful. And so we arrive at the great meats, to which we must give in and even order ahead of time—two are better than one. The stewed chicken with onions, tomatoes, white wine and rosemary is virtually a whole free-range rooster, with dark, dense meat bursting with flavor. Also worthy of mention is the rabbit: plump, with dark legs, only needing a few touches of extra virgin olive oil, white wine and rosemary to uncover a grandiosity unbeknownst to the urbanite. And in November, December and January, there are hares, partridges, woodcocks, grouses, always fresh, never frozen, hunted by Giancarlo and prepared by Carla.

A gastronomical journey to another time.