We arrived in glorious sunshine which stayed with us for the duration of the trip fortunately so within a couple of hours we had hurtled down the Adriatic coast road and were safely ensconced on the veranda eating nibbly things (the Italians have a name for it but I can't for the life of me remember what it is!) and sipping gin & tonics - Ah! Bliss!
Now cooking and eating are a national sport in Italy - both are taken very seriously so I looked forward to the evening meal in a local restaurant called La Quatro Venti - a pizza restaurant that does lots of other things. No English menu, in fact not a word of English was spoken by any of the staff so we relied on Anne's almost fluent Italian to get by - she does need to do some work on her pronunciation and inflection though - the key phrase of the evening if not the entire 4 days was "Una per due" - the portions that they give you are huge and they seem to get offended if you don't eat what's put in front of you - so one between two seemed a good idea. Sue & I opted for a pasta dish (spaghetti in a spicy tomato sauce) followed by a pizza and shared both and by the end of that we were both full! A couple of carafes of wine and coffee and the bill came to 8 euros per person! Not bad!!I won't bore you every detail of the trip but being a rural community it was time for the locals to get their grapes picked. Now everyone seems to own some vines and it appears that everyone helps each other to pick the grapes. So it was with a certain amount of intrigue that I watched tractors toing and froing down the lane chased by lorries and trailers who were collecting the grapes ready to take it to the local wine press where it was to be turned into the drinkable stuff!
Not wishing to gorge ourselves we did eat in a couple of nights - saving ourselves for the big night out at Guilllio's - he's the guy on the tractor in the photo and owns the restaurant that is just 100m from Anne's house - it is always full - the decor is basic but clean and the food is.....endless! So we booked for 8 0'clock - the earliest that he will let you in! The menu consisted of antipasto - cold meats, bits of pizza, bruschetta, olives, cheeses, deep fried custard balls (which was interesting), scrambled egg with bits of liver in and much, much more - and it kept coming until you cleared your plates - and then came "secondo" - the pasta dish, of which there was a choice - the plates came piled high like volcanoes with spaghetti and tagliatelle - by this time I was beginning to feel a little full - we did struggle to eat all the pasta but the waitress was very understanding and cleared the plates even though we had left some food on them! She scuttled back into the kitchen muttering something that sounded like "those bambino English people". Whilst all this is going on the noise level in the restaurant has risen by 1000 decibels as more and more people arrived and plates of food appeared from the kitchen along with vast carafes of red and white wine which were plonked onto the tables to be consumed by the ravenous hoards that had invaded this peaceful part of Europe! The meat came next - we dipped out on the salad course - then la dolce (pudding) which we did manage to eat - then the limoncella and coffee! This food marathon took us 3 hours and I was barely able to pull myself out of the seat when it was time to go. Guillio came to bid us goodnight and gave us the bill - apparently he should have charged us 20 euros each but as we hadn't eaten everything he only charged us 15 - I didn't know whether to feel elated at the price or dejected at his sneer for not eating like an Italian!
Next time we go - I'm not going to eat for a week!
Me and mia sorella!
If you fancy sampling Guillio's for yourself, the house in Montalto is available to rent - it's worth a visit!
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