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travels for friends, food and wine - in exactly this order
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Lunch at Masseria Cardilo at Masseria Cardilo
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Dinner at Osteria Dentro le Mura at Osteria Dentro le Mura with Tomoko Morikawa
Osteria Dentro Le Mura is exactly the kind of restaurant its name suggests: a small, family-run seafood osteria tucked into Termoli’s old town, beside the Castello Svevo and overlooking the Adriatic. Antonio Terzano opened the business in 1999 after working in established restaurants, and today runs it with his wife Lina, who is also the sommelier.... More
Osteria Dentro Le Mura is exactly the kind of restaurant its name suggests: a small, family-run seafood osteria tucked into Termoli’s old town, beside the Castello Svevo and overlooking the Adriatic. Antonio Terzano opened the business in 1999 after working in established restaurants, and today runs it with his wife Lina, who is also the sommelier. Their philosophy has remained deliberately uncomplicated: few tables, informal but knowledgeable hospitality, local products and fresh Adriatic fish selected according to the day’s catch. The restaurant has held Slow Food’s Chiocciola recognition since 2007 and has appeared in the Michelin and Espresso guides.
The place was extremely busy when we visited, with some tables apparently turning two or even three times during the evening. Yet it never felt like a restaurant trying to become something bigger or more sophisticated than it is. It remains a very friendly, solid family operation, and that is much of its charm.
We started with scampi alla menta su melone grigliato, perhaps the most contemporary dish of the evening. The sweetness of the scampi and grilled melon worked nicely together, with the mint bringing freshness.
More traditional was u’ scëcill con le cozze, one of the characteristic dishes of the area: bread-and-cheese dumplings served with mussels. It is precisely the sort of inexpensive, deeply local cooking that makes an osteria like this interesting.
The spaghetto quadrato allo scoglio was generous and straightforward, driven by the flavour of the seafood rather than unnecessary technique. We finished with the brodetto alla termolese, the local Adriatic fish stew and one of the restaurant’s signature dishes. It was rustic, rich and satisfying, with the flavour of the different fish coming together in the broth. Both u’ scëcill and the brodetto are repeatedly singled out by other diners as house specialties.
Nothing here was trying to surprise us. Everything was simply solid and tasty, based on good seafood and a clear understanding of the cooking traditions of Termoli. Friendly service, a bustling atmosphere and an obviously successful family business made this a very enjoyable evening.
A very good, authentic local osteria — exactly what we were hoping to find in Termoli. Less
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Dinner at Uliassi at Uliassi
Uliassi is one of Italy’s great contemporary restaurants, but its origins are remarkably modest. Mauro Uliassi and his sister Catia opened it in 1990 as little more than a seaside shack between Senigallia’s canal harbour and the beach. More than 35 years later it is a three-Michelin-star restaurant, yet it still feels strongly connected to that... More
Uliassi is one of Italy’s great contemporary restaurants, but its origins are remarkably modest. Mauro Uliassi and his sister Catia opened it in 1990 as little more than a seaside shack between Senigallia’s canal harbour and the beach. More than 35 years later it is a three-Michelin-star restaurant, yet it still feels strongly connected to that original place and family. Mauro’s cooking is rooted in the Adriatic, particularly the meeting of sea and land, but combines this with constant experimentation and an almost playful search for new flavours and textures.
For our dinner we chose The Lab 2026, the menu on which Uliassi presents the results of its annual period of research and experimentation. It is an ambitious menu, but what impressed us most was how completely resolved it felt. Excellent food throughout, technically perfect execution and, importantly, a very well-composed progression. Creativity never seemed to be there merely to demonstrate technique.
The menu began with the duck liver wafer with hazelnuts and a Kir Royal shot, followed by red prawns with green curry, pepper and kaffir lime. Then came razor clam with its own sauce, peach blossoms, celery and Siltimur oil, and one of the more unusual combinations, spaghetti with butter, anchovies, hops and blueberries. The sequence continued with sole with green pepper, followed by the wonderfully indulgent “porchetta-style” bombolini with potatoes and lard.
The later part of the menu moved from citrus and cinnamon to mezzamaniche “cacio e pepe” with pear, then wood pigeon with figs and apricots, before finishing with caramelized apple cake, ice cream and Calvados foam. The combinations sometimes sound almost improbable on paper, but the execution was so precise that they made complete sense on the plate.
Hospitality was equally impressive. In addition to the Lab menu, the kitchen generously sent us three extra dishes: shrimp; sea snails with lardo and roasted potatoes; and lamb. The lamb in particular was extraordinary — one of the best lamb dishes I have ever had. That is quite a statement, but this one deserved it.
Nicolò, the sommelier, looked after us extremely well: knowledgeable without making a performance of it, very friendly, and choosing excellent wines that worked beautifully with the progression of the menu.
What I particularly liked about Uliassi is that despite the technical sophistication and three-star precision, the restaurant never loses its sense of pleasure. Mauro describes his objective as creating moments of happiness and having guests leave thinking that the experience was worth it.
On this evening, that philosophy was very easy to understand. Outstanding cooking, perfect execution, a beautifully composed menu and exceptionally generous hospitality. And that lamb will stay in my memory for a very long time. Less
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Dinner at Osteria Caserma Guelfa at Osteria Caserma Guelfa with Tomoko Morikawa
Osteria Caserma Guelfa is deeply rooted in the fishing culture of San Benedetto del Tronto. Chef-owner Federico Palestini comes from a maritime family and spent his youth aboard fishing boats, giving him a knowledge of fish that was acquired at sea rather than in culinary school. His cooking remains closely connected to the old cucina marinara sambenedettese,... More
Osteria Caserma Guelfa is deeply rooted in the fishing culture of San Benedetto del Tronto. Chef-owner Federico Palestini comes from a maritime family and spent his youth aboard fishing boats, giving him a knowledge of fish that was acquired at sea rather than in culinary school. His cooking remains closely connected to the old cucina marinara sambenedettese, while allowing himself enough freedom to reinterpret it. The restaurant itself occupies a remarkable historic building, originally a papal customs post dating back several centuries.
That philosophy was very evident in our dinner. We started with a series of antipasti, and these were excellent — probably the strongest part of an already very good meal.
The scampi, served both raw and cooked, demonstrated exactly why simplicity works when the raw material is this good. The Gamberi Rossi di Mazara were equally impressive: sweet, intense and requiring very little intervention.
The risotto with asparagus and scampi was beautifully judged, with the sweetness of the crustaceans working particularly well against the vegetal character of the asparagus. The restaurant specifically uses Acquerello rice for its risotti.
Then came the pastas. Campofilone sul Mare used pasta from Pastificio Marcozzi di Campofilone with melecche, bottarga and lemon peel — very much a dish of the Adriatic, combining salinity, richness and freshness. The Spaghetto alle Vongole — amusingly described as “senza spaghetti e senza vongole” — showed the more playful, contemporary side of the kitchen.
Unfortunately, the pasta portions were simply too large. By the time we finished them we had to surrender and forfeit the fish course entirely, which was a pity.
We finished instead with the Insalata Marinara.
Overall, a very good dinner. What I particularly liked was that beneath some contemporary presentation and ideas there is genuine knowledge of the sea and of the local fishing tradition. This is not generic modern seafood cooking transplanted onto the Adriatic. Palestini’s cuisine comes directly from San Benedetto and its maritime history — and the excellent antipasti showed that at its best. Less
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Lunch at Ahimè at Ahimè
Ahimè is one of the more interesting counterpoints to Bologna’s deeply traditional restaurant culture. Opened in 2020 near the Mercato delle Erbe, its philosophy is firmly centred on produce, seasonality and a direct relationship with small-scale farmers and suppliers. Much of the vegetable produce comes from a biodynamic farm connected to the restaurant,... More
Ahimè is one of the more interesting counterpoints to Bologna’s deeply traditional restaurant culture. Opened in 2020 near the Mercato delle Erbe, its philosophy is firmly centred on produce, seasonality and a direct relationship with small-scale farmers and suppliers. Much of the vegetable produce comes from a biodynamic farm connected to the restaurant, and the menu changes frequently according to what is available.
Chef and co-founder Lorenzo Vecchia, born in 1992, has an interesting background, having worked in the kitchens of Carlo Cracco, Antonia Klugmann, Martín Berasategui and Lorenzo Cogo. Before Ahimè he ran his own restaurant, Volm, outside Milan, and in 2018 received the CARE’s Young Ethical Chef award.
The cooking at Ahimè is vegetable-driven without being vegetarian, with fermentation playing an important role and influences reaching well beyond Italy. The restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, an appropriate distinction given its particularly attractive pricing.
For lunch we essentially ordered the entire à-la-carte menu once and shared everything, which turned out to be an excellent way of understanding the kitchen.
The bread with fermented shiitake butter immediately established the style: something familiar given considerably more depth through fermentation and umami. We continued with the La Perla del Delta oyster and a lively radicchio salad with salted lemon, onion, plums and pumpkin seeds, combining bitterness, acidity, fruit and crunch.
Then came porchetta with courgettes and celery salad; barley with tomato and basil; risoni with coconut milk, sea urchin and garam masala; spaghetti with kimchi butter, raisins and breadcrumbs; aubergine with chilli oil and pine nuts; and beef tongue with beef demi-glace and green sauce.
The menu moves quite freely between Italian foundations and international influences. The spaghetti with kimchi butter was a good example: recognisably Italian pasta, but fermentation and chilli shifted it into an entirely different register. The combination of sea urchin, coconut milk and garam masala with risoni was similarly unconventional but worked surprisingly naturally.
There is an appealing informality to Ahimè. The room is small and contemporary, the atmosphere relaxed and the service friendly and uncomplicated. Nothing feels unnecessarily elaborate or precious.
Overall, a very pleasant meal — creative, relaxed and enjoyable from beginning to end. Having effectively eaten our way through the entire menu also highlighted just how reasonably priced Ahimè is. With most dishes around €15–20 and the five-course menu at €65, the value for money is excellent.
Ahimè isn’t trying to reproduce Bologna’s traditional cooking. It represents a younger and more contemporary side of the city: produce-driven, fermentation-friendly and quite happy to borrow ideas from elsewhere when they make the food more interesting. Less
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Madonnina del Pescatore — Moreno Cedroni
Moreno Cedroni opened Madonnina del Pescatore in 1984, at only twenty, on this slightly unlikely stretch of Adriatic coast just south of Senigallia. What began as a relatively conventional fish restaurant gradually became one of the laboratories of modern Italian cooking. Cedroni received his first Michelin... More
Madonnina del Pescatore — Moreno Cedroni
Moreno Cedroni opened Madonnina del Pescatore in 1984, at only twenty, on this slightly unlikely stretch of Adriatic coast just south of Senigallia. What began as a relatively conventional fish restaurant gradually became one of the laboratories of modern Italian cooking. Cedroni received his first Michelin star in 1996 and his second ten years later, but perhaps the more consequential moment came through his exposure to Ferran Adrià and El Bulli. A stage there introduced him to a completely different way of thinking about technique, transformation and the possibilities of ingredients. You can still see that intellectual lineage in his cooking today, although over the decades Cedroni has developed a language unmistakably his own.
The 2026 “Luca and Moreno – The Evolution of Fish Bones, a Journey into the Fish Soul” menu is a particularly good example. Its central idea sounds almost academic: rather than treating bones, heads and other normally secondary parts of fish as waste, Cedroni and longtime collaborator Luca Abbadir turn them into ingredients in their own right through ageing, drying, smoking, extraction and fermentation.
The evening appropriately began with a Tribute to Ferran Adrià: the 1997 Parmesan “Gelato”, served with the 2016 Verdicchio Gran Riserva Extra Brut from Garofoli. More than nostalgia, it felt like an acknowledgement of where an important part of Cedroni’s culinary thinking began.
From there, the menu became progressively more ambitious: amberjack with rhubarb, spiny courgette, oxalis and a wafer made from the spines; a marine reinterpretation of pâté en croûte, incorporating monkfish head and tripe, sea-bream sausage, cuttlefish eggs and yuzu; turbot spines aged for two months with burnt herbs, yeast miso and acidulated corn; and Patagonian toothfish coated with its own spines after three months of ageing.
The maccheroncini “fumé” with tuna belly, sea buckthorn, smoked turbot spines and pecorino showed particularly well how the concept works when technique becomes flavour rather than an intellectual exercise. The tuna “ossobuco” continued the playful reinterpretation of familiar Italian forms, while the combination of one-month beeswax-cured lamb with tuna belly pushed the menu onto land without abandoning its central marine narrative.
What impressed us most was how extraordinarily well executed everything was. This is highly technical food, but it never felt as though innovation was being pursued simply to demonstrate technique. The menu was genuinely original and, unusually for cooking operating at this level of experimentation, remarkably coherent.
Service was equally outstanding. Our waiter had been trained by Tina Kragh of Jordnær in Copenhagen, and that pedigree showed: polished and precise, but relaxed enough to allow the evening to become a conversation rather than a performance.
That became particularly enjoyable with Cedroni himself. His El Bulli connection gave us plenty to talk about; having eaten at El Bulli fifteen times, I could trade a few war stories with him about Ferran Adrià and that extraordinary period in European gastronomy. It also made the opening tribute feel considerably more personal.
Cedroni then made a wonderful joke that probably explains the evolution of Madonnina better than any lengthy discussion of culinary philosophy. When he first opened the restaurant, he would come to the table carrying a basket full of whole fish, proudly showing his customers the day’s catch. More than forty years later, he said, he still comes to the table with fish — only now it arrives on a tray, with each piece treated individually and creatively: aged, fermented, dried, smoked or otherwise transformed.
In a way, that single image tells the whole story of Madonnina del Pescatore. The fundamental ingredient has hardly changed; what has changed completely is the thinking around it. The basket of whole fish has become a tray of carefully transformed pieces, yet Cedroni’s fascination with the fish itself has never disappeared.
More than forty years after opening Madonnina, he is still experimenting. There is plenty of history here, but surprisingly little nostalgia. The Fish Bone menu feels contemporary, curious and genuinely innovative — an extraordinarily well-executed dinner from a chef who, even after four decades, clearly hasn’t lost his desire to discover something new. Less
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Dinner at Dalla Gioconda at Dalla Gioconda with Tomoko Morikawa
Dalla Gioconda occupies a spectacular position at the top of Gabicce Monte, overlooking the Adriatic and the borderland between Marche and Romagna. The restaurant opened in 2021 in a former dancing club, created by Stefano Bizzarri and Allegra Tirotti Romanoff together with chef Davide Di Fabio. Sustainability was built into the project from the beginning:... More
Dalla Gioconda occupies a spectacular position at the top of Gabicce Monte, overlooking the Adriatic and the borderland between Marche and Romagna. The restaurant opened in 2021 in a former dancing club, created by Stefano Bizzarri and Allegra Tirotti Romanoff together with chef Davide Di Fabio. Sustainability was built into the project from the beginning: the building achieved LEED Gold certification, the restaurant maintains a natural vegetable and herb garden nearby, and the kitchen emphasizes small local producers and Adriatic fishermen. It subsequently earned both a Michelin star and Michelin Green Star.
Di Fabio has an unusually substantial pedigree. Born in 1985, raised largely in Abruzzo and trained in San Benedetto del Tronto, he joined Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana in 2005 at just 20. He remained for sixteen years, eventually becoming one of the senior figures in the kitchen alongside Takahiko Kondo, before leaving to open Dalla Gioconda.
His stated philosophy is to take the flavour memory of Italian dishes apart and reconstruct it for the present, accepting international influences without, in his words, “betraying the Italian taste.” That tension between Italian identity and outside influences was also one of the most interesting aspects of our dinner.
We chose the current €160 tasting menu, which moved from tomato-water ristretto with black tea and bitter notes through sea lettuce with cucumber, sesame and bottarga; oyster with lemon and bay leaf; scampi with rocket, pine nuts and combava; milk skin with cod; and chilled spaghettini with roasted peppers and red prawns.
The cooking was technically accomplished and frequently very good, although not completely even. The red mullet with Sangiovese was a good example: an interesting idea and attractive composition, but distinctly under-seasoned on our visit, leaving the fish less expressive than it should have been.
By contrast, the chili-glazed morone was excellent—confident, concentrated and one of the clearest successes of the evening. The menu continued with tortelli with apricot and rue and the intriguing pairing of pigeon and tuna belly, before moving into increasingly aromatic and playful desserts.
The broader question concerns Di Fabio’s increasing use of Asian—and particularly Japanese—ideas. The influences bring freshness and excitement, but occasionally feel adopted more through technique and flavour vocabulary than through a deep understanding of the culinary culture behind them. Given Di Fabio’s intelligence and technical ability, this feels entirely correctable: more sustained exposure to Japan and Asia could give these elements greater depth and precision while allowing his fundamentally Italian voice to remain dominant.
Overall, Dalla Gioconda feels like a very strong one-star restaurant moving toward two-star territory. The technical foundation, ambition, setting and best dishes are already at that level; greater consistency in seasoning and a more deeply assimilated approach to its Asian influences could provide the final degree of refinement. Less
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Antica Osteria del Mirasole is one of Italy’s benchmark traditional trattorias—not because it modernizes Emilian cooking, but because it takes ostensibly simple, old-fashioned food exceptionally seriously.
Background & philosophy
Franco Cimini founded Mirasole in 1989, aged just 22, deliberately recreating the atmosphere of an older local... More
Antica Osteria del Mirasole is one of Italy’s benchmark traditional trattorias—not because it modernizes Emilian cooking, but because it takes ostensibly simple, old-fashioned food exceptionally seriously.
Background & philosophy
Franco Cimini founded Mirasole in 1989, aged just 22, deliberately recreating the atmosphere of an older local osteria that had existed around the Second World War. Over the decades he filled the rooms with old paintings, utensils and objects, while the large stone fireplace became both the visual and culinary heart of the restaurant. His wife Anna Caretti subsequently became central to the operation, particularly through the family agricultural business and dairy that supply ingredients to the restaurant.
Cimini’s philosophy is unusually uncompromising: great ingredients should taste recognizably of themselves rather than being transformed through elaborate technique. The result is food that looks rustic but is actually highly controlled. Offal, old cows, poultry, lard, cream, butter and live-fire cooking aren’t nostalgic props—they form the vocabulary of the restaurant.
This has made Mirasole a gastronomic destination in its own right. Gambero Rosso awards it Tre Gamberi, its highest trattoria distinction, while 50 Top Italy named it Italy’s No. 1 trattoria in 2020; it has subsequently remained around the very top of the national rankings. Cimini himself has repeatedly been recognized as one of Italy’s leading osti.
The food
The signature dish is almost certainly the tortellini alla panna d’affioramento Mirasole. This is precisely the sort of dish that explains Cimini. In Bologna, serving tortellini with cream rather than broth can be almost provocative. But Mirasole uses panna d’affioramento, the exceptionally rich cream naturally separated during the production of Parmigiano Reggiano. The dairy connection is particularly important: the menu explicitly describes the pasta section as an homage to Caseificio Sant’Angelo, “our dairy.”
Another defining dish is tagliatelle all’antico ragù di cortile, made using chicken giblets. It reflects the traditional farmyard principle of using the whole animal rather than treating offal as something exotic. La Cucina Italiana describes this ragù as one of Mirasole’s legendary dishes.
Then comes the fire. Old-cow neck and ribs, pork, lamb, veal, sausage, marrow and liver are cooked over wood embers. The fireplace is sufficiently fundamental that the Accademia Italiana della Cucina calls the fire at the centre of the dining room the restaurant’s “gastronomic soul.”
The current menu is wonderfully unfashionable: rabbit-liver-stuffed onion, chicken-liver crostini, snails, calf marrow, brains with fried zucchini, sautéed veal kidney, sheep leg on the spit and pork liver wrapped in caul fat sit alongside mortadella, culatello, tortellini and Bolognese cotoletta.
Dining experience
The surroundings reinforce the cooking. Rather than a polished Michelin-style dining room, Mirasole presents itself as an idealized old Emilian osteria: timber, accumulated objects, warm lighting and the smell and sight of the wood fire.
That informality shouldn’t be mistaken for casual cooking. Reviews repeatedly emphasize the quality of the raw materials, generosity, warmth of service and extraordinary precision underneath apparently simple dishes. Current customer feedback is similarly strong: roughly 4.5/5 from more than 1,000 reviews, with recurring praise for the ingredients, atmosphere and friendly service.
Assessment
What makes Mirasole particularly interesting is that it represents almost the opposite trajectory from contemporary fine dining.
There is little interest in tweezered presentation, novelty for its own sake or lengthy explanations. Instead, Cimini asks whether tortellini, cream, chicken giblets, mortadella, old beef or a piece of pork cooked over wood can be made so good that no reinvention is necessary.
That makes it more than a traditional Bolognese restaurant. It is essentially an argument for the continuing relevance of the osteria itself.
For your dinner, the dishes you actually ate are the one element I cannot responsibly reconstruct from the restaurant’s menu alone. If you send the photos/menu from 21 August, I can add the second part of the project brief: a dish-by-dish review of your actual meal, including presentation, texture, ingredients, technique and an overall assessment. Less
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- Gerhard Huber added a new meal Dinner at Abocar due cucine at Abocar due cucine
Abocar Due Cucine is one of Rimini’s most individual restaurants, built around the partnership of Argentine chef Mariano Guardianelli and Riminese Camilla Corbelli. They opened Abocar in 2013, after careers that had taken them through some serious European kitchens. Guardianelli worked at places including El Celler de Can Roca and Piazza Duomo, while... More
Abocar Due Cucine is one of Rimini’s most individual restaurants, built around the partnership of Argentine chef Mariano Guardianelli and Riminese Camilla Corbelli. They opened Abocar in 2013, after careers that had taken them through some serious European kitchens. Guardianelli worked at places including El Celler de Can Roca and Piazza Duomo, while Corbelli—herself trained as a cook—worked with Mauro Uliassi before ultimately making the dining room and hospitality her domain.
There is also a strong family connection to Rimini. Corbelli grew up around Il Lurido, her family’s famous local seafood restaurant. Abocar therefore isn’t simply an Argentine chef transplanting his cuisine to Italy: it grew from the meeting of Guardianelli’s Argentine background with Corbelli’s deeply Romagnolo restaurant heritage.
Even the name explains the philosophy. Abocar means roughly “to bring closer”, and Guardianelli and Corbelli use it to describe bringing together two geographically distant but culturally surprisingly compatible worlds. Rather than straightforward Italian-Argentine fusion, the cooking has gradually become its own language, using predominantly local ingredients while drawing freely on South American flavours, memories and techniques.
The restaurant received its first Michelin star in the 2019 Guide, five years after opening, and has retained it since. Interestingly, Guardianelli says Michelin was not initially their objective; the restaurant was conceived primarily around hospitality and making people comfortable rather than the formality sometimes associated with fine dining.
Our dinner illustrated this particularly well because Tomoko and I chose the two parallel €80 menus: Tomoko took the Fish Menu and I the Meat Menu.
Both began with the same three snacks: tapioca and soyotta; maté with goat cheese and grapefruit; and a herb basket with herb pesto. Already, maté immediately establishes the Argentine connection, but without turning the meal into an exercise in national symbolism.
Tomoko’s fish progression was particularly unconventional. Mussel salad with black olive and ají panca combined the Adriatic with one of South America’s characteristic chillies. This was followed by fusillo, onion and lemon, and then, surprisingly, roasted eggplant with plums and herb pesto. The “fish” menu therefore wasn’t simply a succession of seafood courses: vegetables, acidity, herbs and fruit played equally important roles.
My meat menu moved in a different direction. Tomato with coconut and pink pepper was followed by chicory tortelli in pepper broth, before the principal meat course of lamb with borlotti beans and tarragon. It was a concise progression, and rather than relying on luxury ingredients or elaborate constructions, the interest came from unusual combinations and the tension between familiar Italian products and less expected aromatic references.
The two menus then converged again for dessert: apricot, fennel and capers, followed by “Oppure”, and finally fig, almond and rosemary.
This structure says a great deal about Abocar. Despite the restaurant’s name, the “two cuisines” no longer feel like two cuisines being deliberately fused. After more than a decade, Guardianelli and Corbelli have developed something more natural: a personal cuisine rooted in Romagna but informed by Argentina and by their years of travelling and cooking abroad.
What distinguishes Abocar is precisely this lack of rigidity. The meal can move from maté to mussels, ají panca to fusillo, chicory tortelli to lamb and borlotti without seeming interested in proving how clever the combinations are. It feels relaxed, curious and personal—an excellent expression of the restaurant’s original idea of avvicinare: bringing ingredients, cultures and people closer together. Less
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The Star Roof Experience at the Arena di Verona is an unusually successful combination of setting, theatre and serious cooking. High above the Arena, with views across Verona and the extraordinary sense of history that comes from dining inside a two-thousand-year-old Roman amphitheatre, the dinner feels genuinely connected to the opera rather than simply... More
The Star Roof Experience at the Arena di Verona is an unusually successful combination of setting, theatre and serious cooking. High above the Arena, with views across Verona and the extraordinary sense of history that comes from dining inside a two-thousand-year-old Roman amphitheatre, the dinner feels genuinely connected to the opera rather than simply added on as hospitality.
The menu was created by Emanuele Scarello of Agli Amici 1887, whose restaurant in Udine holds two Michelin stars, and was executed on site by two of his sous-chefs together with a Japanese chef from the Agli Amici team. The standard of cooking was impressively high for such an unconventional setting.
The four-course “Programma dell’Experience” moved through a concise interpretation of sea, land and season. Baccalà with tomato water and Mediterranean accents was clean and precise. Spaghetti tiepidi with aubergine and smoked sardines had more depth and savoury character, while the charcoal-grilled Garronese beef with bay leaf and cherries was the richest course. Dessert, a peach and sage soup with burnt vanilla cream and meringue, finished the meal with freshness rather than weight.
What made the evening particularly memorable was the balance. The cooking was refined enough to stand on its own, yet never competed with the location or the opera that followed. Service and presentation were polished, the atmosphere felt exclusive without becoming stiff, and the rooftop perspective over the Arena gave the whole experience a sense of occasion.
As a prelude to an evening at the Verona Opera Festival, it worked exceptionally well: high-class cooking in one of Europe’s most extraordinary cultural settings. Less
