Milan Day 2

The last day! We woke up, you know, at a fairly reasonable time. Early enough to get our breakfast, which was included with the room price. It was the best hotel breakfast so far. #1: the coffee was good. Well, mine, a cappuccino, was good. Eric's was just coffee (usually if you order caffè, you get espresso, but this was just regular coffee), and it was just OK. But there was mortadella and salami and yogurt and bread, etc. etc. (There was also something that purported to be juice, but tasted more like children's aspirin; not good.)

The we hit the streets, to wander wander wander. No specific plans. We had already seen inside the Duomo, and had not managed to score tickets to see the last supper, and didn't feel there were any more “must see” items that we wanted to see. So we wandered. It was nice. We went up a pedestrianized street that had along it a special exhibit of photos from National Geographic (always amazing). We shopped at Celio (a French store, yes, but with an Italian name, and more importantly, with a bunch of stuff on sale), where I bought some pants. We wandered through the park behind the ducal palace. We went back to the pedestrianized street and had lunch.

Lunch was pizza, at Ristorante Pizzeria Castello. When I was in Milan 20 years ago, I remember eating a lot of pizza, so this felt appropriate. I also remember that, like this restaurant, there would always be some 30-40 pizza options, all named, and no “build your own” pizzas as we have in the US. So today I had a “capricciosa” (artichokes, mushrooms, olives, and capers), and Eric had a “diavola” (spicy salami and two other spicy meats). They were both quite good. (We had had a capricciosa in Siena, but with ham and without capers. I liked it better with capers, Eric liked it better without.)

And then more wandering. Really, there's very little to report about it. I thought I might run into the high school I went to for 2½ weeks 20 years ago, but I didn't. I was unwilling to really look for it, because that could have been a really pointless exercise of wandering in circles. And if I'd found it, what then?

Back to the hotel to pack, and then off to the restaurant for dinner. We took a streetcar part of the way there (maybe cutting a mile out of the trip). The restaurant was the one I'd reserved last night: Al Pont de Ferr. Definitely worth the return trip to the canal district. Al Pont de Ferr specializes in new interpretations of traditional Milanese cuisine (hence the name, which I take to mean "at the iron bridge" in Milanese dialect).

In addition to our orders, we got various amuse-bouche. First, a shot glass, containing caviar (probably salmon), grapefruit, and a mussel, seasoned with Campari, and covered with a creamy foam (maybe a combination of milk and egg white — too light to be whipped cream, but definitely dairy). That was fantastic. Then, a Chinese-style soup spoon with a single “ravioli”, made of strips of melon wrapped around goat cheese, with a couple of little pieces of duck speck; also fantastic. With that came a little spiral roll flavored with saffron, which was good, but not as good as the others.

My primo was a sort of ravioli called fagottini, stuffed with cinta di Siena, a pork or boar product whose exact translation I can't recall, and served with sauteed baby turnip greens and hazelnuts. That was fabulous. Eric had something from their “come 20 ani fa” ("like 20 years ago") section of the menu, presumably listing things they had on the menu 20 years ago (ironically, when I was here last, though not at this restaurant); he had spaghettoni with a tomato and basil sauce, and it was good but not exciting. My secondo was a filetto de cernia (some sort of fish) with a beet puree, a gorgonzola sauce, and some sort of green; it was also really good. Eric had musetto di maiale (two lovely braised pieced of pork) with a celeriac puree, and some sort of hazelnut sauce (possibly a cream of wheat with hazelnut), steamed artichokes, and sliced fried artichokes. Delicious!

For wine we had a Rossoros di Montepulciano.

The portions were small enough to think about dessert, and the dessert menu was appealing (so far on the trip, desserts have been easy to skip). So we shared a serving of apple cake — two big chunks of cooked apple with a little extremely tasty cake in the middle, with some vanilla gelato. This was accompanied separately by a ginger crema catalana (called a catalogna, I think) served in little cube-shaped dishes. Eric asked for a glass of the recommended dessert wine to accompany it — a Moscato — and the hostess insisted that we should have one each. The wine was really lovely; sweet but not syrupy, and slightly fizzy, with a nice full-bodied taste.

After that we had coffee and split. We found a streetcar line that would take us from the canals all the way around to the hotel, so we took that. The trip, door to door, took about 40 minutes, rather than last night's hour.

Now, to bed. We have to get up early tomorrow, we have a long day, and when I get back to Chicago I have to draw Finn and Charlie and pack for a business trip. *SIGH* Into the fire with me. Vacation time is (almost) over.

Labels: food, italy, journal, personal

posted by Tony at 11:59 PM