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Marcemigo di Tregnago: Villa de Winckels e Cantine del Generale

Via Sorio, 30 , Phone: 045.6500133

Closing day: Lunedi e Martedi Sera (Monday all day and Tuesday Evening)

Reviewed by: dean from MD (moderator), review #604

When: 2003

Romano dal Forno's favorite local restaurant! Spectacular food in an out of the way location. Formal. Fancy food.

Directions: North of Cellore d'Illasi to the west.

www.villadewinckels.it

Romano dal Forno, one of Italy's greatest winemakers drove us to the restaurant as we would have never found it on our own. He was too grubby to go in so we just went in on our own. We were seated and got the somewhat typical cool treatment of a visitor who comes into a restaurant filled only with locals. The maitre d’ approached and asked if we spoke German. This area’s tourists are mostly German and it was fun to not be recognized as obviously American. I immediately told the maitre d’ that Romano dal Forno has recommended we dine here and that we had just come from visiting his winery. This changed everything. We were fussed over and hovered over like honored guests. When the folk at his favorite restaurant are so honored by an individual’s guest, it speaks volumes about how highly that individual is held.

The food was very modern in style, but full of earthy flavors. The wine list was good, but we had to have more Dal Forno wine, and we ordered a bottle of the 96 Valpolicella. The Valpolicells is huge, almost the weight of some amarones but without the tannins or raisiny components typical of amarone. It was very smooth.

Kay had a pear and walnut salad. The pear was shredded along with the cheese, and formed into the original shape of the pear. When presented, it looked like a peeled pear on a bed of greens with walnuts and tomatoes strewen around. At the first forkful, the shredded nature of the dish was apparent. Jane had zucchini sformata, which was strips of zucchini surrounding a chopped zucchini filling sitting on a spicy red pepper sauce. I had Fiori di Zucca ripieno (stuffed with fresh ricotta fresca). All of these antipasti were superb for their fresh flavors and quality of the ingredients. We were in heaven!

For primi, Kay had risotto with porcini and vegetbles, light with earthy flavors from the mushrooms, Jane had ravioli di Coniglio which was nicely flavorful with an olive oil condiment and I had tagliatelle with local finferli mushrooms (in the Chanterelle family).

Kay had a grilled Tomino with grilled vegetables for her totally unecessary secondo. The Tomino (similar to a camembert) was nicely runny with just a hint of char flavor from the grill. It came with tomatoes, onions, eggplant, endive, radicchio, zucchini and roasted potatoes. I had tagliata of Ostrich on arugula, with the over the top addition of pineapple. I too got the roasted potatoes. We had a couple of grappe selected by the maitre d’, one morbido and one forte. The morbido was only smooth by comparison to the 100 proof strong one.

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.

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Marcemigo di Tregnago: Villa de Winckels e Cantine del Generale

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