knowledge italy & mediterranean islands

Gourmet

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There may be truffles ahead

Emilia-Romagna is less familiar to Brits than nearby Tuscany, but Philippa Jacks finds the region has many more culinary claims to fame on a Typically Italian tour, while on p54 Estella Shardlow rounds up some of the best gourmet trips to help your clients get the most out of a destination’s cuisine

at my desk.

W

50

hen confirmation of my gourmet trip to Italy came through, I was eating a microwave spaghetti bolognese

A visit to Emilia-Romagna would be just the ticket to lift me from the Birds Eye frozen-meal depths to which I’d plunged. Gourmet-themed trips have been a best- seller for operator Typically Italian since

30.04.2010

they were introduced last year. Cooking, painting, and language classes are now available at around a third of its properties, particularly at Al Vecchio Convento, which was to be the scene of my culinary enlight- enment.

This small hotel is in the tiny village of Portico di Romagna, about 90 minutes’ drive from both Florence and Bologna. Daniele Broccoli, who owns Typically Italian, calls it

Left: Bridge in Portico di Romagna (population 400) Above: Giovanni manages to prise a truffle out of the mouth of his dog Otto, before it is swallowed

“the village where time stood still”, with high medieval walls, winding cobbled streets, a mere 400 inhabitants and a zero crime rate.

As its name suggests, the hotel is a con- verted convent, lovingly filled with antique furniture, tall wrought-iron beds and tradi- tional embroidered fabrics. It is the only hotel in the village, and famed for having the best restaurant for miles around. Because of a traffic jam near the airport, it was close to 11pm by the time we reached Portico but hostess Marisa still coaxed me downstairs for a “snack”. One slice of mush- room tart, one “aubergine a parmigiana”, one dish of hare ragu, one steak with truffle sauce, and one slice of vanilla cake later, I resigned myself to the fact I'd be needing an extra plane seat on my return journey. Marisa is in charge front-of-house, but it is her husband Giovanni and son Massimo who are responsible for the five-course dining extravaganza each evening, and also teach cooking classes and take guests out on food and wine-related excursions in the local countryside.

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