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Restaurants & Bars

Trip Report: Parma (long)

Indy 67 | Jun 22, 200701:29 PM     3

The restaurants in Parma are really proud of their regional products and cuisine, and they enthusiastically promote their food . For example, at the end of the meal at La Greppia we were told, “You must have a little taste of our Parmesan. Just a little taste.” as the captain was already in the process of putting some slices on a plate for us. In reality, the taste wasn’t so little and the course wasn’t gratis, but ultimately we didn’t care since the Parmesan cheese was undeniably the best we’d ever eaten, including during the trip. (We asked and were told the cheese had been aged 36 months.)

At Cocchi, the captain gave us the standard menus, but he did not recite the daily specials. I knew these existed since I could understand the captain’s Italian as he told them to people dining across the aisle. Since one of the specials sounded appealing, I asked about them when the captain next returned to our table. He said that those specials were appropriate for people who have eaten all the classic Parmigiano dishes, and wanted to try something different. As visitors, we needed to experience the classics first. The food was so delicious and the guidance was done with such charming earnestness, that we weren’t put off. And, as you’ll see, we were most definitely not steamrollered into ordering anything we truly didn’t want.

La Greppia: In both decor and cuisine, this restaurant is a charming blend of the classics and innovation. Generally, the decor is quite traditional: whitewashed, rough-textured walls, starched white linens, and dark wood furniture. Desserts and cheese are brought to the tables on large, traditional rolling carts. However, the huge glass wall at the back of the restaurant allowing diners to see into the kitchen is clearly a bow to a modern trend.

We began by sharing a plate of sublime prosciutto, culatello, and salami. Again, another example of fantastic sourcing. We, then, shared a second antipasto of a wine-poached pear with a mound of Parmesan mousse. The poached pear was more savory than the version I make at home for dessert. The pear’s essential sweetness was a great foil for the mousse which we later learned was nothing more than a whipped mixture of cheese and cream. We were told the moussse was an ancient recipe. Was the pairing traditional? I don’t know, but it was inspired.

We shared an amazing pasta dish that can best be described as a deconstructed pesto pasta. I don’t remember the name of the pasta, but it was a fresh, house-made pasta of wide, flat noodles. During the rolling-out step, fresh basil leaves were placed on the ball of dough so that whole leaves became incorporated into the noodles. The dough was very thin and the leaves were clearly visible. The dish was finished with a pine nut sauce. Swoon time. Incidentally, the portion size of our pasta course was more typical of what I think of as Italian, that is, small to moderate. During our trip, I noticed that the pasta course in many restaurants was showing portion creep. I wonder if the faster pace of life and meals means diners are order fewer courses so the pasta course, particularly, has become somewhat larger.

La Greppia’s osso bucco sets the standard for this classic dish right down to giving diners a marrow spoon. I legitimately described Vini di Gigio’s version as stellar, but this one was better. My husband ate osso bucco one more time in Bologna. Again, it was stellar, but not as good as La Greppia’s version. We later joked that he should have ceased ordering osso bucco after Parma, kind of like retiring the jersey of a star athlete.

I’ve mentioned our cheese course. What made the cheese remarkable was the depth of flavor from the long aging process coupled with the moistness of the cheese.

We shared a dish of mixed berries; we could specify the types of berries we wanted from the separate bowls of different berries on the dessert cart. The restaurant presented us with a plate of cookies, most of which we left since we were so full.

With dinner, we drank a Sangiovese de Romagna, an inexpensive and wholly delightful wine that the captain recommended.

Sorelle Picchi: The restaurant is quite casual and would be a great place for travelers on a moderate budget for dinner, except that this place is only open for lunch. The dining space is a back room indoors, but the air-conditioning was reasonably adequate to the demands of a full room on a very hot day. I know there was another table of Americans, a family of four with adult children. Otherwise, I heard no languages other than Italian. The hotel had described this place as a delicatessan with a restaurant in the back. For a fleeting instant I had this ridiculous image of corned beef and pastrami. Then, I realized the employee could have no idea I knew the word, “salumeria.” We breezed rapidly past the display of cold cuts when we entered, and it was only after we had eaten a delicious meal including a meat platter that we lingered for a look.

We shared a mixed meat platter which included prosciutto, culatello, cotta, and salami. Excellent quality. The list of antipasti included no melon and meat option. However, we were able to satisfy our desire for melon by ordering it from the separate seasonal fruit category. I was able to communicate that we wanted the fruit served along with the meats, and that’s what happened. We, then, shared our first taste of lasagna in Emilia-Romagna. It was very good, but it would later be surpassed by a version in Bologna.

Cocchi: This was the only restaurant on our entire trip that was reasonably filled between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. by Italians. Interestingly, I think even their fellow Italians were unaware that people might be dining so early since cell phones rang three or four times at one of the tables and once at another table until 9:00 p.m.

My husband and I shared a two pasta dishes made with masterful pasta. One dish was a trio of three types of tortelli, the large round filled pasta of Parma. Fillings included potato and porcini, pumpkin, and herbetta (specifically a mixture of ricotta and swiss chard). My favorite was the potato and porcini filling. I found the pumpkin filling too sweet; apparently, the classic recipe mixes pumpkin with crumbled amaretti. The star pasta of the evening was filled with culatello, ricotta, and parmesan and topped with mixed vegetables. Wow!

My husband really enjoyed his stuffed breast of veal. The filling consisted of bread, onions, and, at least, one additional ingredient that neither of us remembers. The meat was slowly and carefully braised and remained very moist. I tried to order a stuffed beef dish – akin to a stuffed beef tenderloin – but when I asked for it to be cooked very, very rare, the captain said that dish wouldn’t work. The recipe was prepared with the whole cut of meat and an order consisted of a slice off the whole; each serving was not cooked individually. The captain thought for a minute and proposed that I get a dish of steak slices atop a bed of fresh spinach, with shavings of parmesan cheese, drizzled with balsamic vinegar. He added that normally this dish would be prepared for two. However, since it was the only beef dish that could be cooked to a specific degree of doneness, he was willing to let me order it as a singleton. It was sublime. The meat was cooked perfectly and each element of the recipe contributed a wonderful note: the astringency of the spinach, the nuttiness of the cheese, and the sweet/sour taste of the vinegar. Yum.

That night, we drank a Valpolicella that was out of our usual price range but delicious.

Parmagolossa: This organization is great and our day with them was one of the highlights of the trip. Before our trip, I had read posts about people being quoted widely ranging prices from this organization, and portraying those differences as Mirco’s offer du jour. I really don’t understand those posts. Mirco, has a very definite price for each possible experience; he’s not making up prices depending on the alignment of the sun, the moon, and the stars. If you elect to tour one food factory, the price is X. Two factories and the price becomes Y. Et cetera. There is a separate price if you want to have a tasting at the vinegar factory. There are two lunch menus, each with a different price. And, finally, transportation is mandatory. If you aren’t driving, you must hire a car service for the day. Since we had to hire a car, our day was very expensive – and, most emphatically – worth every Euro.

Each customer of Parmagolossa is assigned an English-speaking guide, trained by parmagolossa, who explains what we are witnessing along with the over-all process. These guides have the trust of the factories and are allowed to escort visitors to every room in the process without oversight. In the US, overseers from Occupational Health and Safety Administration would freak out if they observed visitors walking on the production floor, occasionally over tangles of electric cords or hoses, or dodging swinging racks of prosciutto or the robot cheese turner in the cheese warehouse. We were never unsafe, and we certainly got a more realistic sense of the process.

If you’ll be visiting the cheese factory, that’s where your day will begin. The production of cheese is such that all visitors see the exact same steps in the process. By the time we arrived, the milk had already gone through its required heatings and was being drained before being removed from the huge copper vats. We left the cheese room to talk about the controlled breeds of cows and to sample some cheese in the shop. By the time we returned, the cheese had been placed into molds.

The steps to prepare prosciutto for its aging process take more than a day, so visitors may see different parts of the process. We saw two parts of the operation: intake of fresh pork legs and the second salting.

For most of the year, there really isn’t anything active to see in the production of balsamic vinegar. I will add that if it’s important to you to buy the 25-year old balsamic vinegar at the factory, go earlier than the second week in June. The producer we visited had sold out one week before our arrival, and there would be no new DOP vinegar bottled until the next bottling, I believe in the fall.

We bought a bottle of silver label vinegar in a 100 ml bottle in the factory. (This amount is the European limit for liquids in carry-on luggage. My risk tolerance is zero for putting oil and vinegar into checked luggage. We wanted to buy one more 100 ml bottle to put into my husband’s carry-on, but we were so appalled by prices in the retail stores in Bologna that we didn’t do so.) We had two brief incidents with luggage screeners as a result of the food we were toting home that I’ll share later.

We ate lunch at a winery that also serves meals. I don’t know the name of this place, and I don’t know whether they serve meals to independent travelers. I will say the meal was memorable both for quality and for quantity. I sincerely believe we were served exactly what they put out for a party of four or, even, six. We began with a platter covered with triangles of two types of savory tarts: one a parmesan/spinach tart and one a mixed vegetable tart. Someone in the kitchen knows crusts! Light and flaky and wonderful. The first round also included serving dishes of mixed vegetables in a vinaigrette and the most amazing sweet and sour cippoline onions ever to grace a table. I asked for the recipe, but I suspect everyone thought I was joking. No said I couldn’t have the recipe, but I didn’t walk away with it either. With this course, we were given a bottle of Malvasia rose, a blend of 90% Mavasia grape and 10% cabernet sauvignon. Next came a parade of huge meat platters: one of prosciutto, one of culatello, and one of mixed salami, pancetta, and cotta. Fabulous quality. This produced a second bottle of wine, a Malvasia white which is 100% Malvasia grape. I think the platter of parmesan drizzled with balsamic vinegar produced a bottle of Lambrusco. At this point, we were in a daze and not from the wine. When they presented us with a platter with pieces of a nut cake and a chocolate cake, we each took an obligatory taste of both flavors, declared “basta” and staggered away from the table. The smaller lunch option would have included the meats and cheese exclusively.

Life has an interesting way of working out. When we finished our tour with Parmagolosa, we hopped on a train and headed to our last destination, Bologna. We walked around Bologna quite a bit and, at the proper Italian time of 9:00, we decided we could consider eating a light dinner. We went to Cesari, a restaurant that makes everyone’s list and had been recommended by friends. It was the worst meal of the entire trip, and we left over much of what little we had ordered.

Next report: Bologna

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