Dolce Stil Novo, Torino (Turin)
It was a valentine special night, and I was dining out with a colleague who shared the ski trip with me. The restaurant might be confused by our potential “relationship”, because none of us tried to dress up for the evening and we talked about random things during the entire evening. The restaurant is outside of town, next to a castle. Unfortunately, we did not find time to visit the castle in the day, and it was closed when we arrived.
Castle
It was a beautiful restaurant inside, two large dining areas with only a few tables per room. The menu was special for valentine day; however, I am not sure how much it differed from the regular dinner set. Also, it was in Italian and there is no English version.
Menu
The first course after canapé was beef tartar, which I always liked. Compared with the stereotype, cold with spicy, the chef made it closer to mouth temperature, so it did not freeze my brain, and paired with pretty much no spice but squash/pumpkin, which led to a very interesting smooth and creamy taste. The beef itself was also tasted creamy, which tasted more like butter than meat. The decorated pasta turned out to be harder but was fun to have. It certainly gave me a different perspective of what a chef can do on a simple and traditional beef tartar.
Tartare di Fassone, zucca mantovana e gelatina di ginger beer (Beef tartare, Mantua pumpkin and ginger beer jelly)
We then get two fish starters/entrées, a prawn tail and a pan-fried white fish (pictures are not given here). Both were well-executed as what you would expect from this level of restaurants. Then it came to the two pasta dishes as very common in Italy. I enjoyed both. First was a seafood tortelli, or I should say seafood paired with Tortelli; the fill of the tortelli was actually cabbage. I liked the fresh tone of this dish, in contrast to the common creamy and/or tomato-based tones. I could taste the seafood part very well because of the light seasoning. Tortelli themselves had slightly dried skin but in a very good way, because it added strong texture when biting in.
Tortelli di brassicacee con pesci pregiati e frutti di mare (Brassica tortelli with fine fish and seafood)
The second pasta gnocchi were very impressive. It contrasts very well to the previous tortelli because the gnocchi were very creamy with a drizzle of truffle sauce. The gnocchi were made very well without the annoying rubbery-texture boundary of gnocchi one might get from another place. It was simply melted in my mouth. Apparently, the chef’s secret was a special breed of potato.
Gnocchetti con radicchio, mozzarella di bufala, prosciutto e tartufo nero (Gnocchi with radicchio, buffalo mozzarella, ham and black truffle)
This is certainly a restaurant good for special event because of the location, interior decoration and service quality. The dishes were as expected, with care and of good taste. The two pasta dishes were my favourite without doubt. However, it was not impressive to me, hence I probably will score three out of five.
🐼 Score: 3/5
