As I have been based in Italy for the past few months I could well be initiating a new tradition of having Christmas, ‘Natale’, here in Serralunga d’Alba, Piedmont, and I’m banking on the following being served for lunch:   Lentils with cotechino (a pork salami) as an antipasti/starter; the dish is thought to bring […]

How does one gauge the success of an evening’s dinner, at Berrys’ in this case? By the level of decibels or (business) cards swapped at its close?  The number of empty glasses or perhaps more crudely, by the amount of orders taken? At Andre Ostertag‘s mercurial tasting recently, for example, I measured it by the time […]

Does Castello di Ama’s owner Lorenza Sebasti Pallanti (left) really model herself on Madame Mentzelopoulos, Ch. Margaux’s glamorous owner?  Or perhaps she just fashions her wines on the famed Bordeaux First Growth, a taste of whose 1961 back in 1989 changed her appreciation of wine forever… But surely her family’s fine Castello di Ama property had […]

So what began with a farce: ‘Don Pasquale’ at Turin’s La Regio…culminated, tragically so with a mesmerizing performance of ‘La Traviata’ on late Sunday afternoon.   And no, the interim wasn’t all ice-cream & chocolates but a privileged insight into another world; a world free of traffic lights, bungalows and political correctness but full of charm, […]