Ahhh, Chianti. That wonderful part of Italy filled with ripening vineyards, stone villas, rolling hills
and about a million other tourists elbowing each other as they take in the authentic Toscana experience.
Every year about one million people visit Tuscany, and one of the most oversubscribed areas is Chianti - famous for the wines of the same name.
Visitors, easily spotted by their shorts, terry-cloth hats and cameras, travel from around the globe so they can sample the wine at the cellar door, dine on the great food at the local trattoria, and of course, take home a bottle of chianti in its traditional straw-wrapped bottle. After finishing the bottle, it's then stashed at the back of a cupboard because some day it would look beautiful on the table with a candle in it - just like the ones you saw in that little romantic restaurant in San Gimignano.
Well, in Warsaw, you can sample chianti in relative comfort without hordes of tourists. Sure, the ambience isn't quite as good, but at the Chianti restaurant on ulica Foksal, you can chose from 18 different types of chianti. It also serves a large variety of other wines, with many of them priced under zł. 100 - a bit of a rarity these days in Warsaw.
David and I sipped on a refreshingly light Abizzia chardonnay (a relative bargain at zł. 70 a bottle) when we had dinner at Chianti last week.
Together with friends, we've had a number of memorable meals at this restaurant, which looks like it was put together by a frustrated landscape gardener with a load of rocks left over from a big job in Konstancin. There are stone-booth seats, decorative stone on the walls, exposed rafters and lots of wrought iron. I can recall eating some great salmon, delicious pasta, veal and fabulous tiramisu here on various occasions.
However, this time, David and I were at loggerheads: Although we agreed on the wine, while David enjoyed his meal, I was not that impressed with mine.
For starters, David chose the chef's ravioli - pillows of ricotta flavored with Parma ham and wrapped in homemade pasta, colored red with capsicum. The dish was dressed simply in a little butter. It was pretty much faultless.
My starter, fettuccine with prawns and rucola, was a bit of a surprise. Great branches of rucola were just sitting on top of the pasta rather than quickly stirred through to wilt them; and also the very light creamy pasta sauce was delicately flavored with curry. I don't mind a bit of fusion cooking - when I'm eating in a modern restaurant; but when I'm in an Italian restaurant, I like my food to be, well, Italian. However, the flavor was good, even though I had to struggle with the great herbaceous spears.
For our main course, David was gleefully happy with his scaloppine con formaggio - veal fillet dressed in a gorgonzola and mozzarella sauce with a couple of spears of asparagus hiding in there, too.
But my main course of stuffed zucchini was a huge disappointment.
"Why did you order that?" asked David as the waitress put the plate before me. Simply because I wanted to try something different!
The plate had one zucchini cut in half and topped with a filling that, save for a ton of semi-raw garlic, was so bland I couldn't work out what was in it. I asked the waitress and she said it was ciabatta bread crumbs, Parmesan and egg to bind it. I have to concede it was baked under a smooth, wonderfully subtle béchamel sauce, but it wasn't enough to save this dish. What's more, it was zł. 35 - rather overpriced for zucchini with some bread.
I consoled myself with a side order of spinach tossed with garlic and raisins. Sadly, our plate of fried potatoes with rosemary and garlic had been whisked out of the frying pain before it had a chance to become properly hot or crisp.
Dessert managed to cheer me up a bit - zabaglione. This dessert of egg yolks, whipped over heat with sugar and Marsala wine was freshly made and still warm. I enjoyed it
0while David pined for tiramisu.
A three-course dinner for two, not including drinks, came to zł. 179 ($44.75).
