After I take a nap and Ed gets caught up on the news, twitter and Jose Andres (he’s reading We Fed a Nation, Jose’s book about his World Kitchen Project in Puerto Rico), we wander out toward Antica Cantina, L’osteria delle Donne (the restaurant of women) for dinner. The restaurant is owned, operated and staffed by women, and has a great reputation for gluten free and allergy specific meals. Not that we need any of that, but the food gets stellar ratings, and I’ve wanted to try them out since last year – when it seemed a bit too far to walk. (Not really, but your perceptions get skewed when you are spoiled with dozens of restaurants within a few blocks from your apartment.)
So, off we go to the restaurant which TripAdvisor says is open at 7. Not. You know…between TripAdvisor and Google, you get bad information every which way you turn. Sigh. So, now we are stuck waiting for half an hour until they open. We continue to traverse Corso Cavour, the main street of Orvieto, looking at different little places to have a drink, and stumble on Pub Al Tempio Etrusco – mainly because they had the word “pub” in their name. Four steps down, we enter a nicely done pizza pub with red brick painted walls and a lovely bartender/server/owner who speaks perfect English to my perfectly awful Italian! We end up with beer and wine for 8.5 Euros, and he brings us this great rosemary focaccia flat bread fresh out of the oven to nibble on free of charge. Its like a super crispy layered tortilla drizzled with olive oil, salt and that fabulous rosemary. Oh, we’re in love. If only we weren’t waiting to go to dinner. We’d finish off the whole thing! Just fantastic! We will definitely be coming back here one night for dinner – since the hospitality and the food and drink quality were excellent.
7:30 finally rolls around, we bid arrivederci to our “guy” and wander up the street to Antica Cantina, where there are already 2 Asian girls seated and ordering. We are the only other customers and we settle up the 2 stairs in what we are calling the “upper” dining room. It has a great vibe, with cool artwork (the open wooden frame on tufa looking walls and the book lined shelves in the window alcove – plus a window onto the open kitchen. How can you go wrong?
The food and the service match the ambience. Absolutely fantastic. The owner – who serves us –has the greatest personality, switching seamlessly from English to Italian (oh, how I wish I could do that!). The food was incredible – gluten free or not, we had a wonderful starter of Prosciutto and I had carciofi in oil (preserved fresh last year – because of course it is not artichoke season, the owner informed me). For the main, Ed had Cinghiale stew – which was spectacular. And of course beer and wine – a reasonably priced half carafe. Jet lag and big carafes of wine – the perfect antidote!
After our fantastic dinner, we meander back to the apartment, through the empty Orvieto streets…
…this is why we love this place! Collapsing on the bed, we manage to stay awake long enough to make it through one Law and Order on the home cable before blissfully falling asleep in a real bed that will salve our jet lagged bodies.
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