An ordinary place

 

San Pietro Val Lemina, October 2, 2016—

HAVING EATEN (and spent) a little more than we're used to, these last few days, or for that matter is perhaps really good for us, we thought we'd eat more simply tonight. And more locally. So after a healthy five-mile walk into nearby Pinerolo and back, we drove to the nearby San Pietro for dinner at a simple trattoria that sounded good.

I suppose what attracted me, in the online reviews I read, was the repeated word casalinga and the intimation that the owner-chef was a woman. I've always maintained that woman cooks are the most reliably likely to be attentive and relatively free from ego-driven errror, and that casalinga, or cuisine bonne femme, or home cooking like grandma used to do, is the most satisfying.

Well, Patrizia — I'm pretty sure that's her name — was definitely a woman. Fortyish, fast-moving and -talking, good-humored, and definitely at ease with herself and her clientele, she put good stuff on the table.

 

Here you see the antipasti: ricotta, salami her cousin makes, thin-sliced raw beef, vitello tonnato, and tongue under a suave dark tomato-based but otherwise secret sauce. We ate it all, all but two of the ricottas, which are not to the Contessa's taste.

Then the primi: for me, agnelotti densely packed with ground meat, thinly sauced with tomato paste, dusted with parmigiana. 

Afterward, our first green salad in days, with good solid tomato wedges and marvelous raw onion.

 

Dessert: for me, semifreddi, probably store-bought but nonetheless tasty, flavored with almond and amaretto and robed with dark chocolate. A first-rate dinner, and not at all expensive. I'd go back any day. Maybe tomorrow.

Prosecco dalla spina; a glass of red

Bar Trattoria Ardite, Via Europa 23, San Pietro Val Lemina, (TO); +39 0121 543322