A newbie on restaurant magazine’s top 50 list, we thought Osteria Francescana was definitely worth a try. We had posted up in Florence for a few nights, so it was a bit of a drive to Modena and then a little bit of a hassle finding somewhere to park (this will be important later). We wandered to the restaurant (also important later) and walked into a modern dining room decorated with Edith Piaf-esque head shots of women with high cheekbones and wavy bob-cut hair.
What would be a very impressive showing of bread started with a basket of wheat and white, hard crust, soft middle and a dish of very smooth extra virgin olive oil. After an amuse bouche of Adriatic fish tempura with salty ice cream (good crunch of the fish bone and intriguing creamy salty topping) came a basket of little rolls – fennel, rosemary, olive, sourdough and some long crispy breadsticks – all very tasty.
Raw grouper, tomato water gelée, frozen mozzarella, smoke from the grill. The smoke was scooped up into your face when the servers removed the dome lids on the plates and immediately sent my little olfactory bulb to the Weber grill in my backyard – but the illusion of a smoked fish was contrasted by the delicate, raw piece of grouper. I have seen mozzarella in the full gamut of textures – very chewy balls to very creamy burrata – but never frozen. Somehow these little crumbles managed to keep all their mozzarella-ness even in icy form.
For the white wine we followed a suggestion to try the 2005 La Stoppa Ageno Emilia. Ortrugo, Trebbiano and aromatico, this was a VERY interesting wine. It was a peachy-amber color and huge floral bouquet off the nose (kind of like the massive vase of pink lilies at the server station next to us), it had a little orange and more flowers on the palate, almost sweet but finished pretty dry. This unusual wine definitely fit our request for something a little bit adventuresome. Despite its bold personality, it adapted very well to many of the dishes to come.
Codfish, extra virgin olive oil, fried skin, cream of chickpea, onion sauce. This was a very fun play on textures, the creamy codfish looked more like what I would have expected from the chickpea puree. The chickpeas were very smooth but looked a little bit more solid in the bowl. The onion sauce was a little bit like a really good French onion soup and it was all set off by the crunch of the friend skin. I was thankful for the collection of bread at hand because this deserved some serious bowl scraping.
Rice: black and grey. Ostrich water, black ink, beluga caviar. This is the best rice I have ever had. Hands down. The first bit took a little bit of acclimating, but once my mouth was accustomed to the fishy salty mix I was in love. This was a precarious dish – if not done just right it could have been a big mushy bowl of salt and fish, but the rice was cooked perfectly and the ink and ostrich water were perfectly balanced.
Black cod, turbot and black ink broth, burned vegetables and herbs. Testament to my inner unrefined palate I can really appreciate burned, salty food. The broth was phenomenal and the vegetables were like a whole bowl of the best little crunchy pieces left stuck to the pan. In a great feat of self-control Matt held back the urge to go face first into the bowl and lick every drop of the salty broth.
Leek and black truffle tart, cooked with black truffle juice and shaved summer truffly pieces, topped with fleur de sel. All served on a spoon. I don’t know how one spoonful could be much better than this.
Ice cream of foie gras. Conceptually, this dish was genius, flavorfully it was a savant-liver apprentice to Einstein (it was really good.) The foie was cooked in a vacuum at low temperature. Inside was some Calvados and extra old balsamic and then covered with toasted nuts on the outside. The nuts added a nice crunch and even when they were stuck in your teeth did not overwhelm the finish of the foie – mentally it kept you chewing, something that doesn’t always happen with a smooth foie, and allowed for all the flavors to explode in your mouth. If only these came in the freezer aisle to be enjoyed on hot summer days.
Soup. Cream of raw potato, black truffle oil and jelly, bread crumbs, nuts, coffee, snails, sweet garlic foam. We were instructed to dig the spoon all the way down to make sure we got all the elements and it was fun to watch the colorful bubbles emerge and separate from under the onion foam. The hint of coffee added a tiny bit of bitter, the truffles and potatoes were earthy, the snails were chewy. Matt’s quote for this dish is “the story of a snail’s life, its journey across the yard and everything it encountered in its 200 meters of existence.” Well said.
Piemonte shell pasta, beef, foie foam, apple jelly and essential oil of nuts. To be eaten in one bite “if you’re able” which I think is actually a test of the diner’s prowess and bravery. Channeling all the machismo of David Hasselhoff (who seems to be a favorite on Italian television) I amped up to devour the shell. Don’t be fooled by the apparently messy ending – I conquered vini vidi vici style.
Now, there was only one other table in the restaurant this evening (Monday is a predictable slow night in Europe) but the sommelier seemed to be trapped talking to them about some fancy beer they were drinking. As the whole team of servers watched on, we waited a little bit too long to get a glass of red wine before giving in to temptation and eating the meat course. One of his colleagues noticed our wandering eyes and pulled the sommelier away to bring us a glass of a piemonte red (whose name I have forgotten) made from croatina grape (a relatively rare one grown in Northern Italy).
Cheek of veal, cream of potato, balsamic vinegar, peas and asparagus, apple jelly. Very tender meat, wonderfully smooth potatoes. I appreciate a simple-element main meat dish after all the revelry from the earlier courses. A wonderful combination of high quality ingredients. And worth the little wait to be enjoyed with the wine.
Mix of legumes and vegetables cooked in vacuum and frozen – black and white beans, asparagus, peas, lentils, carrot cream, crunchy galette of peas. An adaptation of the now ubiquitous shmorgus board of individually placed elements it was a mix of sweet and sour. The sommelier even admitted it was best enjoyed with water. This mixed plate had an array of textures, temperatures and flavors but surprisingly left a final impression of sweet (fitting, because it was the first of the dessert section of the menu)
With the rest of the desserts we paired a Marco Sara un verdùz dal sîs.
A traditional dessert of the region “patzoulgo” (??) with a modern twist. Amaretto cookie, egg yolk foam, coffee ice cream and cookie crumbles, mascarpone foam meringue surrounded by Saba. Saba is the precursor to balsamic vinegar – a cooked down concentration of Trebbiano and Lambrusco grapes used for sweetening in the Greco Roman period. I loved this dessert so much I went back for a final spoon-scrapeful with pen in hand before I started taking notes on it. The cookie crumbles were perfect with the wine, the foam was light but tight and substantial and the coffee ice cream was phenomenal. Then Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” came on the music and the whole experience got even better.
Petit fors: (counterclockwise from bottom left corner) red berry jelly with cherry crust, Caribbean chocolate, caramelized orange peel, orange puff with pastry cream, chocolate coffee cake, bonbon of mandel (?), cacao and pistachio. With an exceptional Arabica grand cru espresso from India.
We were a little disappointed to find out that their chef was not in that night (apparently teaching cookies classes in the Amazon?), but props to the sous chef for putting out such an incredible meal. I hope that dining room is never so sparsely populated again, and if its up to me to ensure that, I’ll find a way to go back. Full and satisfied we got ready to leave, and realized that in our eagerness to get to the restaurant we had not really paid attention to where we had parked our car. We asked the servers if they could guess where we might find a parking lot near a church that had some construction going on. They offered to walk with us but after about a block we assured them we would be fine and thanked them for their help. Luckily Matt’s radar was in full form and somehow, after a few more blocks of wandering, our little red Smart car popped into view around the corner. Disaster averted, we relaxed into the drive home and watched an incredible full moon ebb and flow behind crazy finger-shaped clouds.
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