Trattoria della Posta, Monforte d’Alba - Piemontese food at its simple best

Of all the meals we had on my 3 day visit to Piemonte this week Trattoria della Posta was the best. It’s not that the food was different (Piemontese cuisine has a limited repertoire), simply that it was perfectly executed.

There were white truffles (of course) but particularly fragrant ones scattered abundantly over a carne cruda (chopped raw veal) and the best fonduta I’ve ever tasted.

It’s a feature of carne cruda that the meat should be so good you don’t need to season it and the chef had simply put little piles of seasoning on the side for you to add to taste: some grain mustard, black pepper, pink Himalayan salt (maybe the only affectation in the meal) and grated Castelmagno, the powerful local cheese. It was great with the rich 2008 Gaja Gaia & Rey chardonnay our host Giacomo Conterno had chosen (It seems to be a convention here that you don’t drink your own wines at a meal but show off others from the region. I like that.)

The fonduta (Piedmont’s answer to the fondue) was light-as-air due apparently to using a cheese from Bra rather than the usual Fontina. It came topped with a vivid yellow egg yolk and more truffle shavings which we were urged to stir into the gooey mass. Definitely a dish to try before you die and now on my menu for my last supper.

We then switched away from truffles to tajarin (the local super-fine egg noodles) with a rich ragu, another local speciality which matched perfectly with an earthy 2009 Barbera d’Alba Codamonte from Giuseppe Mascarello, Sensible not to overdo the truffles at this point and to have a contrast of flavours, colours and textures.

The main course was a real surprise: quail stuffed with the deeply savoury piquant Bra sausage - an object lesson in preparing quail which is often cooked too quickly and therefore tough. The crispy umami-rich legs were as good as the stuffing, great foil for a magnificent 2007 Bruno Giacosoa Barbaresco Asile which was just beginning to hit its stride.

We (or rather I) didn’t really need desserts and to be honest they didn’t reach the heights of the preceding courses though I can recommend the fabulously wobbly, creamy pannacotta and a semi-freddo with an intriguing coffee and pistachio ice-cream on the side. Accompanied by a very good moscato but I can’t remember whose.

The restaurant is charmingly old-fashioned and for what it offers not expensive. There’s a set lunch for 40€ but even eating off the carta is affordable and the wines - amazingly - cheaper than you’d find them retail in the UK .

According to David Gleave of Liberty Wines who was taking us around he’d never had a better meal there but even if it was 25% less good I’d still recommend it. Go, preferably in truffle time.

I ate at Trattoria della Posta as a guest of Giacomo Conterno.

Da Cesare al Casaletto, Rome - the perfect neighbourhood trat

With trattorias on every street corner you might wonder why you need to jump on a number 8 tram and go to the end of the line to eat but Da Cesare is well worth the detour, as Michelin famously puts it.

I wouldn’t have known about it but for a couple of local bloggers Katie Parla and Hande Leimer (aka vinoroma) who we’d run into by chance at a wine fair in the Auvergne earlier this year. Both professed it was their favourite restaurant - not least because of its wine list - a big claim in a city so amply provided with places to eat.

Not all of them are up to scratch though and Da Cesare is. It looks modest enough - a large, modern white almost canteen-like room with some outside seating - there’s nothing fancy about it - but it’s rammed with a happy crowd of locals. You definitely need to book, especially for Sunday lunch Hande and her husband Theo told us.

We started with some crisp flatbread (pizzi bianchi) then - what else in Rome? - a selection of fritti. They included a paper cone of beautifully crisp fried squid, fried gnocchi with cacio e pepe (a cheese and pepper sauce that’s normally used on pasta) polpette di melanze (aubergine croquettes topped with tomato) and - best of all - polpette di bolitto, fat little fried nuggests of deeply savoury braised meat topped with pesto.

Pasta was particularly good. Hande suggested we should have spaghetti with mussels and pecorino, an unusual but delicious combination of seafood and cheese, then the owner Leonardo suggested tagliatelle with ceps and I’d set my heart on a good carbonara. It turned out to be the real deal - fabulously golden and eggy, made with guanciale (pigs cheek) and mezzi rigatoni rather than spaghetti - the best I’ve ever eaten.

We washed all this down with a couple of ‘orange’ wines from the largely organic and natural wine list: a 2010 Paski Campania Coda di Volpe and a lovely 2007 Emilia Ageno which suprisingly also went with our shared plate of grilled lamb chops - my match of the week that week. The only main course we could manage after the pasta blowout*. We also tried a characterful thirstquenching local red, the bright, briary 2011 Damiano Ciolli Silene Cesanese Olevano Romano from Lazio.

I’d have given up at that point but Hande said we must have the panna cotta. So we sighed and did and it was perfect - creamy, wobbly and bathed in a rich dark caramel.

We spent about 50€ (£42/$67) a head on this feast which for Rome is great value, particularly for food of this quality. Despite the fact that it’s been extensively written about by Parla and Leimer it’s not overrun with tourists who obviously find the thought of a tram-ride to an outlying neighbourhood daunting. But it's easy so don’t be deterred. It was the best meal we had in Rome by far.

If you want to have an experience like ours both Katie and Hande organise tailormade restaurant visits for visitors to Rome and Katie has a very useful app called Katie Parla’s Rome. Both collaborate on The Rome Digest - which highlights events in the city each week.

* You might want to leave room for one of their offal dishes which are a big feature.

Cesare al Casaletto
Via del Casaletto, 45 – 00151 Roma
Tel. +39 06536015
Closed Wednesdays and for a week at the beginning of October.

To get to Da Cesare pick up the number 8 tram heading for Casaletto (in the opposite direction from the Piazza Venezia) and sit on it until you reach the final stop - about 20 minutes from the centre. As you get off the tram look backwards over your shoulder, cross the road and you’re in Via del Casaletto. Couldn’t be easier.

You can buy tram tickets in tobacconists and magazine kiosks.

First impressions: Merchants Tavern, Shoreditch

It’s hard to talk about Merchants Tavern without telling the story behind it. Which is that it’s a joint collaboration between Britain’s most famous female chef Angela Hartnett and her boyfriend Neil Borthwick.

Sweet, but nothing remarkable about that you might say but Borthwick, a talented chef in his own right, had a terrible accident a year ago when he fell off his bike and suffered serious head injuries. It’s nothing short of miraculous that he’s made the recovery he has and is fronting this grand project which is backed by Canteen founders, Dominic Lake and Patrick Clayton Malone. (Hartnett meanwhile has her own restaurants to mind.)

The great open room with its airy skylight and sweeping semi-circular banquettes appeals the moment you walk through the door. There’s a retro typically Shoreditch bar area in the front which has pulled off the Hawksmoor trick of looking as if it’s been there for years and a large open kitchen at the back. All very 2013.

The menu, wine list and cocktail list are all short, a sage decision by experienced restaurant manager Thomas Blythe (ex St John), the other member of the team. It makes for relaxed eating. The menu is seasonal - where isnt these days? - and sophisticated. Borthwick’s previous job was at The Square and he’s also worked for Michel Bras - an influence that shows in the freshness and simplicity of the food.

I chose well. My starter of scallops, crushed pumpkin and trompettes de la mort mushrooms was a wonderful combination of sweet and earthy and a main course of cod, ham leeks and salsify fell almost into the category of comfort food - the kind of thing I would want to eat if I were feeling poorly and wanted spoiling. It went perfectly with the gorgeous Fanny Sabre Savigny-les-Beaune my host had ordered which I later discovered was £78 a bottle. Eeek! Like the other wines on the list it’s available by the glass so try it if you get the chance.

The third member of our party - and the only one whose dishes I could reach - experimented with the set lunch which featured a tasty but slightly messy-looking starter of home-cured salmon with dill oil and a first class dish of braised pork cheeks and 'creamed potatoes'. Which reminds me, we had mash too - baked potato purée, a must-have side.

The one pudding we ordered - definitely pudding rather than dessert - a soft warm honey and walnut tart with whisky cream - was also spot on.

If I had a criticism it would be that portions - especially the scallops - are small for the price an accusation you certainly couldn’t level at the fixed price lunch which is £18 for two courses. I would guess ordering off the à la carte costs about £40 a head plus service*.

It's early days but Merchants Tavern already passes a crucial test for me. If a foodie friend was coming to London for a few days where would I recommend them to go? Merchants Tavern would definitely be among the options.

Merchants Tavern is at 36 Charlotte Road, London, EC2A 3PG (just off Great Eastern Street by the Hoxton Hotel) Tel: 020 7060 5335 Email: booking@merchantstavern.co.uk

*Although they were still charging soft opening prices when we visited. (The restaurant opened on the 8th).

Boulestin, St James’s Street: London’s latest French restaurant isn't quite there yet

You’d think London had enough in the way of new French restaurants lately but along comes Boulestin in another bid to seduce the city’s Francophiles. Does it succeed?

I have to admit I didn’t eat there in ideal circumstances, with the edge taken off my appetite by a caviar tasting (first world problems . . . ) but food wasn’t really the issue.

For a high profile opening - and a Thursday night - the room was strangely empty and lacking in atmosphere. We later spotted that there was a terrace outside where several diners had been eating on an unseasonally warm September night and a full private dining room downstairs. It’s still early days for the restaurant so maybe they didn’t take as many bookings as they might have done? Or maybe it’s just not a great site (at the bottom of St James’s Street) which could be more worrying for new owner Joel Kissin who formerly worked for Terence Conran and should therefore know his oignons.

He should also know how to train his staff. Our rather flappy and over-effusive waiter was clearly of the school that thought it strange for a couple of women to be dining on their own and therefore that we had to be incapable of choosing our wine. Which was ironic as he clearly didn’t know his own wine list, offering me a glass of St Chinin (sic) which was only available by the bottle rather than the (perfectly nice) Minervois ‘Cuvée Orlic’ above it which was listed by the glass.

Staff hovered to whisk away our plates the moment we’d set our cutlery down meaning we got through a three course meal in an hour and a quarter. Hardly relaxing.

That said, the food - or my food at least - was very good. Given the caviar episode we stuck to salads to start with: my nicely conceived artichoke salad with fennel, tomatoes and preserved lemon being way more interesting than my companion’s (the other Fiona) endive, French beans and Per Las blue cheese which was significantly short of beans.

They were frustratingly already out of the plat du jour - “chef ‘ad to send the rabbit back”, according to The Deeply Annoying Waiter but a huge hunk of dark sticky daube of beef* with mash and beautifully cooked carrots and turnips more than compensated (and was very good with the Minervois). Sorry the photograph's crap, I know. Taking pictures of braised meat in low light is never a good idea but I wanted to give you an idea of the size of it.

The other Fiona had grilled wild seabass with fennel which she thought was marginally overcooked but, being more conservative about my fish, I thought was fine.

I also fared better with my dessert, a fabulously wobbly Sauternes custard with the consistency of a crème brûlée, served with Agen prunes in armagnac. In normal (non-caviar) circumstances I’d have ordered a glass of Sauternes at a pretty reasonable £10.85 to go with that. Fi’s rather solid lemon cheesecake, an odd inclusion on a menu that also featured lemon tart, was less impressive.

There were some other appealing dishes on the menu, especially the game (wild pigeon, girolles, lardons and kale would certainly ring my bell) but if you’re not careful it would be easy to rack up a significant bill - unless you go for the well priced pre- or post-theatre prix fixe at £19.50 for 2 courses which happily includes the daube.

The main problem for Boulestin though is that there’s a lot of competition if you feel like a French meal at this level including Brasserie Chavot just off Bond Street which has just picked up a Michelin star. Despite the quality of the cooking it doesn’t have enough going for it as a restaurant experience to make me want to go back. Except possibly for that custard . . .

Boulestin is at 5 St James's Street, London SW1A 1EF. Tel: 020 7930 2030. There is also an all-day café in the front of the restaurant, Café Marcel.

London's leading critics seem divided on the restaurant. Read Jay Rayner of the Observer's review here and Nick Lander of the FT's here.

I ate at Boulestin as a guest of the restaurant.