Day Ten – The Lunch To End All Lunches, Then Home

The sky was overcast this morning, for the first time since we arrived in Italy. We spent some time packing, then went downstairs for a quiet breakfast. After munching through the usual, we went back upstairs to put the last of our stuff in our bags and dragged it all down to the car.

We headed north, in the general direction of Torino, to spend the day exploring hill towns to the east of Torino, per Tim’s recommendation. We first stopped at Cocconato, a cute little village perched on it’s hill. Unlike a lot of the smaller towns we’d driven through, this one seemed a bit busier even though it was pretty tiny. We stopped at the little cafe for a cappuccino to see us through the rest of the day, and to waste a bit of time before lunch.

Next we drove down the hill, following the signs for the Conbipel factory outlet – they really outdid themselves with the signage. We found Conbipel without any problems, but it took us a minute or two to find the restaurant, despite the fact that we drove past it twice without noticing it. In our defense, we were distracted by the sheer oddness of Conbipel – three or four giant warehouse looking buildings with huge parking lots all around, completely full of cars. Despite the number of cars around, there was no traffic and no people in sight. Spooky – looked like the beginning of a zombie-attack movie.

We finally found Restaurant Caccina Rosengana and went in to ask about a table for lunch. It was noon, but they weren’t quite ready – they asked us to come back in 15 minutes. Oddly, the woman we spoke to didn’t speak very much English, but was fluent in French, so we managed quite well without Italian or English at all.

While we waited, we walked over to the closest Conbipel outlet store and went in, not quite sure what to expect. What we found we definitely were NOT expecting from a factory outlet. It looked exactly like a big North American department store, full of mens and women’s clothes. The only real difference was that everything seemed to be own-brand, and other than a bunch of employees folding clothes, it was completely empty. I kept a close eye out for zombies, as you can never be too sure in these sorts of situations.

We wasted our required 15 minutes and walked back next door to the restaurant, where we already had a table waiting for us, complete with a basket of bread and a stack of grissini (really thin bread sticks). I sampled a bunch of the grissini as they are hugely addictive, which in retrospect was a mistake. We ordered the “typical” menu which included antipasti and a few courses, as all good Italian meals do. We were looking forward to it, but were somewhat surprised by the sheer number of courses we had – eight in all, plus coffee at the end.

Lunch included (I’m documenting, so that we’ll remember): bresola wrapped around some sort of a soft cheese/cream cheese type filling, followed by spinach and ricotta balls in carrot pure, then asparagus mousse in a puff pastry shell, with sliced veal with tuna sauce to round out the antipasti course. Yes, that was just antipasti. The first course was split in two – ravioli filled with veal, pork, and rabbit in a sage butter, then spaghetti in a tomato and sausage sauce. Our main course was roasted veal in a butter and aromatic herb sauce, with mixed fresh veggies. Finally, for desert we had a tasting plate of three treats – a chocolate panna cotta type thing, a cherry tart, and a very tasty semifreddo. I’m feeling full again just writing it all down.

After our epic lunch, we were running a bit late (it took a glorious two and a half hours, all told), so we decided to skip the trip to the abbey up the road and just head straight to the airport. We programmed Tracy the satnav and set off, very full and very happy with our choice of lunch venues.

We made it to the airport with only a little confusion – Tracy didn’t feel like following the same route as the signs appeared to want us to go, but she got us there in the end. We dropped off the car, checked in and dropped the bag, and went through security. Both of us are very sad that we have to leave Italy and are definitely not looking forward to going back to real life tomorrow, although I’m looking forward to sleeping in our own bed again. Until next time...