Food

Eccentric and bombastic Italian chef Gianfranco Vissani was “to the kitchen born.” His father, Mario Vissani, was the owner and chief chef of a country-style restaurant in his tiny medieval hometown of Civitella del Lago near Orvieto in Umbria, in the very heart of Italy. Mario’s customers were local fishermen and Sunday tippers. Gianfranco started [...]

By Mother Martha My last month’s “Religious Stays in Italy” cited many convents offering hospitality to tourists. Instead, the premises of the VOI (standing for Vera Ospitalità Italiana) Camilla Savelli Hotel, reviewed here, still belong to the religious order of nuns, the Agostiniane dei Sette Dolori, but are administered by the tour operator Alpitour. It’s a [...]

Religious Stays in Italy By Mother Martha The non-profit Association Ospitalità Religiosa Italiana (Italian Religious Hospitality) (www.ospitalitareligiosa.it), headquartered at Via Molina 10 in Varese, a city in Lombardy northwest of Milan, tel. 327-3842841, counts some 4,000 “religious places to stay” in Italy, with a total of some 287,000 beds. These include guesthouses, holiday houses, B&Bs, campsites, [...]

Stefano Navarrini Illustration By Mother Martha Since taking over this column in January 2014 from Friar Tuck, whose style was as expansive as his appetite(!), I’ve written about many Roman restaurants. Though all of Rome’s restaurants are now closed due to the virus, we are still hoping they will reopen soon, and we will [...]

Tables Near Raphael By Mother Martha Already an acclaimed artist, at the end of 1508 Raphael (1483-1520) left Florence for Rome, where he lived for the rest of his short life. He was invited to come by Pope Julius II (reigned 1503-13), probably at the suggestion of the architect Donato Bramante, who was working on St. [...]

By Mother Martha While gelato, panettone, cannoli, torrone, and tiramisù are beloved worldwide, other Italian sweets are less well-known and even regional. Some examples are bônet in Piemonte, sbrisolona in Lombardy, torta Barozzi in Emilia-Romagna, tozzetti in Tuscany and Umbria, sfogliatelle, babà, struffoli and la pastiera in Naples, seadas in Sardinia, and cassata and granite of [...]

By Mother Martha The year 2019 was memorable for a favorite Italian aperitivo: the sparkling white wine called prosecco. Its terroir, the region it comes from, is the Veneto province between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, north of the city of Treviso, and into parts of the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia. On July 8, the [...]