Italy Lesson #1: Ask an Italian where you should eat in their city and they will most likely respond with the caveat, “well, you know, to eat really well, you need to go outside of the city.”
That is the answer I got one night from an Italian who had revealed himself as a fellow food fetishist, so I knew I had found the right person. “And what about funghi porcini?” I asked innocently. I was on the hunt for this king of the mushrooms, the boletus edulus as they say in Latin, or the “piglet” as affectionately called by modern day Italians. Fall is prime time porcini season in Italy, and to have a proper porcini meal I knew I had to get out of the city and go to the mountains where they are found and prepared - as one Italian once told me in utmost seriousness - by those who have "the culture of the porcini."
Upon hearing this question, the Italian practically jumped out of his seat in excitement. "There is this place in the mountains..." he paused, leaving me hanging on his every word. "All they do is funghi porcini. Stupendo!”
He started to recount dish upon dish in vivid, sensual detail. I must have been in visible ecstasy, because he stopped, winked at me and said, "Sei golosa, eh?" Golosa means gourmand or glutton in Italian. I took both as a compliment. He then grabbed a napkin, furiously wrote down a few words and handed it to me: "Da Marino - Quincinetto - FUNGHI PORCINI!!!" I immediately told my Italian friends this is where we were going the next day. My new porcini partner-in-crime offered to take us there.
Quincinetto is a small town located just off the autostrada, about a half hour from Torino where the mountains of the Val D’Aosta start their dramatic rise. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about Quincinetto, population 1,100, except funghi porcini, which is exactly why five people piled into two cars and headed out there. Once we got off the exit for Quincinetto – blink and you’ve already passed it – we arrived at a desolate intersection with an old gas station. We made a quick and sharp left, driving by a pizzeria/beer hall on our right. At the end of the road, we saw a sign pointing right for "Da Marino" and followed it up a small hill.
Warning (and Italy Lesson #2): this is not that quaint little trattoria found in some picturesque hillside town, where one sits with his glass of wine and exclaims "Ahhh, Italy." That is the Italy espoused by generic travel magazines and guidebooks. Get over it. This is true Find. Eat. Drink. territory, and Da Marino, located on the ground floor of a nondescript 1960s era apartment building, is at the frontier. Here, it's all about the food, and that of course means funghi.
And then began the insanity. Each course was wheeled out on a cart and served to us al momento. The first was a stunner: a salad of ovoli mushrooms, thinly sliced and barely dressed with lemon and olive oil. These golden yellow, egg-shaped mushrooms have a delicate fragrance and flavor that are best savored unadorned. Considered precious since Roman times, they are extremely rare and almost impossible to find even in restaurants in Italy. They only grow when they like the weather, and once picked, last only a few days and must be eaten right away. Matteo, known as the cynic in our group, even sensed the profundity of the moment. At one point he paused, rested his fork on his plate, and said, "Questo e’ veramente buonissimo." We knew it was truly good.
Then followed three more courses, each one impossibly better than the next:
tagliatelle ai porcini, porcini trifolati (porcini sauteed with olive oil, garlic and parsley; in Tuscany and other parts of Italy with the distinctive minty herb nepitella) and as the grand finale, porcini fritti. Perfectly fried to melt in our mouths with nutty, porcini goodness, this was, as another in our group said, the “colpo di grazia” - the coup de grace – the final death bite - that just about put us over sanity’s edge. But not enough for us to deny ourselves a marvelous dessert of poached pears in marsala to conclude this royal funghi feast.
The damage, including two bottles of Barbaresco and a digestivo: a mere 40 euros each. Driving and digesting our experience on the way back to Torino, my Italian companion got philosophical, “You see, we Italians, all we need to be happy is good food, good wine, and good friends.” That is Italy, and Life, Lesson #3.
