{"id":205,"date":"2015-05-16T18:30:37","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T10:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/?p=205"},"modified":"2019-02-03T17:49:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T09:49:12","slug":"la-ciau-del-tornavento-all-the-wine-to-dine-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/2015\/05\/16\/la-ciau-del-tornavento-all-the-wine-to-dine-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Piedmont’s La Ciau del Tornavento – All the Wine to Dine For"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a Michelin one-star establishment, La Ciau del Tornavento packs a punch. The restaurant sits on a hilltop in the town of Treiso in Piedmont with the dining room opening up onto a fantastic view of the vine laden slopes and valley below. The cuisine takes Piedmont\u2019s traditional dishes up a notch – largely recognisable, nothing foamy here. But best of all it has the most impressive wine collection I\u2019ve ever seen with its cellar holding more than 38,000 bottles.<\/p>\n

\"Spacious<\/a>
Spacious restaurant, great views<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We came here on our last night in Piedmont – we hadn\u2019t planned on\u00a0hitting any fine dining places but La Ciau was enthusiastically recommended by a friend. We are glad we came. The wine cellar itself is a treat to visit. Walking down to the cellar, we were\u00a0met with cleanly stacked, floor to ceiling rows of wine bottles. These are mainly barolos, barbarescos and other Piedmont wines.<\/p>\n

Moving deeper into other areas of the cellar is like going into Aladdin\u2019s cave. It culminates in\u00a0a vaulted room filled with famous names – including several bottles of Domaine Romanee Conti, Petrus and Chateau Yquem. La Ciau\u2019s chef and owner Maurilio Garola half jokes that all his savings have gone into the wines. It\u2019s an extremely illustrious, and delicious, piggy bank.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Rows of bottles line the cellar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With such a well stocked cellar, it\u2019s no wonder that the restaurant\u2019s wine list is a joy to discover. It\u2019s sometimes not easy to find wines of older vintages in Europe\u2019s restaurants since the locals drink their wines relatively young. This was not an issue at La Ciau.<\/p>\n

There are also affordable rarities and we stuck to local wines to accompany our meal. These included a Vigneti Massa Derthona Sterpi 2010, made from the lesser known Timorasso grape. We also enjoyed a nice sparkling pinot noir and chardonnay blend from Contratto Millesimato (Extra Brut 2010). Our red was a Barbaresco Riserva Ovello 2009 and we closed with a La Spinetta Moscato d\u2019Asti Biancospino. I also noted that the prices for the wine, even the higher end Gaja bottles,\u00a0were relatively\u00a0reasonable.<\/p>\n

Turning to the food<\/strong><\/p>\n

We ordered the degustation menu, which La Ciau calls the Destination Menu. It comprises six courses, which are determined by the day\u2019s freshly available ingredients. While we weren\u2019t ravenous, we felt that the degustation would give us the best feel for La Ciau\u2019s food. And since it was just six courses, it would be manageable. Naturally, while there are six courses, there were a couple of fillers in between. In the end, we were so full we just couldn\u2019t manage the cheese trolley, which I really wanted to try.<\/p>\n

\"Roasted<\/a>
Roasted pepper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The meal started with roasted pepper stuffed with rabbit accompanied by an anchovy sauce. I\u2019m not a big fan of anchovy so I was relieved that the sauce was largely on the side and not overwhelming. The pepper and rabbit itself was good, with the pepper having been skinned and nicely sweet.<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/a>
Four goodies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More fillers – a platter of four different types of goodies. Rabbit must have been on the menu as on the plate were fried rabbit \u201cdrumsticks\u201d and rabbit liver profiterole along with fried zucchini flower and a squid inked cod (bacalao) croquette.<\/p>\n

\"Squid<\/a>
Squid marinated in beetroot juice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our second course, which I particularly enjoyed. The squid was marinated in beetroot juice and accompanied by a cream made from Ligurian pigna beans. The squid was cooked just right, not rubbery and super tender. Candied lemon and \u201cblack cappucino\u201d were the additional flavour enhancers.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Prawn coated in hazelnuts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A La Ciau signature dish is the hazelnut coated San Remo prawn – finger lickin\u2019 good. This was probably another filler.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Veal carpaccio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our next dish was the veal carpaccio, which was served with burrata, tomato and hazelnut oil.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Frog drumsticks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My non-beef eating friend was served another signature dish – a plate of frog drumsticks dressed with parsley, anchovy, garlic and egg yolk.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Asparagus with a healthy dose of black truffle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next came the more substantive courses. Asparagus, in this dish, is bathed in a goat, sheep and veal milk reduction and topped with quail egg and black truffle.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Signature Plin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This was followed by\u00a0another house specialty – La Ciau\u2019s variation on plin (a ravioli\u00a0typical of Piedmont), which they call Plin de Seirass. This was ricotta filled ravioli cooked in hay water. The hay gave the ravioli a nice, almost smoked flavour.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Stuffed quail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The final course was a half quail, roasted and stuffed with foie gras and herbs. By this time we were so stuffed that we couldn\u2019t even order dessert. A compromise was the hay sorbet (not pictured), which was pleasant in that it was light but could be described as vanilla infused with the smoked hay. Almost like a mild caramel.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a>
Petit Fours<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I couldn\u2019t touch the Petits Fours in the end but my table mates seemed to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

I think one of the nice touches at La Ciau was the personal presence of Mr. Garola and his wife Nadia Benech, who were quick to answer all our questions about the food. They were both very hands-on, assisting the wait-staff if needed. This made the restaurant feel more like a traditional family run establishment and less of a celebrity chef temple.<\/p>\n

All in, the meal cost less than EUR120 per person – we didn’t order super expensive wines. It was a very satisfying meal and the relatively friendly pricing will entice me to return. There were a number of dishes on the a la carte menu I\u2019d like to come back for including the cheese trolley. They do a Piedmont beef T-bone steak, which must be good given the tenderness of the meat. That, accompanied with a nice elegant barolo, of course.<\/p>\n

Contact La Ciau through their website (largely in Italian, with some English): www.laciaudeltornavento.it<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a Michelin one-star establishment, La Ciau del Tornavento packs a punch. The restaurant sits on a hilltop in the town of Treiso in Piedmont with the dining room opening up onto a fantastic view of the vine laden slopes and valley below. The cuisine takes Piedmont\u2019s traditional dishes up a notch – largely recognisable, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,19,104,124],"tags":[43,69,29,37,30,31],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-italy-europe","category-michelinstar","category-italy-northernitaly","tag-featured","tag-italian_food","tag-italy","tag-michelin_star","tag-piedmont","tag-wine","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3949,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/3949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}