20 Sep 2022

Posted at 00:00h in Italian itineraries, Testimonials
The August crowds have left the beaches and Italian children are getting ready for school. My sister and I decide to take a road trip somewhere in Italy from our respective homes in Rome. It doesn’t take long to settle on a destination we both love – the Costiera Amalfitana – 35 miles of staggeringly beautiful coastline meandering south from Naples.
  
Having covered Italy as the correspondent for LIFE Magazine for two decades, I’ve been up and down the peninsula many times. Yes, the Italian Alps are celestial, Portofino is glorious, the Greek temples in Sicily awe-inspiring, but nowhere has consistently seduced me with its eloquent charm like the Amalfi Coast. Ville in Italia finds us a house perched on the cliff just above the coast road in Praiano, one town South of Positano.

02 Feb 2015

Posted at 00:00h in Food and wine

Palma Campania is a small village in Southern Italy, between Naples, Avellino and Salerno, a tiny dot that shines, however, on the map of Italy thanks to the talent and creativity of Pietro Parisi, a young chef who was born here and where, in 2005, he opened his restaurant, Era Ora, where stars and heads of state have sat at his tables, from Nicolas Sarkozy, accompanied by his wife, Carla Bruni, to Hugh Laurie, the star of "House”.  Pietro is also known as the Farmer Chef  because, in his dishes, he uses produce from his own land, a very fertile area situated between the Avellino valley and the valley of Vesuvius, the Terra Felix of Campania as it was defined in the 80s, when it was one of the biggest producers of walnuts, hazelnuts and, above all, vegetables cultivated by the farmers that Pietro knows personally.

08 Nov 2014

Posted at 00:00h in Food and wine, Italian itineraries
Italy is highly regarded for, among many things, its diverse cuisine, great climate, picturesque landscapes, impressive villas, and a host of gourmet restaurants serving mouthwatering culinary delights. Some of the best restaurants in Italy are found in the Piedmont region. Piedmont restaurants are specifically well known for maintaining centuries’ old traditional cuisine made from the region’s famous specialties such as truffles, stuffed pasta, hazelnuts, and meat casseroles served with the region’s best wines and a variety of chocolate desserts. Here is a look at the top 6 Piedmont restaurants serving unforgettable traditional Italian cuisine:

09 Sep 2014

Posted at 00:00h in Food and wine

The aperitivo experience is a major aspect of Italian tradition.

Traditionally, an Italian aperitivo is actually a pre-meal drink taken as an appetizer. Having an Italian aperitivo has become a common ritual where people meet at a bar to partake alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages with small bites of olives, nuts, cheese, crisps and other similar snacks. In the last years it has slowly replaced the whole dinner process, since many bars in Italy offer, during the aperitivo time, buffet Italian food including pasta, pizza, mozzarellas and may other delights!

29 Aug 2014

Posted at 00:00h in Food and wine

If you say “Volare” you immediately think of Italy’s most famous worldwide song (whose title “Nel Blu dipinto di Blu” was changed into “Volare” in Dean Martin’s version). It immediately transmits the light heartedness, the fantasy, the irony that are typical of the Italian people and their way of life.

In Chicago, when you say “Volare” you immediately think of Benny Siddu’s restaurants, that like the mythic 50s song, transport you to the country of the sun, with their delicious regional dishes, their rich Italian wine list (about 350 labels, one of the best in Chicago, topped only by “Benny’s Chop House”, Siddu’s steak house, that contains 2500 labels), their interior design so full of colours, candle sticks, paintings (by famous painter Matt Lamb), give the impression of being in a typical Italian trattoria, simple and elegant at the same time, with the kitchen in plain view, the red brick oven, the Carrara marble bar.