Trip to Italy Day 8 - Birthday and Easter Lunch At Il Cantuccio

As mentioned in the previous post we went back to Il Cantuccio Restaurant and Wine Bar in Castellina for Beverly’s birthday and our Easter Dinner. Il Cantuccio means "the nook."

Here are some shots of the restaurant which is small like the others we’ve been in.  They have seating inside the restaurant, outside, and across the street in their wine bar.

Obviously from the ceiling, this building has been around a while.

While they have ovens behind the bar, the actual kitchen can’t be any larger than 5’x5.’  This is the cook and the actual kitchen then the ovens.  It's hard to believe so much good food can come from such a small area.

We began the meal a with bottle of wine and a delicious bruschetta appetizer of bread, barely cooked sausage and pecorino cheese which we cut into four pieces.

The locals believe the best Pecorino cheese comes from Tuscany, specifically the town of Pienza, a little south of here, and it is often served young and soft – it has been on every meat and cheese board served to us.

Following the bruschetta, we shared some Gnocchi and a Caesar salad – the gnocchi was very good but I like more anchovies in my salad.

This is restaurant owner, Francesco, opening the bottle of wine he selected for our entrees.  Both wines were super Tuscans for Beverly’s desire of a more full bodied wine.  Super Tuscans are made when the wine includes all or some international grapes (ie – merlot, cabernet, etc.) that have been grown in Tuscany.

For the entrees, Beverly had Eggplant Parmesan, Keith had Rack of Lamb, Kathy had the perfectly cooked Porterhouse Steak, and I had Osso Buco so I could compare it to mine.

We all enjoyed our meals and mine was so good that I ate it all with the main difference being theirs was thinner and larger around than mine at home and it had a much heavier breading on it.  I believe they just grass feed their beef vs. finishing it on corn like in the US and the filet side of the steak was not as tender as what I’m used to I'll get my steak at home.

For dessert we shared their version of cheesecake - a glass with a crust topped with sweet mascarpone cheese (I think) then Nutella.  Finally we had a small glass limoncello.

All in all, a great classic Italian meal and as usual it took us about three hours to eat it and we had most of Bev's and Kathy's meals to bring home.

Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/20/25 event dates