Let’s put it this way: if I have to mention a cuisine that is not enough celebrated, despite its exceptional value, I think of Josean Martinez Alija’s Nerua in Bilbao, or of Paolo Lopriore’s ll Canto, before it closed down. When recently I finished eating at Ciau del Tornavento, in Treiso, I felt something similar. To be clear, the food is completely different from the previous two, the styles are opposite: nevertheless, what they have in common is the clear feeling that you’re in one of those temples of good food that deserve greater fame, in their own field.
We make mistakes, so we cannot exclude that some contingent aspect could have influenced us positively when judging Ciau: for example, at the time of our latest lunch, that is to say a few weeks ago, the Langa area welcomed us with a beautiful sunny day. Besides, the restaurant is luminous, it can boast one of the most beautiful terraces-cum-dining-room in Italy, with an unbeatable view over the hills of Barbaresco. By they way, this is a temple of wine too, with a marvellous cellar, unmatched in Piedmont, with over 50 thousand bottles …
Marinated salmon (with unrefined salt and wild fennel) with a delicate home-made smoking
Anyway, everything helps to make the guest feel at ease, even the location, an elegant building from 1931, in typical Fascist style, an interesting place for those who are passionate about architecture, which later became a state kindergarten and finally was managed by
Maurilio Garola and
Nadia Benech. She’s in the dining room, he’s in the kitchen, helped, for 7 years now, by 32 year old
Marco Lombardo, a talented young man from Alba who has the task of adding a contemporary touch to local tradition. This is a no-frills dream team, scarcely interested in public relations: they say little, patronise even less, travel when they really must but work hard in the kitchen. The result was – according to the experience of the author – a virtually perfect lunch.
One always tends to exaggerate, culinary reviews are full of superlatives, everything is “brilliant” and “extraordinary” so it’s best to explain my point of view. For instance, an excellent meal can start with a tasting of salmon (indeed, the exploited and deprecated salmon), but a marinated one (with unrefined salt and wild fennel) with a delicate home-made smoking, together with some butter from Valle Maira: a delicious dish against the tide, perhaps like the fish itself, which was caught in Norway. And moving on along the menu you can really enjoy yourself. For instance with the
Finanziera piemontese.
Lombardo confesses his soft spot for simple local raw materials: it’s his passion. And he complains: «Few order it, let’s say one guest in 200».
We immediately order it and are repaid by a luxurious, succulent dish, with a clear though finely balanced acidity (given by vinegar and marsala), sweet and sour gherkins and small onions that add crunchiness (while peas add sweetness) and are matched by a meaty triumph: sweetbread, rooster crests, brains, liver meatballs,
granelle and veal. It’s an ecstasy: I tasted one as good perhaps only at
Vivalda’s
Antica Corona Reale in Cervere. Nevertheless, this wasn’t even the emblematic dish of this trip, not as much as its more elaborated relative:
Golden brains with parmantier cream, spugnole mushrooms, white onions, black truffle, a sublime composition that risks everything with its sweet notes (brains, potatoes, leeks, onions...), but easily beats the risk of being overly sweet.
Are these too complicated flavours, that risk to
épater le bourgeois?
Garola-
Lombardo dish out a calm and tasty sea, with excellent products: which is the winning dish, between the classic
Sanremo prawn, breaded into a mix of tonda gentile hazelnut and grissini emerge, or the
Fresh burrata, Sicilia red prawns carpaccio and tomato confit? It’s difficult to answer, in the end we would feel like praising the unexpected one, when we’re served the “left overs” of the prawn, their head breaded into semola flour to be dipped into a sauce
tartare, together with two super fresh moleche fish.
Petit fours on a sightseeing
Those who, instead, should prefer to remain solidly in the Langa area, need not to worry:
Ciau is eclectic and can satisfy this need too. For instance with the
Fassone piemontese meat: it’s marinated for a few hours in oil and lemon but has been hanging for 30 days; raw, in dices, it has an unmatched melt-in-your-mouth character, together with the field salad and flowers, the sauce made with the same egg yolks that are used for the fresh egg pasta for the
Liquid tortelli with asparagus and Alps butter and almonds which – in the following dish – will continue to celebrate this ode to the local territory. As for us, we dedicate our ode to this great, excellent tasty location.
La Ciau del Tornavento
piazza Leopoldo Baracco, 7
Treiso (Cuneo)
+39.0173.638333
Average prices: starters 22, first courses 18, main courses 23, dessert 14 euro
Closed on Wednesdays and at lunchtime on Thursdays
Tasting menu: 60 and 80 euros
