Travelling Walsh's: Osteria - where home cooking can sometimes be better than home cooking

Have you ever been to an Osteria? Well if it is a good one, it is better than home cooking.

Not the Osteria mentioned in this blog, just a cool photo!

This afternoon for our late lunch (it was past 14:30) we went to Osteria Vini e Cucina in Bari. These places create very typical cuisine and there is normally no menu. From the front it was a typical place, with no menu on the window or door, so we stepped in and went down the 6 steps into a room with a vaulted ceiling. There would have been about 12 tables or so and about 30 people already inside, laughing, talking and having a good time.

Una Tavola per Due? - Asked Katie (a table for two)
Si, Si - Yes Yes said the man and gestured to the one closest to the door.

We sat down and he then walked away, within moments he was back with a fresh table cloth (green tartan), but no menu.

He then continued with the following:
"I have Antipasto" (normally a selection of meat cheese and the like)

"I have Orecchieette, with Pomodoro" (a type of pasta and tomato sauce)

"I have meat, Pesche or Carne" (with seafood or meat)

To us this was a dream menu, he said "okay" We both said Si, Grazie (Yes, thank you)

He said Pesche or Carne (Fish or Meat)
We both replied Carne (meat)
Unsurpassed by our reply he asked Salsiccia or Bistecca (Katie was a little lost on this one but I knew what he was asking (Sausage or steak) but thankfully I did and provided a translation. We both opted for the sausage and in typical Osteria style, he said better you have sausage and you have steak, we agreed.

Next, he asked "you like vino?" we said yes and replied vino Rosso (red wine)

With the warm weather and the humidity back in town we also ordered a bottle of water, this is big here, almost everyone has bottled water at mealtime.

So from there, our meal was ordered.

We love these types of very simple conversations, in no way are we fluent within the language but without using almost any English we were able to order an Antipasti, pasta first course, meat second course and house red wine.

Within about 2 minutes the wine arrived followed by the antipasti, it was some slices of cheese with prosciutto and then another plate with incredible sun-dried tomatoes and grilled eggplant which were both drizzled in olive oil.

Savouring these dishes was hard to do as they were amazing, in fact, that would have been enough, but before we wiped the plates clean and our cutlery placed aside for the next dish, the plates were taken from us.

The pasta dish arrived, it was the pasta made locally and had a sweet and savoury tomato sauce, but the clincher for me as the (expected) basil that is normally on a dish like this was not present. Old basil was replaced with...rocket leaves. Yes, the types you would normally have in a salad and just like basil leaves, they were slightly wilted due to the heat of the sauce. When combined with the sauce and pasta the spicy heat from the rocket leaves were like little explosions of energy and complimented the salty cheese on the pasta well.

Again we could have stopped there, of course, we couldn't and thankfully the portions were small so we could continue.

The plates were whisked away and in the meantime, we poured the red wine, this house wine was not at cellar temperature but was chilled and was a welcome refreshment in the warm weather.

In what felt like seconds the meat dish came out, the sausage about 15mm thick and coiled up around some skewers, and the steak thin like sandwich steak. We both shared the meat dishes and were amazed by the succulent texture of the seak and flavours of the sausage. There was very little on the plate other than lettuce (like an iceberg) that was cut up in strips and dashed with olive oil.

Again without warning as soon as we were finished the plates were whisked away... oooh I almost forgot, Southern Italy CAN make bread. Sorry for what I have said in the past but that was based on northern Italian bread which is normally made without salt. The bread in this area is amazing.

Finally, we needed to turn away the waiter as he brought out the fruit dish of two giant slices of watermelon, he was ok with this but insisted we have two little desserts. They were a cross between a mini croissant and a sfogliatella (crispy dessert from Naples) they were piled with a lemon and vanilla custard and dusted passionately with icing sugar.

He also asked if we wanted a coffee to go with our dessert, it appeared it couldn't get any better but I thought let's push it and see if he can also make a great coffee. Of course, it was espresso and had the correct amount of crema on top. Was it great? Of course! This Osteria has been making great food, serving great wine and making great espresso since 1879.

The remainder of the afternoon we were able to catch up with Tony and Norma, relatives from London who have made the long journey to spend the next week with us. We walked the streets of Bari and we were able to see the ladies that make pasta that supplies the local restaurants.