le Calandre

This meal was worth the trip to Rubano.  I am pretty sure for a Wednesday night - they had more staff then they had customers.  I imagine the service is always impeccable, but it seemed even more so last night.  The chef came out to greet us.  I don't think he speaks any English, and we're not sure why he picked our table to greet, but it was still fun.  We had a total of 13 courses.  There are pictures of some of them above.  The pictures do the dishes no justice, but they are still worth showing.

The best way I can think of to describe this food is (for those that live in Calgary) it is similar to Capo. Capo up 99 levels that is (which I didn't think was possible).  Italian for sure as we had scampi, risotto, cannelloni with ricotta etc, but the pasta for the cannelloni was crispy.  For those Top Chef lovers - techniques we saw from Richard last season show up in each dish.  Not too much gastronomy, but just enough to make you think - how did they do that?  A very modern, contemporary style of Italian cooking, and absolutely the best flavours that have ever graced my taste buds!!

Now a bit about the wine for those of you that care.  The Sommelier spent a bunch of time with us finding out what we like and what we were looking for.  The wine list was on an iPad (brilliant by the way), but we hardly looked at it.  We made our decisions off what he was suggesting.  We started with a Dolcetto, moved to a Corvina and wonderful dessert wine made from 100% Garganega.
A quick wine lesson:  Dolcetto is from the Piedmont region (NW Italy) that is normally known for Barolo.  Corvina is one of the three grape varieties used in the production of Amarone (Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara).  I have never had a wine with these varieties on their own, so when the Sommelier suggested a 100% Corvina I was very interested.  It was even more surprising when in one of the best restaurants in the world they brought out the Corvina and the producer was Zenato.  I know there are many of you that won't care about this, but for the wine lovers out there, the Amarone lovers, and most importantly the Zenato drinkers (you know who you are) you understand why this is worth mentioning.  I know we have put back many a bottles of the Zenato Ripasso and Zenato Amarone.  I was very excited to see this wine really is as good as we think it is!

Now I must pack up as we are off to Valpolicella (where Amarone comes from).  I imagine my wine haze from last night may not have a chance to fully go away.