The region of Pavia and its capital city of the same name share the abundance of what Lombardy has to offer, including 13 DOC wine zones. Polenta and risottos rule over pasta, and dishes like osso buco and vitello tonnato deserve their classic status. Robiola, Gorgonzola, Taleggio, Crescenza and Bel Paese are all Lombardian cheeses. So you may assume  that the ristoranti and trattorie of Pavia offer a wide range of gastronomic experiences. Here are a number of every stripe.
                   (Remember, tax and service are included in all menu prices.)

 

RISTORANTE LINO
Piazza del Lino, 15
Pavia
382 180 3920

    The new Lino is not only one of the newest and most modern ristoranti in Pavia but, to my mind, the best and certainly the most sophisticated, drawing largely on the cuisine and ingredients of the Po Valley.
    Located in Piazza del Lino, within a municipal garden area, Lino’s windows throw lovely golden light onto the square. Once through the front door you find yourself in a chic bar and lounge whose size, neither small nor large, is perfect for a pre-dinner cocktail.  The décor of the dining room, done in strong and pale colors, with its tall windows, is a reflection of the influence of Milan on chic contemporary design. Manager and maître d’ Fabrizio Ciccarello is the impeccably dressed fellow with the impeccable Lombardian manners.
    Chef Federico Sgorbini, with the consultancy of the highly regarded Andrea Ribaldone, offers an exceptionally well-priced four-course menu at €55 (also à la carte);  my meal began with small arancini rice balls wrapped in cuttlefish skin dotted with barbecue sauce. “Grissino bollito” (right) which means “boiled breadsticks,” is actually spaghetti colored and scented with saffron and served with a wild boar sauce (€16).  The most marvelous dish was veal cheeks stewed in red Bonarda wine with tamarind that were exquisitely tender and flavorful (€24).
    For dessert zuppa di voghera  was a chocolate-coffee gelato with cardamom gelée and hazelnuts  (€10).
    The wine list, as you might imagine in a restaurant of this caliber, is outstanding, with all the finest Lombardian labels.

 

 

 

BARDELLI
Lungo Ticino Visconti 2
Pavia
382 27441

    Bardelli is an elegant but not at all stuffy ristorante near the covered bridge in the heart of Pavia, restored in 1960 from an old boat building structure.
    The lovely glass-enclosed dining room overlooks the river and has a ceiling of billowing Fortuny fabrics. There is an à la carte menu (with antipasti €16-€20; pastas €13-€24; main courses €20-€24) and a menu degustazione at a remarkable €40 per person.
    My menu the night I visited began with a polenta torta rich with  aged Grana Padana cheese and a creamy center. Risotto with butter and Parmigiano, artichokes and Taleggio was simply and sumptuously good, followed by delicately thin tortelli with braised beef and aromatic sage.  Roast veal (left) was superb, and even though it seemed unseasoned it was suffused with its own roasting juices. A sorbetto smoothie came before dessert, which was an array of petit fours.

  

RISTORANTE PEO
Hotel Moderno
Viale Vittorio Emanuele II, 29
Pavia
382-175-1539

  If you are hungry for hearty, old-fashioned Pavian food and don’t care much about eating it in a garish orange and neon-lighted dining room, drop into Peo, adjacent to the Hotel Moderno. Clearly its clientele are families in the area and prices are geared to them. It was a great spot for me to unwind after a flight to Milan and transport to Pavia, so I scarfed down chef-owner Pompeo Rotondi’s freshly made potato gnocchi (right) with quickly cooked tomato (€10); excellent  ravioli with a braised beef sugo (€11); vitello tonnato (€15), and a flattened veal chop alla Milanese with roasted potatoes (€18), called “elephant’s ear.”  Swordfish came as a thin slab but of good fresh flavor (€17).  I also shared a platter of delightful zucchini generously covered with Parmigiano (€13). Dessert was a nice vanilla panna cotta (€6) and a warm apple tart (€6).

 

 

 

CASCINA VITTORIO
Via Roma, 26
Rognano
382-185-5538

 

    Cascina Vittorio is set on two floors of a 19th century country home, now a destination for gourmands who drive in from nearby Pavia and Milan. Chef Giovanni Ricciardelli, together with his wife and family, works within traditions refined by his own youthful sensibility. His is a rustic cooking full of big flavors, even including the best, most moist, olive-glossed focaccia I’ve ever had (right).
    My meal, fixed priced at €60, included one of his signature items—he claims to sell 500 a week—layers and layers of eggplant millefoglie enriched with Parmigiano. This was followed with risotto mantecato (below) with local squash from Bertagnina di Dorno, beautifully composed with a sauce of Gorgonzola and Calabrian licorice flavorings.
    The main course was a very traditional brasato of local beef cooked for hours in Bonarda and Barbera wines, served with crisp potatoes and herbs. All you need is a fork to eat the super-softened meat.
    Dessert was a soft, light  golden panettone cake that is baked and sold downstairs, dotted with candied fruit and served with fresh cream. You eat it with your fingers and a cup of espresso.

 

 

 

PRIME ALTURE RESORT
Str. Madonna, 109
Casteggio
383 83214

    Constructed by a fellow named Roberto Lechiancole, who made a fortune crafting helicopter blades, this small eco-tourism six-room resort within the vineyards has a splendid trattoria overlooking the Pavian landscape. The wine cellar and tasting room, whose tables are made from corks, is a charming spot to nibble on some bread and salame while sampling the nine wines made here.
    There is a stress on seasonal vegetables as well as grilled items from local cows, pigs and chickens, and game in the fall and winter, which goes into the making of the salume, the mini-meatballs  and cheeses. In the trattoria I enjoyed a deceptively simple risotto with Molana del Brallo cheese and aromatic herbs mixed with a crumble of cotechino pork sausage (right) and a reduction of Pinot Nero wine.

 

 

ALBERGO SELVATICO
Via S. Pellico, 19
Rivanazzano Terme
383 944720

 

    Albergo Selvatico established its reputation with locals and visitors as a hotel in 1912, and today fourth-generation owner Piera Spalla Selvatico and her daughters Michela and Francesca and husband Sergio Dagliua still run everything with enormous courtesy and care, in both the kitchen and big low-lighted, L-shaped dining room.
    A tasting menu began with a glass of sparkling wine from La Versa and a selection of local salame from Varzi and peppers stuffed with anchovies and coppa pork sausage. Then came a torta of squash shaped like a priest’s hat with a fonduta of Taleggio cheese. Tagliatelle made from chestnut flour came with autumn’s best funghi porcini, while agnolotti (right) was graced with a stewed meat ragù. There is also a risotto made with green wild hops cooked with lard and butter, and another with sweet red peppers.
    The main course was a carpaccio of beef darzese (from an “old race”) of cattle, and to finish, an apple crumble with warm, whipped custard zabaglione.

 

 

L’OCA CIUCA
Via XX Settembre
Vigevano
381-348091

 

    Anywhere L’Oca Ciuca were located, it would be extraordinary in the true sense of the word, in that it specializes in dishes made with goose—goose salame, goose sausage, goose pastas, goose risotto, goose stew, roast goose! That it is located on a charming street off the main piazza of the Pavian city of Vigevano makes it all the more requisite for anyone visiting the area to eat there. In two rooms with 20 tables, Fulvia, Stefano, Rossana and Rinaldo cook for you and serve up big portions of very lusty Lombardian fare.
    Over a long lunch with wines from a 150-label list, I began with a flan of pumpkin with a silky besciamella enriched with Taleggio (€8)—a rare non-goose dish. Then came a selection of well-fatted goose-based charcuterie (€15); Carnaroli risotto with big borlotti beans and goose sausage (€14); freshly made egg tagliatelle (above) with a meaty goose ragù (€13); and a leg of crisp-skinned goose (€20) cooked for twelve hours (right).
    For dessert there’s a fruit crostata (€6) and a local favorite, sbrisolona alla mandorla (€6), a cornmeal and almond cake with warm whipped zabaglione.

 

 

NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani
Photos: Pat Dunford

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

    Given the current popularity of Barolos—with some top labels selling for up to $400 a bottle—it’s hard to believe that less than a half century ago the wine was barely sold outside of Piedmont, where it is made.
    “Piedmont was once very poor,” says Alessandro Veglio of Mauro Veglio winery in La Morra. “The market value of Barolo back then was zero.” Indeed, Barolos were often given away free with the sale of a demijohn of Dolcetto,  a lesser wine drunk in large quantities locally.
    Today, however, Piedmont is one of the top export regions, with 1 billion Euros in sales. Although  seventh in terms of quantity produced among Italy’s 20 wine regions, it is second only to Veneto, which exports vast quantities of Prosecco, worth 2.2 billion Euros.  A large part of Piedmont’s surge is due to Barolo, where a top vineyard may sell for 2 million Euros, compared with ten years ago, when the price was 1 million.
    The Veglio family in Piedmont knows well the history of the area’s viniculture, having worked the land since the beginning of the last century,  cultivating, raising livestock and “inventing new ways of getting by every day.” Angelo Veglio, born in 1928, sought to escape the life of a sharecropper to own a vineyard, which he could not do until the1960s in the township of La Morra. In 1979 the family acquired a shabby farmhouse called Cascina Nuova and some of its property with about five hectares of vineyards that contained cru appellations of Arborina and Rocche dell’Annunziata.
    Angelo’s son Mauro (of three) believed in his father’s dream that Barolo could be a great wine and make a profit, taking over the management of the winery in 1986. A decade later the vineyards of Monforte d’Alba were added to their property in La Morra, just as Barolo began its rise in reputation in the international wine market. Veglio invested in modern technology, eschewing age-old methods that had given Barolo a reputation as an ill-made, heavy, dark red wine. In 1992 Veglio had its first harvest and vinification in the new winery, built next to the foundations of the Cascina Nuova farmhouse.
    Mauro’s nephew Alessandro, 38 (together, right), united his own winery with Cascina Nuova, bringing youthful exuberance to the estate as well as a commitment to marketing and spreading recognition in world markets. Now, with 16 hectares of vineyards and five rented, the estate produces 120,000 bottles, including five crus—Arborina, Gattera, Rocche dell’Annunziata, Castelletto and Paiagallo—as well as local wines like Langhe Nebbiolo, Barbera, and Dolcetto d’Alba. About 50% of the wines are sold to restaurants, the rest to wine shops, with one-third of their exports shipping to the U.S., one-third to Europe and one-third to the rest of the world."
    While on a whirlwind marketing trip, Alessandro sat down with me for dinner in New York, where he said, “We want to make approachable wines that you don’t have to wait years to develop, wines that you can drink when we release them. For the Nebbiolo Langhe we work with 50% younger grapes from our vineyards that are four to 20 years old and 50% from older vineyards that we rent in the Roero region. We aim to make Barolos with softer tannins. Our aim is to be more like the Grand Crus of Burgundy, not Bordeaux. We believe that the Nebbiolo grape [used in Barolo] can achieve the finesse of Burgundy’s Pinot Noir but have its own distinct personality. We want to show that our crus are each one distinctive from the other.”
    Without generations of Veglios stuck in the old ways of making Barolo, Alessandro is free to experiment. “My uncle Mauro had no children,” he said, “so he told me, ‘What if we go crazy? Let’s try whatever you think will work.’”
    Part of what Alessandro feels must work is attention to global warming in the vineyards. “We want to keep the grapes from getting burned by the sun,” he said, “So we leave more leaves to cover the grapes. We also installed netting on both sides of the vineyards’ roads in order to guard against hail, but we’ve found they are also providing additional shade.”
    The Veglios use no herbicides or pesticides, instead using pheromones that “confuse the mating habits of insects and limit their reproduction.”  Grapes are exposed to natural wild yeasts, not inoculations.  Except for the Paiagalo cru, all aging is done in small French oak barriques.
    Strong evidence of the Veglios’ plans to make their wines more drinkable upon release is to be found in their very good Langhe Nebbiolo 2018 ($25), which is not aged in new oak, has a medium body, well-knit fruit, acid and light tannins and an adaptability to a wide range of foods. It’s wholly ready to consume right now, and, given its price, on a regular basis.
    The Barolo Classico 2016 ($39) is from what Alessandro says is “the most beautiful vintage I’ve ever seen, right from the start of the growing season through harvest.” The wine is exemplary of what happens when nature cooperates so completely, giving up a voluptuous body and layered texture of dark fruits balanced with acid and tannins that provide character.
    Barolo Gattera 20 ($60) is more complex, drier than the Classico but still very full of the fruit flavor of first-rate Nebbiolo.
    Of the crus, Arborina 2016 ($60) comes from “soil poor in nutrients, consisting of Sant’Agata Marl, a mix of clay, fine sand, and limestone,” which make the vines struggle but also to produce wines with a great deal of fruitiness and concentration.Flavors get bigger and more intense with Casteletto 2016  ($60), from four hectares in a southeast position with a high content of sandstone. Paiagallo 2016 ($90) originates on the eastern slopes of the township of Barolo, and at 15% I found it too heavy, too dense and not in line with Mauro Veglio's intent to produce wines to be enjoyed upon release.