KLouis

Very helpful, thanks! For me the most interesting part was that there are only two restaurants in Umbria (of which one used to have three stars a few years back: too much TV?). This is an area where you eat well in quasi any restaurant in any village, yet so few places if you want the extra "thing".

manstein58

Best restaurant in Genoa? Recommendations please as well as hotel

Perche

Since you didn't mention price, the best restaurant in Genoa is probably Zefferino. Pavorotti was such a customer that it was rumored that for a time he rented an apartment above the restaurant.

From his biography, "The Giro d’Italia headed somewhere into the beautiful italian landscape today as well, but Big Luciano and Odd Pavarotti decided to stay in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liguria region and the great city of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoa (or as the italians say; Genova) for one more day. According to Odd Pavarotti’s guide-book, Pavarotti visited the great restaurant Zeffirino in Genova when ever he was in town. Zeffirino is situated on Via 20 Settembre, 20, which is in the centre of Genova."

Prepare to pay the price. And when in Liguria, you want to focus on the pesto. The pesto is different there. It's a different kind of basil leaf grown in a particular type of soil. It doesn't taste at all like the pesto you get anywhere else in the world. And again since you didn't mention priced, the grandest hotel in Genoa is the Grand Savoia, or Grand Hotel Savoia, or something like that.

Perche

This seems like an interesting trip for anyone going near Bologna. The one in Torino is spectacular, now this, one million square feet of good Italian food..

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/t...av=bottom-well

JMN57

Just flew out of BLQ Tuesday but didn't get a chance to go there. Did the mini, autostrada version and stopped for a nice lunch at the Eataly/Autogrill in Modena. Like to stop there as they have cantucci made with pistachio there that are awesome - always get a couple of boxes. Will try to get to the Bologna monster Eataly when I go through BLQ next year.

Perche

Best restaurant in London
People in this Forum often mention "ratings," which generally means using TripAdvisor, the worst way to plan travel in the world. Asking tourists to rate hotels and restaurants in a city they spent two days passing through is crazy. There was an interesting article about it in an Italian paper today. Almost all of the reviews are false, paid for bad reviews are by enemy restaurants. There was even a video of two competing restaurants across the street from one another who kept posting bad reviews about each other, until finally, one group charged into the restaurant of the other and there was a lengthy fight, with chairs thrown, tables overturned.

In this case, a guy in Milan invented a non-existent restaurant in London, called "The Shed." A picture of it is above. It's his backyard. It's advertised as rustic, natural organic food. He bought a chicken to run around so that he could advertise it as rustic. Since he doesn't know how to cook, he purchased some shaving cream, honey, and bleach tablets, and took pictures of fake dishes. It started out as the 18,149th best restaurant in London. But due to how easily the ratings can be manipulated, this place is now rated the best restaurant in all of London. He has had thousands of people calling for reservations, which he always responds to by saying he is full. It's like La Scaletta, the fake restaurant that someone put on TripAdvisor and made it the number one restaurant in Italy, and it was just a police station in a small town. Within 3 months this guy manipulated the ratings so that he was getting 89,000 requests a day for reservations from around the world. By November 1st, his non-existand restaurant, called, "The Shed," was rated as the best restaurant to London, and it didn't even exist.

He finally accepted a reservation, and allowed a couple to eat there. He went to the supermarket and spent 31 pounds on food, and announced that what they were serving that night was, ""Vegetable minestrone, Mac'n'cheese with truffles or vegetable lasagna. Desserts is a Milk chocolate cup." That's it.

Despite having chickens running around them while they were eating, and them eating canned and frozen food, they actually left a top notch review on TripAdvisor as the best food they ever ate, even though he had just defrosted it from the supermarket! They even insisted on taking a selfie with the super-chef that they posted on TripAdvisor, and he his just an unemployed dude with no cooking experience.

This restaurant didn't even exist, it was a prankster's backyard. When it was revealed to TripAdvisor, there official response was, "Most scammers are considered to manipulate classifications of real locations, so we do not distinguish between the attempted fraud of a true locale and that of a non-existent locale".

Nevertheless, a non-existent locale was able to get rated as the #1 best place to eat in all of London, like they did with Scaletta, a non-existent restaurant in Italy, with the address of a defunct Italian police station in a ghost town. Mamma mia!


Pictures of the food

manstein58

Best classic trattoria in Rome? Gino’s? Perilli?

Perche

Cesare al Casaletto. Hands down. You can spend ten times that amount, and not eat better. This is where the chefs eat on their day off.
http://katieparla.com/cesare-al-casa...est-trattoria/

Sciamano

Perilli was maybe good till 20 years ago, maybe. Went there some months ago and spent the double for a pasta that I prepare better!

Stay away from there.

manstein58

Gino's or Perilli?

Sciamano

Perilli (I didn't read Gino's that's why I answered like this. I'll edit it)

manstein58

Perche

I think it depends on what you order. I rate both Perilli and Gino's as excellent, depending on the dish. It's pretty hard to top the carbonara at Perilli. And also, Gino is a very common name, so it depends on which Gino's you are going to. If it is Gino's in Trastevere, then you will definitely be eating food that would be better left outside for the birds. That's pretty much true for most restaurants in Trastevere. Mass tourism has taken over Trastevere, and it's hard to find a decent place to eat there anymore.

I don't think you can rate most restauranst in Rome as a whole. Some excel in one dish, and half of the other things on the menu are terrible. It just depends on what you order. Gino's, as long as this is not about the one in Trastevere but the one near Parlamento, makes all Roman dishes very well. And I'm not someone speaking out of some tourism nostalgia. That's one of my go-to places. It doesn't exceed at anything, but they will never disappoint, no matter what you order.

I'm definitely against the myth of, "eating with the locals." That is extreme nonsense, in my opinion, but Gino's is a truly local place. One of the most important things about eating in Italy is the, "rapport between price and quality." (Rapporto prezo-qualita). Perilli has some great dishes, and some not so great, like many places. You just have to know what to order. Carbonara.

Gino's, if we are talking about the one near Parlamento, you can never really go wrong there. It won't sweep you off your feet, but the rapport between quality and price is about as high as it gets. That's at least my two cents.

manstein58

GoldenItalianBoy

Un caro saluto a tutti gli amici italiani, con i migliori auguri per un 2018 ricco di viaggi !

​​​​​​Greetings to all Italian friends, and a happy 2018 full of great trips !