Eating holes

So far, my eating experience in Milan has been very sketchy. Not having much time - or will, to be fair - to discover the best eating holes in the city, I simply let myself be dragged from place to place by my Milanese friends. The experience has been mixed at best, although it did uncover what was my favourite restaurant so far: La Madonnina.


So far. Because tonight young E. took Tot T and me to a place literally next door: L'Osteria dei Poeti. There are several around Italy, it seems, but few sport such an exquisite selection of cross-regional delicacies.

It all started with a selection of affettati. One in particular caught our attention for the peculiarity of its name: coglioni di mulo, donkey's bollocks.


It came with squacquerone, a traditional fresh cheese from Romagna, which was served with figs mostarda from Cremona, which we incidentally discussed yesterday.


We then moved on to meats of various sorts, including a rather elaborate filet fold, stufffed with crescenza, radicchio and covered in quite a lot of cream. Not for the faint hearted. Something rather like this:


To finish things off, we opted for orange and chocolate sponge cake, and large glasses of grappa barricata.


In a word, excellent. But we barely scratched the surface of the long list, which included excellent cheeses from all over Italy and snails, my favourite small edible pet.

We'll be reserving table 9 for the next 3 months...