The Big 60! 🙀
Thursday was my 60th birthday! Normally we would have had a big party or gone to a really nice restaurant to usher in the new decade; however, with the current COVID crisis, we can’t have big parties, and our restaurants in Italy have to close by 6:00 pm.Â
Fortunately, take away is still allowed., so we decided to bring the restaurant home. I knew just who to call. We’ve taken food tours with Jennifer Mcllvaine in the past, and knew she was an excellent chef.Â
this year we were delighted when she opened a wine bar in Bevagna , Le Barbatelle. We stopped in for somee tasty treats with a glass of wine this summer after a long tandem ride. Â
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We ordered 2 appetizers: supplì, which are stuffed, fried rice balls, and a Roman style artichoke. Both were delish. In fact, the Roman artichoke was one of the best we’ve ever had.
We also ordered 2 portions of her porcini truffle lasagna. We actually split one that night and had the other one for lunch another day. It was outstanding, and we reveled in the mushroomy goodness.Â
For the meat dish, we ordered beef braised in sagrantino wine with greens. The beef was melt-in- your-mouth tender, and the sagrantino sauce gave it an extra rich beefy flavor.
Since we were ordering from a wine bar, it made sense to get a recommendation. We got a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino. It was perfect. Bold enough to go with the lasagna and the beef, but not highly tannic.Â
For dessert we picked up a couple of slices of cheesecake made at the Antico Caffè della Piazza. She normally puts a blackberry spread over it, but we were able to convince her that we really did want plain cheesecake. We enjoyed a little Zibibbo, a Sicilian dessert wine with it. James’ cousin Natalia turned us onto this sweet, but not cloying wine. It is one of the few dessert wines that does not give us headaches.Â
Even though we couldn’t go out, it was lovely to spend my birthday with my favorite person in the world. We turned down the lights, lit candles, and used the good china. We’ll have a party next year!
Here is Jennifer’s current menu, you can find Le Barbetelle on Facebook, she also has a web page, Life Italian Style. Now that we are yellow again, I highly recommend checking out her Wine bar in person!
