Italy 2015: Cinque Terre Eats

If you hadn't heard, I was in Italy for a week last month. If you're interested in the non-food stuff, you can hop over to my travel blog, because I've started sharing all of my tips and photo diaries.

Anyway, the main reason we decided to go was for the food. That is how important food is to us. I thought I'd share snippets of what we ate in each city.

First up, I'm sharing the deliciousness from Cinque Terre.

GIANNI FRANZI

We stayed at Gianni Franzi and after seeing what they had on the menu, we decided that it would be the perfect venue for our inaugural meal.

We started with a baby-sized bottle of the local wine, sassarini. It's a really crisp and dry wine. Though I'm more of a crisp and sweet wine kind of girl, I did enjoy the sassarini.

For our starter, we got the anchovy (acciughe) with lemon and olive oil. Anchovy dishes are quite common and popular in this area and with good reason. It's freshly caught and then simply served and it's delicious. The lemon brightened up the briny ocean-y flavors of the fish while the olive oil added a lovely unctuousness.

For her primi piatti, my sister got the black pasta with a seafood sauce. The black pasta was deliciously salty and I loved how the noodles were perfectly dressed with the sauce.

For my primi piatti, I had the seafood spaghetti. A big pile of pasta with clams and mussels was presented to me. This was my favorite dish of the entire trip. My sister and I were trying to dissect the flavors so we could recreate it when we got home. We think that there was some white wine, lemon, just a little garlic, a little hot pepper flakes, and fresh oregano. It was perfect.

For our main, we decided to share a dish of grilled baby octopus. The octopus was perfectly tender and really simple. All it needed was a little squeeze of lemon and it was perfect.

We enjoyed our meal as the sun was setting and then decided we needed dessert.

Because we were in Italy, we had to get tiramisu. The creamy portion was incredibly light - it had the texture of whipped cream - and the ladyfingers were super fluffy and the espresso flavor was crazy. It was awesome.

RIOMAGGIORE PIZZA SHOP

For breakfast, we skipped coffee and stopped by a little pizza shop to get some tricolor pesto pizza. It was incredible. If you didn't know, pesto was created in this region so it's a must-eat when you're in Liguria.

TRATTORIA LA SCOGLIERA

We enjoyed a lovely lunch in Manarola. We got a platter of anchovies served in three different ways: salted, fried, and fresh.

Sister got a pesto pizza for lunch. It was huge and a little too cheesy, but the pesto itself was superb.

I went for the seafood linguine. It wasn't as good as the pasta I had at Gianni Franzi, but it was still really good and it was packed with seafood.

UN MARE DI YOGURT DA MADDALENA

After climbing maybe a thousand stairs to reach Corniglia, we rewarded ourselves with some gelato. I went for lemon and mango while baby sister went for strawberry and kinder bueno. The gelato was unbelievably creamy and smooth and perfect.

GIANNI FRANZI PART 2

So, because we loved Gianni Franzi so much on our first night, we decided to go back for our final dinner in Cinque Terre. My sister went for the spaghetti with clams, which was delicious.

I went for the same spaghetti with seafood that I enjoyed on my first night and it was just as delicious the second time around.

For our main, we got this insane grilled seafood platter, which had baby octopus, calamari, langoustines, and prawns. The langoustines were so amazing. Why don't we have more langoustines in the States?

The platter was so humongous that we couldn't even consider getting dessert.

BREAKFAST BAR

For breakfast on our last morning, we found a little cafe and grabbed a cappuccino (Italy is the only place I'll consider drinking coffee, as I'm not a regular coffee drinker) and some brioche. We got one apple and one chocolate, which was kind of perfect, as 'mela' and 'cioccolato' are two words I had learned via Duolingo prior to our visit.

VERNAZZA PIZZA

To finish off our time in Cinque Terre, we each grabbed a piece of tricolor pesto pizza. The pizza here is made on a super thick, fluffy crust, which makes sense because focaccia originated here too.

So that was a little food tour of Cinque Terre. Come back for the next four cities!

xoxo.