Our favorite cafe in Borgo recently changed ownership. Nikola has taken a new job and now it is the Gecko Cafe. 0.80 Euro for an espresso - the best coffee I’ve had. It’s a really cute coffee shop and the new owners are very friendly.
Winter is beautiful in Tuscany. The light is more gentle all day than in the summer and the warmth seems closer when the distant mountains are covered in snow and the nights are cold. We had a lovely time there, if only for two nights, warming the house with the wood furnace and taking long walks down to town and up to Rocca.
We ate at I Macelli in Borgo a Mazzano the first night - I had the Minestra Di Cereali, then the Ravioli di Castagne and finally the Filetto Di Manzo, all excellent as always. The food at I Macelli is excellent, always. The second night we had dinner at The Butterfly, just outside of Lucca. Butterfly is a Michelin rated restaurant and perhaps the best restaurant I’ve ever been to. Everything there is amazing.
Carolyn and I both had the “of the land” tasting menu. Of I think about 8 courses, only the pasta with sardines was not to my taste, but I don’t normally like them anyway and even so it was good.
It is a source of constant amazement how affordable first rate restaurants are in Italy. The food there is much better than anything one can get in the US, probably because the supply tend to be local and everything is made fresh and from local ingredients, and possibly for the same reason the prices are surprisingly low, even with the painful exchange rate one eats better in Italy than one could in the US at 4-5 times the price.
And then there’s the bulk wine dispensed into your own bottle at less than 2 euro a liter…
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We had a wonderful meal at the Restoran Dvorisce. The local Croatian wine was very good and the food excellent: Carolyn had the spaghetti with crab and I had swordfish. The restaurant is stylish and clean and the service was excellent.
The night before we ate at Masklin I Lata, a cute little local homestyle restaurant with a great selection of local brandies. I had vegetable farina soup, Carolyn tomato rice. She had seafood risotto and I seafood spaghetti. All excellent.
Maps.
Red brick coffee tofee brownie. Good food in guelph
Excellent food, good drink and the grill is open until midnight.
It is my favorite destination on a cold night. Though the music is often too loud and the patrons occasionally are, and especially Thursday nights (motorbike night) it can be a bit crowded, it is probably the best late-night food in Cambridge and just happens to be
on the way from MIT to our apartment.
Watching snow through the big windows is very pleasant.
As I’m spending more time in Guelph lately than expected, it has been a very good thing to discover the Red Brick Cafe. They have good food items and very good coffee. No overheated milk in the latte. They know the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. The coffee is excellent. Back before the US economy tanked, it would have been a good deal too, but with the US dollar trailing the Canadian one, it is only fairly priced.
576 Queen St. W. in Toronto (416) 504-9736 at Bathurst.
Good shwarma. I got dinner there are 1:30am on Tuesday. Open late and very satisfying.
We had a lovely dinner at Mizu on King St. in Toronto. Very good, very fresh Sushi and a very nice owner who kindly shared with us his two favorite sushi restaurants in Toronto:
- Kazi Sushi in Queen’s Way
- Hiro Sushi on King St. East
Dinner at Old Weang Ping, maybe the best Thai restaurant in the bay area. 510 430 8771
