Sunday Lunch: I Tri Scalin and Cucina e Butega

4 July

After a long morning in the Archeological Museum, we found ourselves on the south side of town. A recommendation from VirtualTourist stuck in the mind, that a restaurant called I Tri Scalin (who needs final vowels!) was a place where families went for Sunday lunch. It was Sunday; it was lunch time; and the ipod real came to the fore. A quick peek at the downloaded webpage gave us the address: via Darsena 52, and the sear

ch function actually found the street on a pdf map, something of a walk outside the walls, and the search function for more nice people in Ferrara, led us to the spot.

No menu, as such. The waiter reels off what they have today, but for our benefit, he did bring over a printed list, and told us what dishes “non c’è”: these included donkey stew (to Holt’s slight disappointment and greater relief). We asked about salama da sugo con purè di patate. Too hot, he said. Instead we checked off another of the classics: pasticcio di maccheroni. Take fresh elbow maccheroni, blend with a white sauce charged with nutmeg and ground meat, and bake it in puff pastry. Only the Italians can put a starch inside another starch and make magic.

The best dish, worth the detour all by itself, was the agniolini with pesto and cherry tomatoes. N

ot the usual blender pesto, but finely chopped basil (growing everywhere in July), set off by the acid of the little tomatoes. No nuts.

For a cold platter: vitello tonnato. For a hot: fritto vegetale, crackling bits of zucchini and eggplant. Plus it made its own dessert: batter-fried apples and crema, sprinkled with powered sugar.

A half liter of the house white. It effervesced. So did we.

Despite thinking we might never eat again, we did. The peckish feeling returned around 9:30 and after a pleasant walk we entered the bright and bustling Cucina e Butega (bottega to those of us whose Ferrarese is a tad rusty). All our restaurants have been rather sedate till now, so it was a pleasure to enter a well-lit, crowded, but not clattering space.

A well thought out menu of mostly slow cooked, easily plated dishes. We asked about salama da sugo con purè di patate. Too hot, he said. Holt finally understood, when Barbara likened it unto ordering “turkey with all the trimmings” in July. A restaurant might well give it to you, but would be wrong not to protect the ignorant from their follies. (Not one of the guidebooks which listed the “typical” dishes mentioned that this is a winter dish).

We ordered rabbit: coniglio disossata , which arrived in nice slices (nices slices?), rolled around prosciutto and a whole zucchini running the length. Then oca arrosta with mele verdi: goose dark and rich, where the green apples had melted into a background sauce.

The wine was called Zefiro, which we ordered purely for the name of our nephew Zephyr, Not only did it turn out to be from a region we had read about and wanted to try, the Colli Piacneti, but a totally new grape, Ortrugo. It was wonderful, bright, crisp, fading to a delicious mineral water flavor at the end. Since all the wines are frizzante by default, they use fermo to mark a wine as “still.”

Holt went up to ask about desserts and then, at the very end of our time in Ferrara, he was granted his wish: a dessert called “salama a sugo,” prepared only there, a rich creamy chocolate cake with zabaglione, which we swear is (lightly) flavored with turmeric.

And so we left Ferrara having finally sampled all the classic dishes (sort of).