Before going to Italy, a couple of my best friends said that while I was in Italy we had to go to a restaurant and have the full Italian meal. I needed to have all the courses.
So let’s review, what are all the courses in the full Italian meal? I’ve heard different versions but there’s Antipasto, Primo (Pasta), Secondo (Meat), Dolce (Dessert), Espresso, and then after dinner alcohol like limoncella.
Well, one night while in Montevarchi a city in Tuscany, we were looking for some food. One of the local shop owners recommended Osteria Uvaspina. We walked by. It looked like a cute place. Had a nice modern interior, which was different in ancient Montevarchi. We decided to go in.
After a quick chat with the waitress, who also may have been the chef (it was a slow night), we decided… what the heck! Let’s get the tasting menu with all the all courses.
Let me walk you through what we had. First, let me warn you. This will be a food porn heavy blog post…

This was just a quick bite to start things off. It’s a sardine in a cucumber foam. Definitely don’t eat a lot of sardines but this was deliciousness.

We had two antipastos. I don’t remember what this one was called exactly but it had ham, mozzarella, basil with some balsamic vinegar, in between two flaky pastry sheets. It was delicious.

The second antipasto was a carpaccio of horse meat. Yep horse… like Wilber. It’s the meat raw and cut really thin and pounded out. I think there was basil under it. Had some type of cheese shaved on it with a drizzle of olive oil.

The pasta course was house made tagliatelle with a pea puree and bacon. It was one of my favorite courses. Of course, it was a play off of the classic of peas & bacon. And… as they say, a meal without pasta is a sin against god & man.

Next was some kind of pork medallion deliciousness with a puree of something that looks like mashed potatoes but it wasn’t . It could have been polenta.

Next was dessert. I had some sort of peach thing with a flaky cookie thing and peach juice.

Lauren had some sort of multen chocolate cake. It oozed chocolate in the middle in a very sexy way.
By the time we were done, it hardly felt like we were there for 2 1/2 hours but we were. You really got to see eating as something more than this utility that you do to give yourself nutrition. Eating is an experience. It’s an experience that you share with your friends & family.




