A Little Hay for Lunch in the Town Next Door

Today we went over to Canepina, the next town over from our own Soriano nel Cimino, for lunch at Trattoria Linetta. When we moved here we planned on eating out a few times a week, but the pandemic changed all that. As things have changed, it has been hard to change our mindset too. Would we feel comfortable enough to eat indoors, and really enjoy it?

And lately, incredibly, we have been so busy with creating multiple itineraries for many different clients that we have just ended up staying home, because an “epic” lunch would be wasted on us if we had to come home and work for several hours.

But today we had the time and the will, so we did a bit of work in the morning and then went to Canepina. Canepina is famous for its “fieno”, the Italian word for hay. Fieno is a thin, light pasta, like angelhair, but more fine. Typically it is served with a tomato ragu, or with a white bolognese, like wild boar, pork, or rabbit. It is specific to this town and only a few places make it.

Today we had it both ways, Matt’s was with rabbit white sauce.

Then we had a stew of marinated pork with artichokes. After we inquired, we were told the pork is marinated in white wine, water, sugar, and salt, then slow cooked.

With this, we had a dish of fresh, razor-thin sliced raw puntarelle, with a great olive oil and anchovy paste. This puntarelle was so delicious that we ordered a second plate, plus a little more wine to finish it off.

These are all relatively simple dishes to make, but each element was carefully chosen from great local ingredients, and it showed.

Because we ordered the second dish of raw puntarelle, and inquired about the vegetable, the chef came out and talked to us about how to prepare it, and also brought us a bonus plate of cooked puntarelle, which he explained was more bitter than the raw, so he served it with cooked carrots to sweeten it.

We were already stuffed but I accidentally ordered a dish of sweet chestnuts in rum, an espresso, and a grappa (not pictured).

We had 750ml of fabulous local red wine, a bottle of sparkling water, and some great local bread. For all this, we paid €55.

Our green passes were checked, as was everyone else’s, and everyone wore masks when they were not sitting at the table. Customers who came in who obviously knew the staff happily elbow-bumped them to say hello, and I thought about how much the culture has changed since Covid, and also how little. The little adjustments we have made to make ourselves more safe have taken time to get used to but they are really not a big deal.

At the other corner of the trattoria, a table full of businessmen were having lunch together. They talked some business, but spent a ton of time talking about the food, remarking on its quality, and complimenting the staff and chef.

We are so grateful to live here, where such careful attention is paid to great eating and quality of life in general, and where it is possible to have such an “epic” lunch for such a bargain.