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Accademia Ristorante, Casale Monferrato, Piedmont: Just Glorious!
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Accademia Ristorante, Casale Monferrato, Piedmont: Just Glorious!
Accademia Ristorante, 2 antipasti, 2 primi piatti, 1 main course, 2 desserts, 1 bottle white wine, 2 dessert wines, 2 bottles still water: €143 (US$169, £122). Via Goffredo Mameli, 29, 15033 Casale Monferrato, Alessandria, Italy. +390142452269. http://www.accademiaristorante.it/
Written by Liam Collens // Find other food reviews here.
Accademia Ristorante could rely on being jaw-dropping beautiful but it also churns out home-style dishes with finesse.
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
One of the most finely decorated restaurants I’ve ever visited
Accademia Ristorante sits inside a historical site offers a quick sightseeing and gawping
Very generous portions for the price
Superb chocolate dessert, il bonet
Very strong wine menu under €30
The Lows
More rustic-style cooking vs what some may expect from a Michelin guide list (bib gourmand)
Some dishes felt under seasoned
Accademia Ristorante: Casale Monferrato’s Best Restaurant
Piemontesi food is nothing short of sublime. Delectable dishes constructed from ingredients perfectly in season. The sweetest pale green courgettes adorned with delicate yellow-gold flowers cooked and brimming with milky, suave ricotta. In a land where everything is yes yes yes, it is impossible to say no, please stop, I am full.
My quest brings me to the small but perfectly formed town of Casale Monferrato, specifically to Accademia Ristorante. Casale Monferrato resembles many aged Piemontesi towns. Industrial, utilitarian exteriors give way to old town facades: the residual legacy of former glory. It is hard to imagine people will look back on today’s characterless steel chimneys with the same affection as soaring stone archways and expansive piazzas still bustling with weekend markets.
Accademia Ristorante’s leans on a classical style from the 1700s including original frescoes
My quest brings me to the small but perfectly formed town of Casale Monferrato, specifically to Accademia Ristorante. Casale Monferrato resembles many aged Piemontesi towns. Industrial, utilitarian exteriors give way to old town facades: the residual legacy of former glory. It is hard to imagine people will look back on today’s characterless steel chimneys with the same affection as soaring stone archways and expansive piazzas still bustling with weekend markets.
Accademia Ristorante’s leans on a classical style from the 1700s including original frescoes
Accademia Ristorante reveals its secret before its front door
I arrive at the foothills of Palazzo Gozzano Treville, the home of Accademia Ristorante and Casale Monferrato’s Philharmonic Orchestra. You must allow at least 20 to 30 minutes for photos and gawping.
Accademia Ristorante, and the wider Palazzo Gozzano Treville, is magnificently stained with fading but no less stunning frescoes painted in the 1700s. The craftsmanship is humbling and seldom seen elsewhere. I am dumbstruck.
Accademia Ristorante’s original 1700s frescoes just in front of the restaurant’s front door.
Accademia Ristorante’s dining room and sitting areas romance you. Fresh cut flowers scent the rooms, oversized vibrant curtains drape across open windows affording visitors a fresh summer’s breeze and view onto the palazzo’s slender, smooth columns and intricate statues. It is a restaurant within a museum and unlike anywhere else I have ever seen. If you told me that this was Italy’s most beautiful restaurant, I would not flinch nor would I care about second place.
Accademia Ristorante’s original 1700s frescoes just in front of the restaurant’s front door.
Accademia Ristorante’s original 1700s frescoes just in front of the restaurant’s front door.
Accademia Ristorante’s dining room and sitting areas romance you. Fresh cut flowers scent the rooms, oversized vibrant curtains drape across open windows affording visitors a fresh summer’s breeze and view onto the palazzo’s slender, smooth columns and intricate statues. It is a restaurant within a museum and unlike anywhere else I have ever seen. If you told me that this was Italy’s most beautiful restaurant, I would not flinch nor would I care about second place.
Accademia Ristorante’s original 1700s frescoes just in front of the restaurant’s front door.
Accademia Ristorante demonstrates capable cooking without seeking to impress you with those fastidious details that only gastro-fetishists care about.
Accademia Ristorante’s menu and food
Mrs EatGoSee and I settle into an intimately small dining room. The service is gentle and friendly. The atmosphere is regal. In the most unlikely of places, this Bib Gourmand restaurant is accessible at surprisingly affordable prices.
A small tasting menu offers four courses for €36. That’s correct, less than €10 a plate. It is outrageous value. The sort that should cause other restaurants to seriously self assess. I am looking at you Dubai.
Young couples, mother-daughter duos and businessmen congregate for a quick lunch nearby. Gleaming plates of summery green risotto with courgettes, burrata and anchovy are met with approval (€13). Piemontesi classics of pale chilled plates of vitello tonnato (€12) and courgette flowers plump with rich buffalo mozzarella cream and broad beans (€14) litter a focused, regional menu.
Accademia Ristorante demonstrates capable cooking without seeking to impress you with those fastidious details that only gastro-fetishists care about. There is a notable juxtaposition between the decor’s grandeur versus the comparatively more home-style, rustic food. Accademia Ristorante does better than just slap food on a plate, but it clearly does not actively seek the awards it’s achieved.
A pungent stracchino gorgonzola cream kicks off proceedings perfect for tracing salt-crusted breadsticks to amuse our bouches. An oversized veal tartare with parmesan cream and pepperonata is a totemic antipasti offering at least two days worth of your daily dietary protein requirement (€12). The fresh red shrimp tartare is beautifully hand-chopped and bolstered by orange segments and crisp cucumber (€20).
Accademia Ristorante’s Veal Tartare; Red Shrimp Tartare with orange vinagarette.
A rustic red goats cheese ravioli is layered with a lawn of glassy, sweet Breme onions and pepper cream. (€14). The goat cheese crumbles in the mouth which, together with a thicker ravioli pasta, leans more homemade than fine dining. It is comfort food, find a cat, curl up on the sofa and catch up on what is yet unseen on Netflix.
My agnolotti is man-handled, rustic and meaty glazed in silky salted butter with a whisper of woody thyme and onion (€13). My only wish is that the meat filling was slow-cooked to a lip-smacking sauce imparting a gutsy, roast meat depth that is wholly absent.
Accademia Ristorante’s Red Goat’s Cheese Ravioli with Onions; Accademia Ristorante Agnolotti with Salted Butter and Thyme.
So far Mrs EatGoSee and I agree that this is not our most technically accomplished meal enjoyed in Italy. That is a tug of war between Piazza Duomo and Ristorante Lido 84. Nonetheless, Accademia Ristorante is certainly memorable for all the right reasons.
A sautéed octopus is resilient but not overcooked. A seriously a very generous portion of tentacle protein tangled on a bed of caponata; it is like ratatouille, but better. This caponata is a touch oily and, again, begs for a flick of seasoning.
Accademia Ristorante’s sauteed octopus with caponata.
Desserts arrive but the star is Accademia Ristorante’s bonet interpretation, a Piemontesi classic dessert. A chocolate pudding laced with espresso with the sweet crackle of amaretti biscuit crumbs and the warming caramel lick of masala. It is a tiramisu all grown up and shed of its childish ways. A dessert with a mortgage, viking-level beard, worn it leather Chesterton from which it drinks single malts.
Mrs EatGoSee’s raspberry tart rushes with all the best of summer fruit crushed over a spongy cake lacquered with a thin layer of dark chocolate.
Accademia Ristorante’s stunning il Bonet; Accademia Ristorante raspberry and chocolate tart.
Come back? A part of me never left. The cooking is capable and focused. You sense the kitchen is stocked with cooks that intuitive understand good food, not poncey frills. Cooks who grew up with a childhood affection for regional dishes. They know what they are doing. Accademia Ristorante does not set out to impress you, but ends up doing so anyway.
The fact Accademia Ristorante is astonishingly beautiful inspires a second reason to return. This is not the best meal I had in Italy, but it is very memorable.
Accademia Ristorante is one of the first restaurants where I would bring friends who enjoy food for a casual lunch imbibed with too much wine. The best kind of day.
Accademia Ristorante’s stunning il Bonet; Accademia Ristorante raspberry and chocolate tart.
A small tasting menu offers four courses for €36. That’s correct, less than €10 a plate. It is outrageous value. The sort that should cause other restaurants to seriously self assess. I am looking at you Dubai.
Young couples, mother-daughter duos and businessmen congregate for a quick lunch nearby. Gleaming plates of summery green risotto with courgettes, burrata and anchovy are met with approval (€13). Piemontesi classics of pale chilled plates of vitello tonnato (€12) and courgette flowers plump with rich buffalo mozzarella cream and broad beans (€14) litter a focused, regional menu.
Accademia Ristorante demonstrates capable cooking without seeking to impress you with those fastidious details that only gastro-fetishists care about. There is a notable juxtaposition between the decor’s grandeur versus the comparatively more home-style, rustic food. Accademia Ristorante does better than just slap food on a plate, but it clearly does not actively seek the awards it’s achieved.
A pungent stracchino gorgonzola cream kicks off proceedings perfect for tracing salt-crusted breadsticks to amuse our bouches. An oversized veal tartare with parmesan cream and pepperonata is a totemic antipasti offering at least two days worth of your daily dietary protein requirement (€12). The fresh red shrimp tartare is beautifully hand-chopped and bolstered by orange segments and crisp cucumber (€20).
Accademia Ristorante’s Veal Tartare; Red Shrimp Tartare with orange vinagarette.
A rustic red goats cheese ravioli is layered with a lawn of glassy, sweet Breme onions and pepper cream. (€14). The goat cheese crumbles in the mouth which, together with a thicker ravioli pasta, leans more homemade than fine dining. It is comfort food, find a cat, curl up on the sofa and catch up on what is yet unseen on Netflix.
My agnolotti is man-handled, rustic and meaty glazed in silky salted butter with a whisper of woody thyme and onion (€13). My only wish is that the meat filling was slow-cooked to a lip-smacking sauce imparting a gutsy, roast meat depth that is wholly absent.
Accademia Ristorante’s Red Goat’s Cheese Ravioli with Onions; Accademia Ristorante Agnolotti with Salted Butter and Thyme.
Accademia Ristorante’s main courses and desserts
So far Mrs EatGoSee and I agree that this is not our most technically accomplished meal enjoyed in Italy. That is a tug of war between Piazza Duomo and Ristorante Lido 84. Nonetheless, Accademia Ristorante is certainly memorable for all the right reasons.
A sautéed octopus is resilient but not overcooked. A seriously a very generous portion of tentacle protein tangled on a bed of caponata; it is like ratatouille, but better. This caponata is a touch oily and, again, begs for a flick of seasoning.
Accademia Ristorante’s sauteed octopus with caponata.
Desserts arrive but the star is Accademia Ristorante’s bonet interpretation, a Piemontesi classic dessert. A chocolate pudding laced with espresso with the sweet crackle of amaretti biscuit crumbs and the warming caramel lick of masala. It is a tiramisu all grown up and shed of its childish ways. A dessert with a mortgage, viking-level beard, worn it leather Chesterton from which it drinks single malts.
Mrs EatGoSee’s raspberry tart rushes with all the best of summer fruit crushed over a spongy cake lacquered with a thin layer of dark chocolate.
Accademia Ristorante’s stunning il Bonet; Accademia Ristorante raspberry and chocolate tart.
Would I Come Back To Accademia Ristorante?
Come back? A part of me never left. The cooking is capable and focused. You sense the kitchen is stocked with cooks that intuitive understand good food, not poncey frills. Cooks who grew up with a childhood affection for regional dishes. They know what they are doing. Accademia Ristorante does not set out to impress you, but ends up doing so anyway.
The fact Accademia Ristorante is astonishingly beautiful inspires a second reason to return. This is not the best meal I had in Italy, but it is very memorable.
Accademia Ristorante is one of the first restaurants where I would bring friends who enjoy food for a casual lunch imbibed with too much wine. The best kind of day.
Accademia Ristorante’s stunning il Bonet; Accademia Ristorante raspberry and chocolate tart.
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