Agli Amici, Udine: One of Italy’s Best Restaurants
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Agli Amici, Udine: One of Italy's Best Restaurants
Agli Amici, six-course tasting menus: €140 (meat/seafood or vegetarian). Wine pairing: €60. Liquid pairing: €60. Agli Amici, Via Liguria, 252, 33100 Udine, Italy. Liam Collens was invited as a guest to Agli Amici.
Agli Amici serves impeccable, modern Friulian-Italian cuisine with panache. It’s “worth a detour” from Udine's centre to Udine’s countryside.
Written by Liam Collens / See other reviews here.
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
Review: Agli Amici, Udine: One of Italy’s Best Restaurants, with Two Michelin Stars
Leaving Udine, the city’s buildings thin to a trickle of country homes and stretches of leafy fields, at which point, you wonder whether you’ve taken a wrong turn. Then, Agli Amici appears. Its white edifice and oversized signage reconfirm Agli Amici’s founding in 1887 and that it still holds the distinction of two Michelin Stars. How appropriate given this detour.
Agli Amici’s modern, amiable approach is ever-present with an air of formality swaddled and warmed with Italian charm by Michaela Scarello and her team. After all, “Agli Amici” means “our friends”. A team of proficient professionals weaving between tables and, without a word, lay plates in uniform and possess a sixth sense that your 2000 Ronco del Gnemiz Sauvignon needs replenishing. Agli Amici, like all good friends, reveals her best self when you don’t hold back.
Agli Amici would host me no less than four times in one week. This sojourn partially reflects my enthusiasm for chef Emanuele Scarello’s cooking and approachable joie de vivre. I am in Udine during Ein Prosit, an impressive food and wine festival put on by Friuli Venezia Giulia tourism.
I disclose this “invite” transparently. You can all apply as much cynicism and circumspect as you want. The floor is yours. However, I assure you of two things. Firstly, Agli Amici lay on my list of “places to slip out and visit, if given a chance” before arriving in Udine. Secondly, since going, I do recommend Agli Amici to anyone willing to listen (and also to many of those who don’t). Are there places I would not recommend in Udine? Yes, and you won’t read about those. At least from me.
Agli Amici is just on the outskirts of Udine but well worth the journey with its owners, Chef Emanuele Scarello and Michaela Scarello.
Agli Amici’s modern, amiable approach is ever-present with an air of formality swaddled and warmed with Italian charm by Michaela Scarello and her team. After all, “Agli Amici” means “our friends”. A team of proficient professionals weaving between tables and, without a word, lay plates in uniform and possess a sixth sense that your 2000 Ronco del Gnemiz Sauvignon needs replenishing. Agli Amici, like all good friends, reveals her best self when you don’t hold back.
Agli Amici would host me no less than four times in one week. This sojourn partially reflects my enthusiasm for chef Emanuele Scarello’s cooking and approachable joie de vivre. I am in Udine during Ein Prosit, an impressive food and wine festival put on by Friuli Venezia Giulia tourism.
I disclose this “invite” transparently. You can all apply as much cynicism and circumspect as you want. The floor is yours. However, I assure you of two things. Firstly, Agli Amici lay on my list of “places to slip out and visit, if given a chance” before arriving in Udine. Secondly, since going, I do recommend Agli Amici to anyone willing to listen (and also to many of those who don’t). Are there places I would not recommend in Udine? Yes, and you won’t read about those. At least from me.
Agli Amici is just on the outskirts of Udine but well worth the journey with its owners, Chef Emanuele Scarello and Michaela Scarello.
Agli Amici’s menu, food and wine
Agli Amici cooks modern Italian cuisine, regionally rooted, sourcing local ingredients to create a seasonal menu.
Agli Amici lubricates our lunch with aperitifs in their new lounge. Temptations arrive in the form of Kante Spumante (€18) and a house Bruschetta cocktail: an alchemy of Agli Amici’s own gin and tomato water pelted with oregano (€20). New friends opt for the non-alcoholic Purple Persian (€18). Here come bites of tempura shiso leaf with powdered garlic and the tiniest crispy fish and a bite of homemade mascarpone crisp flavoured with anchovy umami and a hit of citrus are self-effacingly described as “snacks”.
Agli Amici’s dark aperitivo room is a calm spot for their snack and aperitifs before their tasting menu.
Agli Amici lubricates our lunch with aperitifs in their new lounge. Temptations arrive in the form of Kante Spumante (€18) and a house Bruschetta cocktail: an alchemy of Agli Amici’s own gin and tomato water pelted with oregano (€20). New friends opt for the non-alcoholic Purple Persian (€18). Here come bites of tempura shiso leaf with powdered garlic and the tiniest crispy fish and a bite of homemade mascarpone crisp flavoured with anchovy umami and a hit of citrus are self-effacingly described as “snacks”.
Agli Amici’s dark aperitivo room is a calm spot for their snack and aperitifs before their tasting menu.
The lobster is deliciously-poached along that thinnest of lines between raw and cooked where you may be tempted to check its pulse.
Agli Amici’s tasting menu
Arriving at our table in the sun-drenched dining room (the better of the two halves, request this section), a trolley of homemade straw-thin grissini and bread are presented with lemon-infused butter. Soon a lobster tail follows in a blush puddle bubbling with a foam of aji amarillo and green apple. The lobster is deliciously-poached along that thinnest of lines between raw and cooked where you may be tempted to check its pulse. The lobster’s claw later arrives enveloped in a gyoza-like dumpling on a stout mound of chickpea purée enriched with butter.
The dish of the day is made of three pert ravioli that gentrify comfort food with a rush of delicious, suave cauliflower cream and rich pecorino. It swiftly enters the race for the top three best plates of pasta eaten in 2022. You too can enjoy the other two at Lido 84 and L’Orto. Our Parmesan risotto dusted with powdered bay leaf rests over a ragout of pigeon and black truffle revealed with the slightest nudge of a spoon. Pudgy Gosia gnocchis under a duvet of black truffle and hazelnuts slip down easily.
Agl Amici’s courses of lobster tail, lobster claw dumpling, cauliflower & pecorino ravioli and then the gnocchi.
Loosening a belt buckle, the desserts make their way. A pre-dessert wafer sandwich of brightest lilac followed by a fragile “daisy” with yuzu sorbet. To finish, the charming team goes full Willy Wonka by pulling in a trolley of homemade candies in oversized jars – some marzipan and amaretto or hazelnut and red fruits, among others – combined with a butter-rich brioche-like bread topped with hand-squeezed vanilla cream.
Agli Amici’s desserts impressed us with their presentation, texture and detail. Desserts are meant to wow, and these did just that.
You do remember that I went four times in one week? Even so, I would return again if I was within an hour’s drive. Agli Amici showcases attention to both detail and joy – a combination the group agrees is thin on the ground when vaulted to these Michelin Star heights.
Other dinings afford insights into Agli Amici’s broader repertoire. A judiciously-cooked scampi with squash and bergamot reduction served at Sunday lunch confirms the exacting consistency with the lobster tail. A cauliflower, partridge and anchovy course punches with salt and umami giving credibility to the phrase “surf and turf”.
Agli Amici’s tasting menus include a seafood / meat option and a second vegetarian option.
Italian food lovers and people curious about Friulian wine. Michelin Star collectors and fine dining enthusiasts. Anyone staying in Udine or Friuli Venezia Giulia. Prior visitors to Emanuele’s other restaurants in Italy and Croatia.
Agli Amici’s Parmesan risotto with pigeon ragu and a bay leaf dust; Snacks from the apertivo lounge made from shisho leaf with tiny fried fishes and more snacks with cocktails
Agli Amici’s wholemeal spaghetti cooked in squash and ginger water; buckwheat tartlet with umeboshi, Parmigiano Reggiano and raw porcini; gently cooked oyster with flavoured butter; caesar, porcini, black and golden chanterelles mushrooms, almonds and lemonbalm
The dish of the day is made of three pert ravioli that gentrify comfort food with a rush of delicious, suave cauliflower cream and rich pecorino. It swiftly enters the race for the top three best plates of pasta eaten in 2022. You too can enjoy the other two at Lido 84 and L’Orto. Our Parmesan risotto dusted with powdered bay leaf rests over a ragout of pigeon and black truffle revealed with the slightest nudge of a spoon. Pudgy Gosia gnocchis under a duvet of black truffle and hazelnuts slip down easily.
Agl Amici’s courses of lobster tail, lobster claw dumpling, cauliflower & pecorino ravioli and then the gnocchi.
Loosening a belt buckle, the desserts make their way. A pre-dessert wafer sandwich of brightest lilac followed by a fragile “daisy” with yuzu sorbet. To finish, the charming team goes full Willy Wonka by pulling in a trolley of homemade candies in oversized jars – some marzipan and amaretto or hazelnut and red fruits, among others – combined with a butter-rich brioche-like bread topped with hand-squeezed vanilla cream.
Agli Amici’s desserts impressed us with their presentation, texture and detail. Desserts are meant to wow, and these did just that.
Agli Amici, Would I Return?
You do remember that I went four times in one week? Even so, I would return again if I was within an hour’s drive. Agli Amici showcases attention to both detail and joy – a combination the group agrees is thin on the ground when vaulted to these Michelin Star heights.
Other dinings afford insights into Agli Amici’s broader repertoire. A judiciously-cooked scampi with squash and bergamot reduction served at Sunday lunch confirms the exacting consistency with the lobster tail. A cauliflower, partridge and anchovy course punches with salt and umami giving credibility to the phrase “surf and turf”.
Agli Amici’s tasting menus include a seafood / meat option and a second vegetarian option.
Agli Amici, Who Should Go?
Italian food lovers and people curious about Friulian wine. Michelin Star collectors and fine dining enthusiasts. Anyone staying in Udine or Friuli Venezia Giulia. Prior visitors to Emanuele’s other restaurants in Italy and Croatia.
Agli Amici’s Parmesan risotto with pigeon ragu and a bay leaf dust; Snacks from the apertivo lounge made from shisho leaf with tiny fried fishes and more snacks with cocktails
Agli Amici’s wholemeal spaghetti cooked in squash and ginger water; buckwheat tartlet with umeboshi, Parmigiano Reggiano and raw porcini; gently cooked oyster with flavoured butter; caesar, porcini, black and golden chanterelles mushrooms, almonds and lemonbalm
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