Just spent my first vacation in South Tyrol (Italian: Alto Adige, German: Südtirol), Northern Italy, a region where Italian and German are the two main languages. This provides for a very interesting dialect that at times sounds like a mix of Austrian and Swiss German with a sprinkling of Italian. We booked last minute so several hotels we called had no more vacancies. We finally came across Schlosswirt in Scena in a guide book and booked a room for a week. It was a very clean hotel with spacious rooms and a nice breakfast buffet. The only disadvantage were the nearby church bells that woke us at an ungodly hour.
On our first night we went to the rustic Thurnerhof, just a short walk away from our hotel through the typical South Tyrolian apple orchards. We were lucky that it was warm enough to sit outside or we wouldn't have gotten a seat inside as the restaurant is quite popular.
We got started off with a basket of typical South Tyrolian breads including Schüttelbrot, a dry flatbread made of a mix of rye and wheat flour and spiced with fennel and caraway seeds as well as anise, coriander and fenugreek.
As a main I had the curious dish of mixed salads with the South Tyrolian specialty of bacon dumplings (Speckknödel). Who came up with the idea of putting hot dumplings on cold salad? It's delicious nonetheless.
J. had Tafelspitz (boiled beef) with vegetables, potatoes and South Tyrolian apple horseradish cream. Also a very tasty dish.
For dessert we shared a dessert platter, which turned out to be amaretto semifreddo, chocolate mousse and apple strudel (another South Tyrolian specialty). The semifreddo was very good, the other two a little disappointing due to a lack of flavor and strange texture.
All in all we were really happy with the restaurant and would have gone back on two other occasions had they not been fully booked.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment