Ok, let's say you are on the autostrada from Venice to Austria or vice versa. You are sick of…read moreeating at the petrol stops (though, admittedly, the sandwiches are not bad). You want a meal. You want pasta or pizza or both.
Pull off in Pontebba, near the Austrian border. It's a little town, and Caffe Vecchio is on one of 2 or 3 principal streets, a few steps from the main plaza with the bars where all the bikers and cyclists stop for a bit. The restaurant is in the back with a large bar area in front, but you can eat in either space.
They have maybe 30 pizzas on the menu, with about any combo of ingredients you might want, but if you don't see what you'd like, customize it. I had the sausage and morels a coupe of times. Delicious thin crust from the wood burning oven. Perfect.
The pastas are excellent, too. I enjoyed the spaghetti with meat sauce more than once, and my wife had the arrabiatta sauce with spaghetti, with penne, and on its own with bread. She loved it. Nice and spicy. The lasagne is tasty, too. Some days we ate here twice. And they have coffee in the morning.
One drawback. On evenings that they have no hotel guests (there is a small hotel above), they often don't have pasta at dinner. There is always lasagne, though. All menu items are available at lunch.
Nice folks, with good house wines, too.
