I asked a few locals about the best fare for a fair price. Several of them recommended "enotheque…read morebernardi" for Italian food. Good enough for me. It was just around the corner from my hotel. But then again, Bruneck is such a small town, pretty much everything is just around the corner from anything else, give or take a block or two.
Arriving into the restaurant, one might expect it to be any other bistro. Looking at the menu might reaffirm this. It looked fairly, well, expected.
The menu language choices are in Deutsch and Italiano, not English. I think this is great since it guarantees that I will be surprised since I would be mortified to ask for a menu in English (I have a deep seeded fear of being "That American" when I travel overseas, but that's another blog). I don't speak much German or Italian, which are the two primary languages of use in Bruneck/Brunico, but I do know what and "coppa" and "confit" and "pecorino" are, so that is all I needed to see in order to, well, order.
First came the bread, shortly thereafter the wine.
The bread came in a bowl with several selections. I have been in Germany prior to this for several days, so I was determined to only have one bite of a piece to just whet my appetite. I failed. Miserably.
The waitress brought me a fine estate bottled extra virgin olive oil and some balsamic vinegar...real balsamic. The kind that is cooked grape musk, stuffed in a barrel, and aged like fine scotch until it is 6% acidity and ready to enjoy.
Seeing this in front of me, in combination with the freshly baked bread, my willpower hopped on a passing car and waved to me on it's way down the street and out of sight.
I "savored" my way through the better part of an entire bowl of bread. Each calorie in every acidic, fruity, oily, seasoned, chewy bite was worth it. Willpower, send me a postcard from wherever you went.
My plate came with a generous helping of coppa, sliced as thin as the credit card I would use to pay for this meal, with a side salad with onions confit. Sweet, mild, and still offering the texture of onion, with none of the raw bite that accompanies the lilly. Thinly shaved vegetables like carrots, turnip, and zucchini were featured, and the mild nuttiness from the pine nuts was a nice subtlety to the palate. Add to this the generous topping of Pecorino Romano cheese with it's creamy, almost meaty flavor and salty bite and the dish was almost over seasoned, but the genius of it was the balance the glass of Montereggi do Massa Marittima 2010. A bold and fruity red wine that highlights each note of the dish itself as it mingles and crosses every taste bud. The salty coppa and pecorino mixed with the wine tannins, the onions with the blackberry-like quality of the red, and the bitterness of the young fresh greens washed away with the body of the wine itself. I could sum it all up with a twitter-worthy quote: "Omigod om nom nom."
The one tragedy of this meal, was I was alone at a table for two. Such a pity, such pleasure like this was meant to be shared.
I left sated, but wanting more, like the end of a really great live concert. Relax, this was just Day 1. I'm here for dental technician training yes, and what better to complement a buffet of knowledge with than a little taste of everything Bruneck has to offer. Now to find a proper guide!
