Montefalco – Italy

Recently, we’ve been travelling to Italy once again and we decided to drive from Rome to the lovely Montefalco, in the region of Umbria.

The town is about 2 hours from the capital and the road to get there is pretty nice as well, featuring some panoramic view of the Flaminia, the old road built by the Roman empire; the only suggestion we can give you, is to take plenty of time to travel, as the traffic can be quite insane, especially if there is any festivity around (we were there for Easter), or if it’s during the weekend.

For our stay, we decided to book two nights at Vicolo Fabbri, a small but really nice flat right in the center of Montefalco, close to the Piazza del Comune, which is essentially the main square of Montefalco; the owner of the flat is also the owner of the restaurant and wine bar (or, like they say in Italy, Enoteca) “L’Alchimista” and, after reading about the place, we decided to book for dinner the following day.

For the flat, you will need to go in the restaurant and get they keys there; in terms of getting to the square, if you come by car, you will need to park it outside the wall. Overall, this should not be a problem as there are plenty of spaces where to leave it for free. The flat itself, as mentioned before, is an open space studio, composed of a small kitchen area, big and comfortable bed and great bathroom. Even though all the bed sheets, towels, etc. are provided, it’s important to come prepared in terms of shower gel, toothbrushes and toothpaste as these are not included in the rented property. I couldn’t praise enough the really great bed, especially after being in many places around the world with AirBnB or any other service, and find often low quality mattress, to spend the night on. This is not how Vicolo Fabbri is!

After checking in, we’ve decided to go around the town for some food, as we were almost close to collapse of hunger.

Word of advice: do not try to get lunch in Montefalco after 2pm, as they simply won’t serve it anymore. The place is still going on the same slow pace that has always been a characteristic of many places in Italy. Even though, at the time, I was growing angry about it, it’s something that you learn to appreciate, especially if you come from a big city like London is. After going around asking (more like begging) for food in few places, we’ve stopped in the main square and the restaurant/bar that is there (called Federico II), was still partially serving some food (no pasta though!). We sat down and got two nice fillet steaks cooked in Sagrantino wine and a bottle of Montefalco Red to go with it; what we didn’t know, is that the meat cooked in that specific wine, it’s simply outstanding.

Look at this:

Did you see it? Did you see how amazing that meat looks like? You need to understand that, regardless of how hungry you can be, that steak is insane. The wine gives it a taste of epic and the meat itself is tender, fresh and full of great flavor. All the meat comes from local producers and you can feel the difference from a crappy steak you get in whatever supermarket; this is another level.

Happy with our lunch, we decided to fully embrace the Italian culture and get ourselves a so called “Aperitivo”: essentially, this consists of a couple of glasses of your favorite beverage (yep, red wine for us) accompanied with a variety of small *complementary* snacks.

Let me tell you this again: the food you get during the aperitivo, is FREE. Gratis. No cost.

The restaurant kept its cool and once again delivered very high quality food, even for this afternoon occasion; once finished, after walking around for about 10 minutes, we went to rest and to get ready for the evening.

The restaurant we booked for dinner, was a place called “Il Postaccio”, which roughly translates into “The bad place”: this is to describe something that can be considered rustic, not in line with fine dining expectations, but more old school for people that are hungry. Well, the food we had was absolutely great and, for the first time, we actually drunk a bottle of Sagrantino, the local wine.

Another word of advice: Sagrantino it’s an excellent wine, but it’s very heavy (we are talking about 15% heavy). Please make sure to order appropriate food for it or you might end up either extremely drunk or unable to finish the bottle. Aside from this small detail, the wine is absolutely outstanding and it deserves the praise that has recently been built around it.

The restaurant itself is quite small but welcoming and the host (I’m assuming the owner as well) is very friendly and the service was fast and impeccable. In terms of food, the menu changes quite often and it offers a good variety of meat, fish and vegetables. The dishes are written on a board: this is not a place with a 5 pages menu and what else. This is for someone that comes in, chooses from a board and loves every single minute of it, like we did. Great place!

As for the specific, I went for Tagliata and verdure ripassate (essentially a steak and vegetables), while my wife went for the wild boar in beer: amazing food!

After a pleasant meal, we went in the first Enoteca right after the arcs of the main entrance of Montefalco, going towards the main square: the name of the place is “Enoteca” and it offers a good variety of wines and some food. The place was very full, as we believe it is also one of the main hub for the locals to meet up and have one or more glasses.

It was time for us to go to sleep and so we did, getting ready for the next day!

Stay tuned for day 2, coming soon!

Categories: Italy, Montefalco