Trattoria di Paese
Trattoria di Paese
The name means roughly "whatever it takes" in the local Piedmontese dialect — a family trattoria in the village of Settime where the recipes have been passed down orally and never written. Gran Fritto Misto, Bollito Misto, Bagna Cauda in season: the complete vocabulary of Piedmontese peasant cooking, made from memory by a family that has been making it for generations in the same kitchen in the same village. The lunch fixed menu starts from €10, which is a number that requires a moment to process.
This is not a restaurant in the modern sense of the word. It is a table kept alive by habit, loyalty and a principled refusal to change anything — by the regulars who have been coming every week for decades, by the farmworkers and locals who treat it as an extension of their own kitchen. Reservation is required and cash is the only option. It is closed weekends, which means the clientele is entirely local, which means the food is cooked for people who know exactly what it should taste like.