Day 11 - Turin – And my new favourite place on earth!

This one is a long one, but Italy, and Torino are treating me so well I have to share.  I am constantly amazed at the beauty of this city and thankful to be here, it seems like every time I turn a corner I am in another stunning piazza with vistas of palaces, ornate churches or just a stylishly relaxed café.

And I have been indulging in the regional choclate specialty of gianduja (and giandujotti) but possibly a little too much. I genuinely adore the stuff but am starting to find myself avoiding buying any more (and I do have more than enough to keep me, along with a small village, in supply for quite some time).  As a result I seem to have inadvertently taken to buying biscotti instead – and I don’t even like biscuits that much!  Although the little chocolate profiterole I had today was exceptional, but technically not a biscuit.

And then of course there is the gelato.  The Torinians (or however they should be addressed) appear to love the stuff.  More than I have seen anywhere else in Italy, they can be found slurping it down on street corners, steps, cafés, shop fronts – wherever there is space.  And of course I’ve had Italian gelato before and recognise how good it can be, but there seemed to be something else going on here so thought I should find out a little more. 

The first thing I learn is that not all gelato is created equal, as with the strong regional focus on food there is regional differences to gelato.  Apparently ‘up north’ they use more egg yolks and cream – and the result?  Beyond anything of the ice-cream family I have ever had before!  The texture is so thick, creamy and absolutely luscious that I cannot describe it, but do revel in the memory as I try and find words to do it justice. And add the local flavour specialty, gianduja of course, to the equation and I can never look at ice cream the same again.  I also had some coco (coconut) and fragola (strawberry) but the gianduja was by far the best.  Particularly from the Café San Carlo – although skip the beautifully interiored café/ restaurant with their overpriced, not very nice ravioli and abundance of attitude and grab a cup (or cone, but I’m a cup girl) of their sweet offerings around the corner for 2,00 euro and settle yourself into a space on the piazza and watch the world go by. 

I worry about my gelato quality diminishing after leaving Turin and try and calculate in my mind how many gelato I can eat in a day without getting enormously fat (bearing in mind a typical day also has to include hot chocolate, chocolates, fennel seed salame and the like).  Sadly, I think I am rationed to no more than one a day...

But as much as the gelato is fantastic, I haven’t even got to my new favourite place on earth – a bold statement I am aware, but a very true statement.

I wrote a couple of very short notes to myself  when I first entered my new favourite place on earth and they are a little silly, a little excited; a bit like a gushing teenager meeting The Beatles (or insert your relevant contemporary cultural reference – although  please note The Beatles are not my contemporaries, more my folks).  Anyway, notes read:

Officially the most amazing place on earth! So so so phenomenally excited!!! 

And yes the underline, repetition and multiple exclamation marks are what I wrote.  So where/what is my new favourite place on earth?   Well, with a little effort it can be found in an unassuming part of Torino, on the number 42 bus line (yes I even had to navigate Italian buses to get myself here, not quite sure where you are going to end up – true dedication and very impressed with my brave and successful effort) and it is a place called Eataly and it is the most incredible food store I have ever been in.  Sadly their website isn’t so great, not for us English speakers anyway, otherwise I would direct you there – but it is this enormous temple to all things of the Italian gourmand.  Classy but unassuming it has everything and everything is of quality– aisles offering pasta, cookbooks, fresh licorice sticks, jams, nougat (tarrone), cooking equipment, amazing meats, fresh seafood, fresh nuts weighed out for you, a café where you can stand at the banco (bar) and drink your macchiato, fresh and gleaming gelato, cheese and the list goes on.  But really there isn’t a list – as this is, of course, all about chocolate!!! Actually I did buy a few other things including the freshest of local hazelnuts roasted to perfection, some phenomenally good salame with fennel seeds and the tasty but freaky textured Italian specialty Lardo, yes as the name suggests this is just fat.  And of course I purchased myself a ridiculous amount of chocolate.

As usual there were a lot of chocolate brands I didn’t know but then there were so many that I did – and never before have I seen them, or could I have expected to see them, under one roof!  There was Venchi (significantly cheaper and with a better range than the Venchi store), Garbino who I had drooled over and spent a considerable sum at the day before (in this case more expensive than the store), Caffarel who do some amazing things with hazelnuts, and of course my unrequited love (unrequited as it is so difficult for me to find) Domori.  Then there was Barrati Milano, Uurzi, Leudere…. 

The only problem with Eataly (aside from being a good 24 hour flight away from where I live) is the chocolate section is positioned right at the front of the store, which means that as I stood there in stupor and wonderment – for quite a time than is neither normal or acceptable, the staff must have been wondering what the hell I was doing.  And then I spent so long wandering backwards and forwards through this shrine of cocao that I was waiting for someone to ask me what I was doing, accusing me of commercial espionage, or at beat stealing.  But somewhat disappointingly, no-one paid me the slightest attention; a shame as I would have liked to have used my halting Italian to explain how magnifico this place was.  But alas, maybe it is normal for traveling chocolate enthusiasts to be lost amongst all this glory.  And even after the reality of how much I spent (lets just say it is well into the three figure mark) and of course the very real luggage allowance problem I am going to have deal with in a few days (at the moment getting by being a ‘bag lady’ as such, but Easyjet surely won’t see it that way) I couldn’t stop an enormous smile from overtaking my face.  Maybe that is why they paid me no attention, with that daft smile I must have looked a little on the ‘touched’ side of things.  But needless to say, Eataly is now my undisputed favourite place on the planet!

And as a finishing note (although there is so much chocolate stuff of Torino that I want to blog about including the hot chocolate and il biciern, there is only so much I can risk sending my readers to sleep) I have been trying to keep running whilst on holidays.  Obviously I want to keep my fitness up, but it doesn’t go astray with the vast chocolate consumption either (although suspect chocolate consumption is outweighing anything achieved from running).  And I ran in Germany quite happily, amongst other runners either in parks, along the river or in the forest.  But it seems running in Italy, or at least Torino (or at the very least the part of Torino I was staying in) is not the done thing.  After a particular day of indulgence I thought I would get a quick 12km in and off I went, running gear on, hair tied back, garmin set – but the amount of odd, bemused and bewildered looks I got was extraordinary.  From adults, children, old people – even a dog or two I do believe.  I heard one father explaining to his toddler what I was doing when stretching as she was so perplexed by my activities.  Has no-one every run in Torino before?  I do not exaggerate, teenagers in the street made fun of me!  Now I know that my running style may not be the best, but it isn’t that bad!  Seriously, very odd experience.  But I say too bad to your bemused looks and teasing ways, I love my running, and I love my chocolate and the two exist quite nicely in my world, thank you very much Torino and your non-running residents.  Luckily I love your city, and your food, so I will forgive you!