I Matetti

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You can still find traditional Ligurian food in the renowned and famous Alassio, a true authentic trattoria, with the menu written in dialect by hand on a notebook like the ones used in schools many years ago: an informal atmosphere, black and white photos from the 70’s on the walls of children or “matetti” in dialect posing in their school uniform or for group pictures. Upon entering you’ll see a big blackboard with the daily dishes. Dishes follow Ligurian tradition, flavorful big portions. It’s a piity one has to choose as all dishes are worth trying. The owners are always happy and nice, sometimes they pretend to be grouchy but they’re just joking around and they’ll catch you off guard. For starters try their mixed appetizer with fried anchovies, seafood salad, cabbage wraps and Recco focaccia. Among their first courses we recommend their ravioli, pansotti, tagliatelle with bottarga and shrimp and the “gasse”: farfalle shaped fresh pasta, with pesto and potatoes. Among second dishes you’ll find mixed fried seafood, rabbit, octopus, stewed squid and the codfish. Their selection of desserts includes classics such as the bunet, tiramisù and ice creams. Their delicious apple fritters are served to everyone at the end of the meal. Small cellar with Vermentino and Pigato at reasonable prices. Excellent value for your money, a meal will set you back about € 25. Reservations are recommended.

Osteria del Tempo Stretto

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When you walk through the tavern’s door you get into a welcoming and well-kept location, leaving behind the traffic and noise of the Aurelia drive. The chef Cinzia Chiappori has a great professionalism, but she is a simple and honest person. She loves getting involved in trying new dishes with special ingredients, she likes to open her kitchen to other chefs and offers four-handed dinners, even with skit nights. The constant of its cuisine is the highest quality products always fresh and zero-mile. In the last year she renewed the dining room, with a touch of pink, and even her menus by offering for working lunch at noon unique and simple dishes at 15 euro, and in the evening more elaborate menus at 30 euro. Cinzia offers a creative local cuisine, where the local fish is very present, as well as artichokes and violet asparagus, slow food presidia. The delicious rabbit tuna and salmon tartare with raw artichokes and brandacujun are worth to be tasted. Among the first courses we mention the corzetti with artichokes and clams, the noodles with curry and shrimp ragù. Among the second courses, the delicious octopus cooked in red wine. The desserts are very carefully prepared by the chef, with unusual ingredients, such as the panna cotta with asparagus, edible flowers and lavender. In good weather you can have lunch in the garden and stop and rest in the three beautiful rooms on the upper floor.

La Prua

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Situated in an incredible location at the start of the trekking itinerary, and with a porch which allows to eat a stone’s throw from the sea (and in the summer, right on the beach), this restaurant bets it all on local fish and high quality ingredients, only using the finest products, possibly local. The tasting menu, priced 50 Euros excluding wine, envisages, as starter, eledones on a pumpkin and ginger cream; purple yam gnocchi with baby squids and bagna cauda; sea bass escalope with dry pulses and cereals as second course; and dessert of your choice. A la carte, you can find, as starters, an intriguing “crudo di pesce” (fish tartare), a tryptic with sea bass on dry fava beans cream, smoked swordfish on toast with black sesame, and eledones. Among the first courses: squid ink tagliolini with John Dory, baby broccolis and pine nuts, sea bass ravioli with tuna, and a chickpeas zimino (a vegetable sauce) with shrimp tails. We recommend the fritto misto (fried mix), light and crispy, and the fish grilled mix. Meaty and vegetarian dishes are also offered. There is a wide selection of desserts, such as the chocolate “triple mousse” with Grand Marnier and pistachios, and the clementine and chestnuts crème. The wine list is interesting and offers both local wines, and a good selection of important choices from other Italian regions.

Trattoria da Bianca

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Arnasco is a delightful small town set among hills which produce the “pignola” an olive with a slight pine nut taste from which a renowned olive oil is made. People come to this amazing spot mostly for their amazing ravioli which Marica and her daughter Sonia prepare each day with herbs and borage and serve with sauce, butter or sage or simply plain just as they are right out of the water. Their menu is always the same, a guarantee of continuity in this restaurant which has been owned for three generations by the same family. The atmosphere is cozy, simple and inviting. You eat what is offered to you, nothing is written, all dishes are seasonal and the vegetables come from a garden opposite the restaurant. For starters try their 8 appetizers among which you’ll find cured meats, small onions, bean salad, vegetable pies, peppers, bruschetta, battered artichockes or zucchini blossoms.You should try their ravioli, tortellini or tagliatelle all homemade. Among second courses we recommend the Ligurian rabbit with olives and pine nuts, roast beef and snails. House desserts include: tiramisù, panna cotta, fruit tarts and apple pies. Local red and white wines are included in the menu price (€ 25). We recommend making reservations in advance during the weekend.

Ristorante Quintilio

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Quintilio’s restaurant is a guarantee of quality and good food since 1889, on the border between Piedmont and Liguria. Luca and Lorena have continued a journey of great tradition of the family restaurant. The interior of the restaurant is very refined and elegant, it is divided into three rooms, the largest classical dining room, with collections of antique glass vases, then there is the winery, Lorraine’s pride, competent sommelier, where you are surrounded by a collection of more than 500 labels and another lounge more private, with rare books and precious objects. The cuisine is based on products of the highest quality, depending on the season, such as precious truffles, collected in the surrounding areas, and mushrooms in classic and innovative recipes. The amuse-bouche is a tasting of rice cake, a real treat, followed by homemade bread, focaccia and breadsticks. The tasting menu consists of 4 courses for 45 euro and will fully satisfy you. Among the appetizers we mention the egg pochè with parmesan mousse and brown stock with or without truffles, a refined bowl of duck foie gras, marinated in sauternes. Among the first courses there are the unmissable ravioli al plin or the exquisite gnocchi with Calizzano potatoes with fondue and black truffle. Among the main courses you can taste the tripes with beans, or the classic braised with barolo. Delicious desserts, such as apple pie with homemade ice-cream. Well-stocked wine cellar with the best local labels.

Antica Osteria La Sosta

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The historic center of Laigueglia is a candy box that, inside, houses other small candy boxes. One of these is the Antica Osteria la Sosta, managed with great skill by the chef Stefania Alberti, while the dining room is managed by her husband Daniele Zillani, a restorer, that has “signed” the furnishing with several really interesting pieces. The couple opened the restaurant in 2004, but after a break of several years to take care of their first child, since a year they have returned to the head of their restaurant. The atmosphere is warm. Daniele is attentive without being intrusive, but it is from the kitchen (appetizers and first courses to 12 euro, main courses between 12 and 18, but on average 15, desserts at 6 euros, satisfactory portions) that more pleasant surprises arrive. Stefania is self-taught, but has followed an impressive series of courses that have trained her as a chef, much appreciated by both Gualtiero Marchesi and Silvio Torre, the former a monument in cooking, the latter a monument for enogastronomic diffusion. The menu is local: anchovies, cod, fish of the day (but also rabbit and fassona), but prepared with imagination and wisdom and seasoned with excellent extra virgin oil. Do not miss the rabbit terrine with Valleggia apricots (in the season) and chard, gnocchi with cod and mushrooms, the “previ”, the traditional stuffed lettuce. Good, with fair mark-up, the wine list mainly coastal.

Ristorante Pinocchio

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After gaining substantial experience in the culinary sector, in 1980 Sara and Nino established this restaurant in the lush Val Lerrone, offering a traditional, local cuisine which will satisfy also the most demanding guest. Their dishes are appreciated by Italian customers as much as by foreigners, thanks to the finest local ingredients, and to their ability to merge Ligurian and Piedmontese traditions. The offered entrees are vegetables of the garden dip with Ligurian olives-flavoured oil, olives, and tried tomatoes, served with a mix of salamis: donkey’s, pork’s, and spicy from Calabria. The menu features a long list of starters: hot and cold, with fish, meat and cheese – such as goat’s tomino with peppers jam on the side, cured meats, steamed octopus, and exquisite rossetti (small fish) fritters. Among the first courses, the ravioli with borage stand out, but gnocchi and tagliatelle are also worth trying; everything is handmade, and served with seasonal sauces. The second courses are very important, substantial: grilled mixes, roast-beefs, and roasts, but also fish options such as the sea bream and salmon. Skilful pastry chefs create desserts such as fruit pies, amazing tiramisu, delicious semi-freddos, and pudding. Excellent value for money: tasting menu at 30 Euro, including homemade wine. It is also possible to stay for the night.

Ristorante Il Sogno

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The new location of the restaurant in the center of Finale is very successful, the restaurant’s dining rooms are very bright, the furniture very nice and elegant. The chef and owner Timi has achieved his dream here, to offer customers the excellent fish always fresh, cooked with passion. The tasting menu at 35 euro is composed of an appetizer, chickpea puree with rosemary and fried shrimp tails, followed by noodles of fresh pasta cut with a knife, sea bass sauce and sautéed vegetables, then the baked fish of the day with potatoes and Taggiasca olives, local artichokes, and it ends with the delicious sorbet with clementines and vodka. In the a la carte menu you can choose the bonito tartare, soy sauce, fennel salad and oranges pernambucco or the hot pie of pasta brisè with Jerusalem artichokes and cream of buffalo mozzarella. Among the first courses we mention the double ravioli stuffed with fish and artichokes, mullet and broccoli’s sauce or half paccheri with purple prawns from Sanremo. Among the second courses you can taste the grilled veracious squid with cream of celeriac or the delicious lamb chops cooked in oven-baked hazelnuts. The desserts, all homemade, are interesting such as the hazelnut semifreddo, ganache with fondant, salt crystals and chocolate earth. Wide selection of wines with high quality labels and a careful selection of champagne.

Trattoria in Ciassa da Francesca

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Walking in the narrow streets (carugi) of Albisola Superiore you will have the surprise to find this small restaurant, with a nice sign, where you can taste a simple and genuine Ligurian cuisine. Here you can taste, on Thursdays and Fridays, the delicious wheat-based pancake, served with cheese and olives and the chickpea-based pancake, combined with many ingredients, olives, onions, blue cheese and so on…The full menu for lunch time is offered at 10 euro, in the evening you may choose a la carte, with many fish dishes, such as the octopus salad or the devilled one, the special blueberry noodles with prawns, cod tortelli, the cut of tuna with artichokes. Not only fish, Francesca, helped by her mother, also prepares excellent ravioli with walnut pesto, borage noodles with pesto, all fresh homemade pasta. The desserts prepared by the chef are delights, such as the meringue or the apple pastry or the panna cotta. For a full dinner you spend between 20 and 30 euro. The intimate and bright dining room, the wooden furniture and the paintings by Dino Gambetta, Francesca’s uncle and painter very well known locally, make the atmosphere very comfortable. We recommend booking, especially at the weekend.

Ristorante Babette

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Location of great beauty for Fabio Bonavia’s restaurant, chef of great experience, who since 2002 has opened his first restaurant in the old town of Albenga and about 6 years ago just on the beach, facing the island of Gallinara. The structure is large and very bright, both outside and inside where there are large dining rooms, elegant and well furnished, with large windows for having dinner overlooking the sea. The menu changes every season, the chef is served by local farmers and fishermen. From the menu we mention the anchovy chest marinated in Ligurian way with stuffed confit of red onion and the cloud of crunchy fennels among the appetizers (15 euro). We continue with the inviting black tagliatelle with cuttlefish sauce, clams and crunchy broccoletti (17 euro) or yellow saffron ravioli filled with fish and the artichoke sauce of Albenga (18 euro). Among the second courses, the grilled mixed fish and shellfish with the lemon emulsion, the parsley salmoriglio cups, capers and red onion confit (33 euro) or among the meats the Fassona tender cheek with cream potatoes flavoured with nutmeg and Nebbiolo sauce (19 euro). The desserts are inviting such as the tart filled with almonds and pears, salted caramel sauce and praline ice cream (9 euro). Two tasting menus for 43 euro and 48 euro. The wine list is broad, with interesting offers of local wines.