open mind, empty stomach

I spent one of my days off from Il Troscione in Siena with 3 of my co-WWOOFers. Due to logistics, we only had about 3.5 hours in the city. We spent 30 minutes having nannini coffee in the main piazza, then walked around town for about an hour. Siena is really beautiful and was covered in tourists. It still wasn’t as bad as Florence or Rome and was not enough to detract from the experience. We checked out their church and the first bank in the world. Siena is also home to one of the premier Slow Food restaurants in the country, Hosteria Il Carroccio. They are Golden Snail recipients and have all kinds of foodie bling on their door and entryway. Il Carroccio is also the first restaurant I encountered from the book that offers a tasting menu. We all went with it and were blown away. They opened with a charcuterie and crostini platter and followed it up with a very Tuscan bean and bread soup. We had the also very Tuscan, pici pasta with mushroom sauce. We had two meat courses that shared a plate: grilled wild boar and braised veal. The boar was a little chewy and was the only part of the meal that bordered on being a disappointment. Dessert was biscotti and ricciarelli. I’m not a big sweet fan, but really enjoyed the ricciarelli. Along with the cookies, our server put full bottles of grapa and limoncello on our table. The prix fixe included all of the water, red wine, white wine, grapa, and limoncello we could drink. It’s fair to say that we got our money’s worth. Lunch lasted a little over 2 hours and we ended up having to take a taxi to make our train and didn’t get to see any more of the city. From what I saw of Siena I liked and what I tasted in Siena, I loved. It’s a place I wouldn’t mind going back to for more than a few hours.

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