DEFINITELY a meal worth the trip /PiazzaDuomoAlba

Y (May '23)

SCORE: Tell yo friends

Highlights: their signature salad, the veal, the grilled fish

VALUE: For a once in a while meal, excellent. 850 EUR for one pairing with 8 glasses of wine, 2 form their prime category, overnight stay at their rooms and breakfast the next morning

I heard about this place when I came by Alba last year for a trip to go check out the truffle hunt. It was supposed to be a phenomenal meal, but it needed planning to snag a booking.. Anyhow, as my details for this trip out to Europe firmed up, I was delighted to hear they had an opening on a weeknight. I was totally down. Put myself down for the longer menu, and to my surprise I got an email from the staff that suggested that I take them up on staying the evening at their rooms above the restauarnt. This was an amusing suggestion that I had never received from a restaurant before, and quite frankly it built the anticipation of this meal further.

For those who've not been to Alba, I would suggest that you park outside of town and take a walk in. the old part of town has back streets that are so narrow (yet still passable to traffic) that in a small toyota vehicle, I felt like I was trying to handle a canalboat up a stairwell in an office tower. All the proximity sensors were going off, at once, all the time. Anywho, finally maed it to their rooms the afternoon before the meal, and I got a chance to bumble around this quaint and idyllic town, which I would highly recommend doing even if you're not there for dinner at Duomo (which you should be)

Getting in, the restaurant was painted this time in this light pink colour - and the staff's ties were colour coded to match. The ceilling art were done by a famous local painter and this theme of visual aesthetics ran through the meal from end to end. This review will be slightly different from the ones I usually post for two main reasons. First, each dish in many courses were so complex, that it was too many things to keep track of. Second, by about mid meal, they'd served me so much booze, that I honestly was a bit buzzed to keep notes.

There are meals that you hear about them being a long affair, and you think, "surely it's not that batch. I'm a semi professional at this eating thing, I can manage". Then they start off with the first course, and you start having second thoughts about how intense it's going to be. This meal was in the second category. For snacks, I was presented with 6 different items, each more intricate and decadent than the next. My highlight was definitely the cracker with the aoili dollops and local wildflowers. each bite of that was completely different thanks to the different flowers. The pink mousse was very satisfying too and definitely a counterpoint to the otherwise light starters

The first actual course was a series of 9 dishes, very similarly done to like a banchan set? different vegetables prepared, fermented, seasoned differently to offer a glimpse into the variety of tastes, textures and aromas that the piemontese countryside has to offer. It was an absolute winner. I did not expect this (or the next) dish to be something to write home about. Yet both these courses absolutely were. The highlights were the velvety smooth chawanmushi with a chicken-dashi reduction and the seasoned squash. both of these dishes were deceptively layered and worth every bite that was presented.

The next dish, and in my view one of the highlights of the meal, was the chef's signature salad. To give some context, One of my first fine dining experiences as an adult was in California, and I had gone to Chez Panisse. There was a salad there that was only dressed with the ingredients that were already in the salad. ie - no dressing. different ingredients within the salad provided the flavor contrasts that a dressing would otherwise provide. I was blown away by that concept then. At Piazza duomo, they did the same thing in this signature salad. Except they cranked the notch up.. each bite as you went down from the top of the salad was a different combination of local leaves, giving you a bite that was savory, then spicy like you'd bit into a hot peppercorn, then acidic but they were all just different leaves! it was incredible. If it's an add on when you visit, highly recommend you to add this on

To continue in the same theme of light dishes, the restaurant presented us with a play on beets (done three ways), then their risotto and grilled fish. Each dish was beautifully plated to the point of looking like it was art on my plate. They also built up the menu intensity gradually, with each course getting a bit heavier than the last, and it was really very fun to see this trajectory play out. Throughout, the wines kept flowing, the staff kept making friendly conversation when they came by.

The last two plates of the main dinner were these delicious dumplings (that I can't for the life of me remember what was in themthanks to Davide from the service team, I now know they were mascarpone dumplings with almonds), that were served with a warm and comforting broth, and veal fillet. The veal was amazingly tender and much more fragrant than what I had experienced in my piemontese trip, and when asked, I was told it was because it's veal that's only been fed milk as opposed to a compound feed. This showed in the quality of the meat, and it was good enough to eat on its own, even without the delicious sauce that it came with.

Then came the desserts where they really stepped into full swing with the artful plating. There was a white chocolate tart that was plated to look like kintsugi, complete with gold glitter down the "sealed" veins and a panna cotta that was made to look like a Matisse. The panna cotta was definitely the winner for me, with the different gels that made the splotches each adding a different accompaniment to the smooth, velvety and milky panna cotta underneath.

This is definitely a meal worth taking the trip out for, and I enjoyed every minute of every course. The amount of planning and care that went into each of these plates was astounding, and I could only dream of being able to plan and execute food like this.