Northern ITALY FOOD!! 🇮🇹 Trying Iconic Piedmont Dishes in Turin

I found myself in the city of Turin, region of Piedmont, during a stopover and I thought it was a good idea to learn something about the local cuisine. Learning about places is so much fun when it involves eating delicious local food. Piedmont cuisine in northern Italy is about hearty dishes with a focus on local ingredients such as stuffed pasta, braised meats and cured hams. So we're going to the first stop which is essentially a place which is kind of unique and rare because they sell a traditional Piedmont speciality like street food. Probably the only place in Turin, one of the few places in in Italy that sell Goffri. Goffri are a speciality of the Piedmont region of Italy. It's typically seen in festivals across the region but it's somewhat disappearing. It's essentially a wafer made of flour and water and cooked in a special cast iron griddle then topped with a variety of local cheeses and cured meats. The small family-run business in Turin is one of the very few left serving this regional delicacy. I've actually read that Goffreria Piedmontesa is actually the only place in Italy that have its own mill with stone millstones to produce their own flours so this is even the flours is their own product. As you can see we've got two different types of, well you can call them waffle if you want. They're not exactly waffle, they're much more thin and crispy. One is called miasse and it's made of corn dough. One is the Goffri, the original one, the one that looks like more like a waffle and is basically made with turkey ham and arugula. There's actually also artichokes inside, looks super thin. There's an artichoke paste inside, so beautiful. The turkey ham, extremely delicate but yeah it's just like a very simple kind of sandwich or waffle. Simple and extremely friable and light kind of dough. The second one is called miasse and it's pretty similar but it's made of corn dough and inside we have got lardon and cheese. It's again another speciality hidden cuisine of Piedmont region. I think this is the winner. The corn dough is nice and crispy. Inside you've got this kind of, you know, a very fatty overload of the lardon and the cheese. Savory and kind of salty and very salty. The combination of lardon and cheese make it this very salty. Really good stuff. The next place I wanted to show you is this place called Pour Manger. They're also called the potato man just because they are not served jagged potato. Jagged potato isn't really something common in Italy but the owners essentially they came from Edinburgh. They were Italian people living in Edinburgh and they fell in love with jagged potato and they wanted to bring it to Italy and so they introduced this British speciality in Turin but obviously with an Italian twist using hams and cheese from the local region of Piedmont. It's located in another beautiful alley in the city center of Turin and right behind us is actually a food market which is really cute and also we've ordered some half liter of Piedmont wine. And the way I've ordered my jagged potato is by having some raw ham, olives and burrata cheese. Burrata is like very similar to mozzarella but more prestigious if you will. We've got some fresh bread as well and that's our starter with raw sausage, Piedmont sausage, valerian roots and leaf and the grana cheese. Actually the first thing that I want to try is the the sausage so I'm going to grab some of this sausage and the valeriana and the grana cheese as well. It's raw sausage I mean it's not for everyone. Some people may be put off by this it tastes like it's supposed to taste like imagine eating raw sausage but it's nice and peppery it's not spicy it's just like sweet sausage. The beautiful potato it's absolutely packed with raw ham prosciutto crudo as we call it in Italy and this beautiful mozzarella it's not a mozzarella it's a burrata it's like more soft inside than a typical mozzarella it's got this kind of inner heart almost like runny milk if you think about it and the outer layer is more like similar to a mozzarella. I'm gonna put this beautiful burrata cheese into my piece of bread. I know I'm supposed to eat this with the potato but I think it's I just want to try the pure burrata first on a piece of bread. Burrata is just on a different level just the pure milk inside like it's pure satisfaction. You can see the jagged potato has got the skin I think you're supposed to actually eat the skin as well. We're gonna grab some of the potato and we're gonna put some of this kind of raw ham slice into the potato as well. There we go there we've got the full bite this looks beautiful. The raw ham is like a speciality of Italy salty soft texture very delicate and it goes really well with the olives and the potato yeah this is just like a very beautiful kind of street snack. We ordered just one for two because you know we are eating other things in this tour but it's amazing to sit down in this street and just feel like in a proper Italian kind of cultural environment and we are eating British food essentially. In Turin you can still occasionally find those rustic casual taverns where locals gather to eat regional northern Italian dishes that bring back memories. These small restaurants are called Piola and they are known for their unpretentious home-style cooking and a friendly welcoming vibe. The scope of this cozy and rustic eatery is that of preserving the traditional Piedmontese cuisine. There's not a lot of space inside there might be like 10-15 tables and it's really interesting they've got this kind of menu which is handwritten and they've got a few starters and then some dish of pasta and some as we call them in Italy second dishes like usually meat that comes after the pasta and so we've ordered a selection of things. In just 15 minutes we got our appetizers which consists of a local soft cheese made from cow's milk and some veal slices in tuna sauce. In Italy you'll find bread and grated cheese in your table regardless of what you order. Okay the first thing that we're gonna try is Tomino with caramelized onion. Tomino is basically a cheese of Piedmont. I'm not actually very familiar with this it almost looks like ricotta cheese and you've got this caramelized onions on top. I was expecting a texture similar to mozzarella but this is super dense almost kind of chalky. It's a very salty cheese but then with the caramelized onion which is kind of sweet makes this kind of beautiful contrast in your mouth. It's a very dense kind of texture very dense and the next thing we're gonna try is Vitello Tonnato. It's probably one of the most traditional Piedmontese dish. It's made of thinly sliced veal which is served cold with a top of a kind of a mayonnaise kind of sauce which is made with a mix of egg yolks obviously tuna, anchovies, pepper, lemon juice, cake and you see there is a little bit of salad cabbage and lettuce on top. It's kind of tuna mayonnaise. It's got a beautiful like lemony taste. The slice of veal are also very soft. It's a really nice dish. So we got into the first course which is made of pasta and we've got two different types of pasta and obviously they are from the tradition of Piedmont. One is tagliolini with wild boar ragu. Imagine like a bowl of mis made with wild boar. Absolutely. The ragu like the strong kind of bushmeat type of flavor of the wild boar. Carrot in there. I can smell the parsley, the black pepper. This ragu looks really nice and the second dish that we've got is agnolotti. They look like similar to tortellini if you wish or ravioli. Essentially like a pasta which is stuffed with things inside. No I'm not really sure what's what's inside these kind of things but I think they are made with a sauce of peanuts, butter and beer. They look quite chunky. Okay I really want to start with some of this tagliolini. They you know tagliolini they look similar to spaghetti but they've just got this kind of square texture. We are gonna grab a good chunk. I wish I had like a spoon because that's how I normally eat. But yeah let's go. It's kind of pasta like you don't have to chew a lot. It's not that much al dente. A sauce which bases itself on the flavor of the meat, the wild boar and the sweetness of the carrot. Strong flavor of onions as well. But there is no tomato in there. You know in Italy it's not that frequent but it is like a white based sauce. Obviously I'm not gonna leave a single inch of this beautiful ragu with wild boar and carrots. It's really good. Stefano has warned me about this agnolotti because they are particularly heavy. I think they are supposed to have butter and cheese inside. Let's just make sure that we take one of this and you can see we've got some nuts on the top and we just make sure that we scoop a little bit of this kind of buttery sauce. Okay yeah they are packed with butter and salty cheese inside. It's super yummy but very heavy. They are super heavy but it's very typical in the piedmontese tradition to use butter instead of olive oil as we use in the south of Italy. So like butter is a really fundamental component of white pasta sauces. They don't use olive oil. I'm not gonna hide that we are struggling right now with Stefano but to be honest we have arrived to the second course which obviously is made of meat and potatoes and this looks like a very beefy chunky piece of pork ribs and they look fatty and juicy. They have been braised with rosemary as well. Yeah let's grab a piece. It's kind of it's kind of fatty. Yeah yeah I love the ratio between fat and lean meat. Certainly very yummy. They look really nice but they taste also really nice but super fatty. They almost look like they are fried because you can see they are shiny. I think they've been fried in oil. Are they grilled or fried? I don't know. Yeah so we've just confirmed with the waiter these are like pork ribs made in the oven with beer. My friend thanks for watching this one. Give it a like if you enjoyed it and it's time to leave Italy. I hope we can meet again for some tasty food around the world wherever that is going to be.