We have stayed in Milan for more than 4 days, and I must say that it should have been shortened a little bit. We thought that four days would be enough for us to shop more, but it appeared that most of the things were not cheaper in Hong Kong. So yeah, we decided to spend more time in the restaurant.

One night we were too tired and we just went into one random restaurant close to our hotel. However, we realized that it was a place where you could choose your own combo for your lunch, like a little buffet but confined with sets. The portions were quite big too, and the food was not bad.

We ordered the assorted seafood with spaghetti and another spaghetti with lobster. Then we added one more dish, veal with mushroom and potato.

The food was just okay or maybe we should jump to the next day with some more remarkable dishes.

We were looking for the famous Gusto restaurant, but just failed to find it, no idea. However, we went into another one with the same name. We believed this was not the one we were looking for, but seeing new interior and modern design inside, we decided to sit down and had a quick lunch here (Google Map).

During the lunch time, we served a little buffet-like menu. You could choose 6 out of the 14 little dishes, and among the choices you could find pasta, vegetable, meat and dessert.

I also ordered a squid-inked bread with salmon inside, and also an iced coffee.

The little dishes were quite okay, but all of them were cool dishes. I didn't much prefer that when there was meat inside but the taste were average still. The sandwich was rather disappointing though. The salmon was not fresh enough and the salad dressing inside overwhelmed the entire sandwich, and you couldn't taste anything at all except that dressing. The bread was dry and the taste was a little bitter too, which completely ruined the salmon inside.

However, the coffee was very well prepared. It is so smooth and the smell of coffee was strong, something you may not expect from a cold coffee. It was so good that I was tempted to have another glass. Nice one.

Talking about good coffee, one probably won't miss the famous Caffe Greco in Rome. Oh yeah, we now just flew back to Rome, our last stop in Italy. Founded in 1760, this little old shop was located in Via Condotti, one of the streets stuffed with name brands. The waiters inside were all dressed up in suit, holding onto the traditions for hundreds of years.

We sat down and ordered some coffee. Iced coffee, then shakerato and cappuccino.

And I am not going to lie. The taste of the coffee was okay but unremarkable, and it was not cheap at all. However, the overall ambiance was miraculously kept from the old days till today, and it was really a relaxing place for coffee and chatting.

Our finally meal happened to be in a famous pizza place where you can always find a queue outside its door. Pizzaeria da Baffetto is in some alleys, and it is like the "dai pai dong" in Hong Kong. We queued for 20 minutes and finally got a seat, sharing a long table with a pair of lovers (I think they were from France). In order to see how good the pizzas were, we ordered the simplest ones, because the simple ones were actually the hardest to make good.

The first one was a typical quatro formaggio, and the second was a pizza with mushroom and tomato sauce.

I am not sure if I need to be a complete Italian to enjoy the pizzas, but they were not as good as the one I tried in other restaurants. The thickness was okay but a little bit too thin for me. The texture was not amazingly good, while the smell of charcoal kind of overwhelmed the pizza, giving a slightly choking unpleasant feeling. The tomato sauce was nice, but the mushroom was too dry, or perhaps that was the intention to make some contrasting feel in the mouth using a lot of tomato sauce and dry ingredients.

The service was a major problem, and I suspect the owner and the staff were blown away by the popularity and overrated comments from books. We were not well treated and actually rushed to complete the meal. That is a big taboo for a good restaurant, unless they don't care at all. To conclude, one must have a quick visit of this place because eating pizzas in a back alley is surely something that you never tried in other restaurants in the town, but do come early, otherwise you will need to spend quite some time watching people enjoying their meals before you can do the same.

Alright, that's all for my food trip in Italy, and I hope you enjoy all these photos and my comments on them. As you can see, I have linked some of the restaurants on Google Map, and so if you have a chance to visit these cities, you can try to go to these restaurants and enjoy great food. Have fun!

I think I gotta catch up because I will lose my memory very soon, and I know many of you probably find this being so outdated too. However, good food is timeless and always inspiring and so I am posting the final bits of the Italian delicacies here

After the Venice trip we moved to Milan, the city of fashion and style. However, you may be able to guess that most of the food here is more modern and fusion type, due to extra international influences from other places in the world. As the city is much more modernized, you can expect some less classic menus in Milan.

Still, we cannot miss the famous Cafe Cova shop in Milan, which is the first shop of the restaurant. Located at Via Montenapoleone 8, this classic cafe is surrounded by name brand shops and it has been like this for over a hundred years! Going inside, you will feel time has gone back to the old days, and you are ready to enjoy one of the best coffee in Italy.

Alright, it sounds like it is not the best, but still it is good coffee, and with the beautiful and elegant ambience, I am sure that you don't mind to spend the whole afternoon here in a relaxing way.

This is a typical cappuccino, very delicious but I actually like the cup most. Then I ordered another cup of coffee, a cold caffe shakerato. Very nice too.

Milan is a big modern city and so you can find a lot of internation fast food restaurants. One night, we failed to find a decent classic Italian restaurant, and we just went into one small shop which was very new though not stylish. Here we finally found some traditional Italian food. This is gnocchi served with typical tomato sauce. It was not very special but chewy!

We got a very very non-special spaghetti...

And finally finished our meal with a big quatro formaggio. That was not bad at all!

However, on the other day, we tried a really great place where you can have some modernized Italian food, a little fusion type, but stil completely make you drool! It is located at the top floor of a department store, and there you can see the Duomo right next to you. (Check this Google Map and look at the roof terrace, that is the restaurant!)

This is the MAIO restaurant, and the prices here are quite a bit above anything around the area, but the view is spectacular. You can see the top structures of the Duomo, and with the beautiful sunshine, this is really the perfect place for a relaxing late lunch. Let's take a look at what we ordered. The drink came first, and my was a shakerato, yes, again!

Probably the first shakerato coffee I got in Italy which had such a big pile of cream on the top, but my girlfriend's drink was a bit more exaggerated. She ordered hot chocolate with cream, and see? It was really "with cream"!

My lady ordered creamy risotto with sea bass fillet, and it looked really creamy...

But then it was surprisingly light and good, not heavy at all! The portion was just enough to fill your stomach, meaning the cook got the size right. The fish was not oily after frying though it could be be some more fresh type of fish (probably because Milan is not a port city). Mine is a very healthy dish, a simple risotto with shrimps and vegetable.

It wasn't just rice, but a mix of brown rice and white rice. You would expect a very fresh dish, and it is actually fresher than I expected because when it was served, you could already smell something like grass! The leaves and brown rice made this dish look like a little planter, and I hesitated for a second before really picking up the fork. I felt like eating grass! However, when I had the first taste of it, I fell in love with it. Unlike Chinese rice, most of the risotto have a harder texture like uncooked rice. However, this rice mix was not very hard or dry at all, and the mix of dried grape and chopped carrots was a good idea to add little sweetness to the plate, or else the whole dish would be too dry like pure grass. If you add salty ingredients, the freshness of the dish probably would not be retained. The shrimps were fresh too without any fishy smell, and they were the undertone of the dish. The main role is the rice!

This is really unbelievably and I love it so much, and I am sure I am going to visit it again when I go to Milan again!

In the afternoon, we realized we had quite a lot of time to waste, so we went in the famous cafe shop Caffe Zucca. You won't miss this place, because it is right at the entrance of the shoppers-must-visit Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

I was just in love with both cappuccino and shakerato, and there you go!

I love the way the Italians prepare cold coffee. It is quite common to put ice cubes into coffee to make an iced one, but they mix espresso and ice and shake everything well with a shaker can (like bartenders always do). That will create a thoroughly cold drink called caffé shakerato that you can enjoy instantly, without the need to wait for the ice to melt. It also retains the little foam at the top, like a typical cappuccino, beautiful!

We were not sure if it was the hot weather or our stomach still had space, but we decided to go into one crowded ice-cream shop to have a taste of gelato. Oh, it appeared that it only had its shop front filled with people while the inside was quite empty. Perfect for us to enjoy a cup of ice-cream without disturbance.

Stay tuned!

In the second day in Venice, we went to Murano, a little island which was famous for its glassware. Of course, here we talk about food, not glassware, so let's go straight to lunch!

The restaurant we chose was right at the river bank. Okay it is a canal, but it was not a bad idea to have lunch next to some water. The service was not very good right when the waiter knew that we didn't order a lot of food. C'mon, it is not up to you who choose what to eat! Stupid asshole! It required me to ask him for bread in order to get some bread to come, which were no good. Seriously Italians weren't that good in bakery while the French were the one.

Alright, our "small" lunch had only two dishes, the Spaghette al Nero do seppia (with cuttlefish) and Branzino (sea bass).

The pasta was just okay, but the sea bass was nice. Since Venice was an island, and seafood plays an important role in the Venetian menus. Most of the seafood you found here is fresh and good, and I realize that squids, cuttlefish and sea bass are the most common.

We went to another island called Burano, which was even further. This island had really nothing but beautiful colorful houses, and they are the only reason why people came to visit it. After the visit we went back to Venice. We just randomly picked one restaurant and had a simple dinner before heading off to hotel.

Again, don't be tricked. These breads were no good and as hard as rock.

The pizza came, and it was a quattro formaggio.

Two pasta came, the linguine with seafood and lasagna with meat and tomato. Simple stuff.

The next day we went to the center part of Venice and checked some less visited corners of the city, and we went to a small restaurant for a cheap lunch. It was called Ae Oche. It had a really interesting design, with all the interior designed as those old wooden house in the cow boy era of US.

We ordered some interesting food too, and first it was the pasta, garganelli mari e monti (seafood with mushroom sauce).

Then the onion rings came...oops, it is not onion, but fried squid with polenta!

And then a different pizza! It was a folder pizza, and this flavour was called ghiotto with ham and cheese on top, and mushroom inside...the look was so funny that it looked like a huge Chinese dumpling!

After lunch, we search for a little shop which was famous for their chocolate. VizioVirtú had everything you wanted to eat and indulge yourself in. I got myself a bottle of caffe chocolate spread, and also a dark chocolate ice-cream. Oh my god, that is perfect under such hot weather!

Then we went back to St. Macro Square and shopped a while. At first we wanted to visit the famous Harry's Bar but it was too early and so we settled down in another place. It was so hot and we ordered this cappuccino freddo, which immediately cooled us down.

And then we went to a restaurant recommended by the Wallpaper City Guide, called Lineadombra (Google Maps). This place was not cheap at all, but you can enjoy this spectacular view across the other side of the canal and look straight at the Redentore churches there. The dinner we had here was just AMAZING and the best through our trip. Let's take a look at tonight's menu!

I mentioned that the bread in Italy was no good, but not here. You can see many kinds of bread here, and all of them were warm and delicious. And they were very good too to go with some olive oil and red vinegar. Then the appetizer came in, which was a piece of toast with mushroom on top.

The starter, or anti-pasta, was served right after the appetizer. It was scampi with apple slices, crab meat and onions sandwiched inside. Beautiful!

The first course came, and it was a simple spaghetti with clams. That was the best spaghetti so far because it was very light, and went so well with the fresh clams. You could even taste the sea water in the dish!

Finally, the main course came, and it was a very well-done sea bass with mushrooms and orange slices.

Just the look already made you drool, and the fish was tasty. It was not oily at all and the orange slices, to my surprise, added a very special and wonderful retouch to the seafood. It was a brilliant idea!

I enjoy this meal so much that it is like one of my best dinners I have ever had in my life so far. I love how they "modernized" the simple Italian food. Instead of over decorating the traditional tasty food, they reform it and add some details and some surprising alteration to the dish, keeping the lightness while creating a new fresh taste to the food. I think the food truly "upgrades" the typical Venetian or Italian food, and the attention to details completely reveals the restaurant's passion in food. That is very important!

The service was very good too. The waiters welcome us with smiles and introduced us the food on the menu without any impatience at all. They even treated each of us a free glass of champagne!

The meal cost quite something, but the food and service, together with the amazing and alluring views, were all worth it. I would definitely visit this place again if I have a chance to go to Venice in the future!

Now we are finally in Venice! It is one of the cities I love most, and the charisma comes from both the people and the beautiful settings of buildings and the ocean. In that case, even the food looks more delicious!

We arrived at Venice in the morning and it was nearly eleven after settling down at the hotel. The first thing we did after that of course was to find a place to eat. We chose one of the restaurants located at the main street Strada Nova, and ordered one pizza and one pasta.

In the famous St Macro Square, you can easily find one very old cafe with music band outside. Caffé Florian has been here for more than 250 years, and I am sure that you can feel the old Venice in this place.

We took the seat which was right next to the window, and you saw those tables in this image? They could be rotated! That was because in the past those women wore really huge dresses and it was hard to move themselves into the sofa seating. So the tables were made rotatable so that the ladies could go in and sit down easier.

Of course we didn't need to sit in that way. My girlfriend ordered a Caffé Freddo, while I ordered this Caffé Venexiana, which was an alcoholic drink!

The Caffé Venexiana was actually dark cappuccino with some alcohol at the bottom. The coffee was hot, and together with the alcohol, it kinda burnt my throat. Not literally but my throat got so hot after bottom up. After that we strolled around the main plaza and along the piers, and went to another famous place for dinner, called Da Pinto, which was open since 1890.

So let the dinner start...first it was the taglilenni vegetariane, and as you can guess, it was vegetable only. Then it was seppie veneziana, which was squid with squid ink as the sauce.

That was so black, and I have no idea still what the two pieces of yellow thing were. They were not cakes but...I don't know. Anyway, the final dish came, which was spaghette algio olive pesto.

We came here to try some really delicious tiny fried squids, but tonight it was all sold out. So yeah, it is a pity but at least the other kinds of food was okay (except the services). Tomorrow we will be going to another island where you could find beautiful glassware!

I can't believe that it has been more than two months and I haven't finished explaining the great food I had in Italy! I gotta finish the blogs right now! It is funny because just looking at the photos I am drooling again!

Now it is the second day in Florence. We went to a little cafe called O Cafe, with a bit O outside the cafe. It was a very modern place actually, instead of being an old-traditional kind of coffee shop. Of course, we were attracted too by the beautiful breads and cakes in the glass counter.

I immediately ordered a cup of cappuccino, while my girlfriend, worrying if the coffee was too strong for her, ordered a cup of chocolate instead.

After the delicious drink, we went on to our trip. We tried one really funny waffle when we were walking along the main street, and it was a waffle slightly larger than your hand with ice-cream sandwiched inside. The idea was good, but it was too big for both of us. I couldn't swallow the whole thing, and felt wasting my money because this thing cost me 8 euros! What a rip-off!

That night, we settled ourselves at a very nice Florence restaurant, Ristorante Le Botteghe Di Donatello Di Palange Rita & C. Snc located right next to the famous Duomo. From our seats we could just see the church across the street!

We ordered two simple pasta, but they are very well done. The first one is Tomato Risotto with Clams, while the other is a Ravioli with Black Truffle Sauce.

The latter one looked small in portion, but it was actually pretty heavy, probably because of the cream. The smell of the truffle was quite strong, nearly overwhelmed all the other ingredients in the plate. Still, the pasta were very good and together with the view, this dinner was probably one of the best in our trip.

Then we are heading off to Venice!

On the fifth day of our trip, we went to an outlet which was a one-hour trip from Florence. The place was called the Mall, which is pretty famous, and you can find some name-brand shops with discounted products. I bought several coin bags and card holders for my parents and friends, and they are just about HK$200 each! Cheap!

The Mall has only one spot for meals, and the restaurant is very modern. We ordered Parma ham as usual (we just love it, don't know why) and two simple pizzas: pizza with mushroom and pizza with sausage.

I must say that the pizzas, while they are not bad, are not comparable to the traditional ones you can find in the town center. I guess the pizzas were like modernized, haha, and the taste was a bit...less tradition. We also ordered a caffe shakerato, and that is the best in our lunch! It had vanilla inside and it was very smooth!

Back to Florence in the evening, we went to one of the restaurants on the main street Via Panzani. You could find a lot of people on this street because this is the road from the Central Station to the famous Duomo. We chose this place for dinner because we saw the sign "Know Japanese", and we were like, that's interesting, let's see!

It turned out that they only had Japanese-translated menus, not that they really knew how to speak Japanese -_- I knew it I knew it! Anyway, we ordered some typical Italian food again, one quatro formaggio and one dish of caserecce with shrimps and pesto.

The pasta was quite special, and was very chewy. I like how the Italians prepare their food. They use very simple raw material and very simple seasoning but the product is very delicious already. The frequent use of tomato and olive oil makes the food healthy too, and you can never feel oily. The only thing that you may find it hard to accept is the cheese, if you cannot take dairy or very creamy stuff.

We ordered one dessert too, and I think you can guess what it is. The famous Italian tiramisu!

Compared to those you can get in Hong Kong, this one was more creamy and the bottom layer had a very strong taste of alcohol. My girlfriend just loved it because of that alcoholic layer since she loves any dessert with a strong alcoholic sensation anyway, this was very good and you could indulge completely in the mixture of espresso and cocoa powder. Very nice!

On the fourth day of our trip we went to Florence, and instead of walking about the city, we immediately went to another city where you can find the famous tower. Yes, it is Pisa.

There are quite some restaurants in Tower of Pisa, since that place is a common tourist attraction point. We just randomly picked one since they all looked pretty much the same. We then chose the first one in the main street.

First thing on the table, beside the not-so-good bread, Italians usually have some cheese ready for their meal. However, to me, for most of the time the pasta was already creamy and cheesy enough

We ordered first the tortellini with cream and ham, and then pappardelle with hare sauce. Tortellini is like the wonton in Chinese, with meat wrapped by the pasta. That's why we call them "Italian wontons" in Chinese translation. Pappardelle is a very flat and wide pasta, much wider than fettuccine! When you eat that, you feel like you are swallowing a big piece of paper pasta!

And yes, this dish was with hare sauce! That's hare, a wild rabbit, but the taste was just like typical BBQ sauce, so yeah...

Then the pizza came. It was just a typical pizza with mushroom on top. We already learned that any typical pizza in Italy was very good already. It was so true! Now we truly feel that Italian is really the best European food because it was easy to make, and easy to make very good!

Back to Florence, we went to a restaurant which was right next to our hotel. We had a really quick but nice dinner there. The restaurant was clean and modern, and we met this really kind boy too. He was from Beijing and moved here to study. That's so cool! Chinese people are everywhere, haha!

In this restaurant you can order any kind of pasta, and that would be our great chance to try more. We ordered the farfalle with clams, parsley and chili, and also a dish of ravioli con ripieno di ricotta e spinaci in tomato sauce.

The farfalle was quite nice, because the chili really brought out the taste of the seafood. The ravioli was quite a surprise because I thought it would be a little heavy but the tomato actually lessened the heavy taste of the pasta due to the ricotta filling inside. We also ordered a risotto with cream and mushroom.

This one does look very heavy, but I think they did it well this time, with the creamy sauce just enough to wet the rice. The potion was just big enough for one person and so we didn't need to waste anything.

This restaurant, which was right at the opposite of the Florence Central Station, was a nice recommendation from me to you. They have the whole menu of pasta and so you can choose your favourite and have it with your favourite sauce. Isn't that nice for newbies like me to learn about Italian pasta?

Alright, perhaps you have already looked at all my Italy pictures in the main site, and so you are here hoping to see more. If you haven't seen the Italy pack yet, visit my main site now www.aw8.net and enter the Photo section. Otherwise, you can now move on and read the following paragraphs, which will make you drool I bet. At the same time, I will explain the dishes a little bit so that you know more about them. If I am wrong, feel free to note me back!

It seems that the most tasty food in Europe is Italian food. Britain has nothing but fish and chips as their famous dish, while French food is not the taste for everyone. German food is only about ham or sausage, and Spain is only famous for coffee.

Italy, however, has many more food types to choose from, and has far more signature dishes than other countries. When you talk about Italian food, there are pizzas and pastas, and you have the famous gelato as dessert. If it is not that good, pasta won't be everywhere in this word!

Another thing about Italian food is that it is easy to make and not fancy, and very filling too. Yes, pasta is not originated from Italy completely but Italy is certainly the place of pasta, the place that spread this kind of flour food.

When we first got off in Rome, it was very hot. While we were talking to the first sightseeing place, we spotted this pizza shop and they got some really funny pizzas.

You just order from glass shelf and the waiter will cut them and put it into the oven to reheat it. They will fold them up when they hand it to you, and you can't believe that it is so delicious!

I think it is not the typical pizza you saw before, but it is probably a traditional one. I don't know but at least it was very good!

The first restaurant we went to is located in an alley, and it was recommended by our guide book. The book said it had great spaghetti, and so we were checking it out. Let's take a look at the meal we had. First was the Parma ham! We love Parma ham and guess we were having the most traditional taste since this Italian dish was made in Italy here!

Then we had a little pizza with beef on top. It looked like some kind of raw or half-cooked beef, but anyway it was not bad at all.

The spaghetti finally came. It was spaghetti with clams, while another dish also arrived. It was fettuccine in tomato sauce. Both were very good!

This is Italian food. It is not complicated or fancy, but it has good taste. Simple, easy and done. That's why I like Italian food. The look may be plain or nothing special, but the taste is very good. The texture of the pasta is not the same as that you can find in Hong Kong. I guess it is because of the raw material they use to make pasta, but I just love this kind of texture, very chewy!

For dinner, originally we were looking for a pizza shop, but to no avail. Finally, we settled ourselves at another restaurant on the same street, and it looked like a little good surprise.

First it was a bottle of water. Yes, I show you this bottle of water because I want to say that it is ridiculous. This thing costs 2 euros and nearly the same price in other restaurants. It is stupid because water shouldn't cost anything in a restaurant. In Hong Kong, water is FREE, and it SHOULD be free. And I didn't order this particular bottle or special kind of water, but they said they only had these bottles. I know that many places including the US did the same thing sometimes, and I think it is just ridiculous. Anyway.

The bread then came. It was not good at all, and I realize that most of the bread in Italy sucks, while those in France are much better. The bread here looks like they are stored for a year. it is not soft inside, and it is just plastic on the outside. No idea what happened.

Then the main course arrived and now this is the real food we were talking about.

The quattro formaggio (pizza with four cheeses) was excellent, and you could smell the cheeses before the plate came down to the table! It was so good that it was not merely a pizza, but a special pizza that allows you to taste the cheeses! The four kinds of cheeses, for your information, are gorgonzola, emmental, gouda and mozzarella.

And the next main course is the spaghetti with clams! Oh yes, again! My girlfriend loves this dish...

It did not look special, but the texture of the spaghetti was not usual. I think all the spaghetti here is good, haha, as the pasta here is incomparable with those in Hong Kong.

That's for today, and I will show you more in the next blog!