Some background
My passion for food started when I was a little kid. I loved stay around observing and helping my parents and grandparents cooking. As any other typical Italian family, Sundays were usually the day of the week dedicated to more elaborated meals, and the expectations were always high. As I grew older, my first job required me to do some occasional day trips not too far away from the town I used to live. The best part of that job was that all my lunches during those trips were expensed by the company. That being said, eating at small restaurants, road bars and bakeries became a routine for me. Over the years, while gradually building my sales professional career, I changed positions and companies quite a few times. I started to travel more frequently, and the territory that I was once limited to a small local region from a sudden expanded to five countries thousands of miles away from home. After a few years, I was covering pretty much four continents – North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. During that time I had the opportunity to live in four different countries and, since 2008, Canada became home for me, a place I carefully chose to grow deep roots.
Along the past 35 years of work to those companies, I may have wined and dined over 3,000 people at some of the most wonderful places. Most of them were clients, suppliers, friends, and family members. Sometimes I took them to small little family owned restaurants located in remote regions, sometimes to large and fancy restaurants located in famous and beautiful cities. No matter the size of the restaurant (or the bill), the most important for me was the opportunity to enjoy the time I was spending in the company of interesting people. These still are great opportunities to socialize and learn about other people’s culture, about their local gastronomy, their families, their businesses and, why not, to close deals!
Places I recommend you to go
No matter if you are a frequent business traveler or a tourist, chances are you may have struggled sometimes trying to find that perfect place to wine and dine your clients, friends or family. Reality is the reviews one can find on cell phone apps are not always precise. Maybe you are on vacation with your significant other looking for that perfect romantic and quite place to have an authentic local food tonight. Or maybe you are alone, travelling by yourself and feeling adventurous to try something different this weekend. No matter the reason of your trip, if you are on business or on vacation, celebrating an important date or simply driving errands in some region, please fell free to check the suggestions of places I am posting on here. These are places I visited, loved the ambience, the food, the service, and would come back for more.
Some of my favorite recipes
After more than three decades of travels visiting so many places and trying so many different foods and wines, I end up building an interesting collection of recipes of the best meals I had. Some of those recipes were received as gifts from chefs, some others from friends and family members who love to cook at home as much as I do. Here at home I tried to replicate the majority of them as accurately as possible – minor adjustments were obviously required to compensate any missing local ingredient. On this blog I will share with you some of those recipes, make a few comments about the places where I tried them, and teach you a few tricks. Are you feeling like enjoying your kitchen today? Go ahead and feel free to browse my private collection of recipes!
I hope you enjoy this blog and the information that I will be gradually sharing with you!
