Overall a really nice experience here. It’s a hard destination for us to get to and it was a pretty warm day and a long drive. We stayed there so we checked in around 4:30, showered up and explored around a bit before 6:30 cocktails. It’s the first time we stayed the night at a 3 star restaurant/Inn so that in itself was unique, so I’ll rate the stay separately.
The stay was really nice. It was really sold as a basic room so our expectations were somewhat low, but not in a bad way. There just aren’t many places around there to stay, so we would have stayed regardless. When we checked into our room we were pleasantly surprised. AC was ice cold, there was a king size bed and a beautiful shower. The room was beautiful and it was more than worth it just for the breakfast alone. It’s not the fanciest place I’ve ever stayed, but it was really nice and the breakfast was one of the best I’ve ever had in an inn. It was full of fresh baked goods and fruits etc. it was so much food but so thoughtful and well laid out.
For dinner, the service was really nice. Everyone was friendly and you get served by a mixture of chefs and servers. You primarily have one server but you see quite a few people. We’re typically a bit chatty and there was so much to do for the servers that we didn’t get a tonne of chatting done. I love hearing the background of experienced servers in fine dining who typically have traveled all over. Everyone was pleasant but moved along pretty quickly. Understandable why that is. We were never for want so there’s that and food and wine got to us pretty quickly. Some lag between dishes but I think that’s because of odd timing of guests entering the dining room. Overall, still really good.
The food was really nice. A lot of veggie forward dishes which we are seeing a massive uptick of in fine dining. I like it, others may not. Some dishes which stood out was the corn beignet, cappelletti, tagliolini and orzotto. Obviously most of the food was very local and fresh. A bit of heat/spice which was really nice and not often seen in these settings.
The wine was amazing. You could do classic or funky pairing. We like both so asked for a mix which they did. Most wines were Slovenian which we had never had. One of my favourite chards to date was in the pairing. The one thing to watch out for is they give you quite a bit of wine. I was feeling pretty tipsy by the end of dinner. Not a bad thing but my wife was worse and hungover the next day haha.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. I like how they kept a few classics and then mixed it up with more seasonal for the rest of it. One disappointing thing was that Ana wasn’t there but another chef has been running the kitchen for some time now it sounds like. Well worth the journey either way.
by ochief19