Home Restaurant with My Italian Friends Vittoria and Domenico
If you are looking for an unusual experience and an authentic meal in the home of an Italian family try My Italian Friends. A website guiding tourists to Italian home restaurants.
As travel and food bloggers we are often approached by companies and tourist organisations wanting promotion for this product and that initiative. The answer is plain no 19 out of 20 times. Italian Notes is a private blog and a work of passion, and we are not interested in recommending or endorsing things, we don’t believe in wholeheartedly.
One of the things we do believe in, however, is meeting ordinary Italian families and hearing about their lives and their passions over a nice meal. That’s where myitalianfriends.com fits in.
How it works
My Italian Friends is a website promoting Italian home restaurants, so even foreigners can find these shebeens that are spread all over the country. You simply enter a date and a city on the website, and seconds later you are presented with a list of home cooks willing to share their meal with some strangers for the price of 18-50 Euro per person all included. You pay through the website, so there is no awkwardness or pecuniary embarrassment involved. It’s just a perfect opportunity for meeting the locals and having an extraordinary holiday experience.
At least that’s what we thought, so we accepted the proposal, and were invited to visit Vittoria on a Friday night in April. On the website. it says that Vittoria is a retired banker and a passionate cook who particularly likes to prepare old regional recipes. It sounded promising, and we were not disappointed.
All is set for at nice dinner. It’s Mette and Henrik from Italian Notes to the left. Domenico at the end of the table and Lina and Claudio to the right. Rossella takes the picture and Vittoria is busy in the kitchen.
English speaker present
At the appointed time we set out to find Vittoria’s house in a suburb of Taranto, and after some confusion in dark alleys and meeting an Italian couple of fellow diners, who were as lost as we were, we managed to locate the address.
The gate opened and we were received by Vittoria’s husband Domenico, who guided us into a really nice house, where the table was set for 7 people. Knowing there would be foreign guests, Vittoria and Domenico had invited his English speaking work colleague Rossella to join us for the night, and after a short round of introductions we all sat down to eat.
Nice meal in good company
Vittoria had been busy in the kitchen most of the day, and for starters she had served mozzarella di bufala from the prime producer in Battipaglia, a delicious cream of goat cheese and dried tomatoes, a gratin of fava beans and cicoria and three kinds of bread with different fillings as one of the guests was allergic to onions. Her husband Domenico served a nice local red wine and a ‘Brindisi’ toast was proposed.
Right from the start there wasn’t an awkward, silent or boring moment around the table. Everyone was talking, finding similarities and shared interests and experiences from the the word go. Over the next couple of hours, we talked politics, pollution, taxation, education, health services, retirement schemes, YouTube videos, family status, gardening and military operations. And we were given a load of insider tips on what to see and where to go in the region. I ended up feeling quite sorry for our hostess, who had to leave the table every so often in order to attend to things in the kitchen.
I’ll be back
The antipasti were followed by a pasta dish of Timballo con polpettini, local sausages with homegrown broccoli rape and a homebaked bread with crunchy seeds. The last course was a divine homemade custard cake known as bocconotto pasticiotto leccese. By then the time was approaching midnight, but before we left we were given a grand tour of the spectacular garden and an open invitation to come back for a guided city walk next time we visit this part of Italy.
I’m sure we will take them up on the offer and use myitalianfriends.com again for an unforgettable meal and a chance to mix with the locals.
Italian Notes
What an interesting idea Mette! I would love to do this. So nice that everyone clicked together too.
Yes, it’s quite remarkable. Perhaps it just goes to prove, that we are all more alike than we think.
This sounds like a wonderful idea. Good thing, too, that you can pay through the website; would surely be awkward otherwise.
Yes, apparently home restaurants are quite common in Italy. But I guess they have mostly been marketed through the usual passa parole word of mouth or private Facebook pages which makes it very difficult for tourists to try it out.
Hi Mette, it’s Vittoria.The article on your blog is a very welcome gift.Beyond my personal satisfaction, I’m proud to honour my land and the hospitality, the warmth,the feeling of sharing according to our traditions.
I’m very happy to met you and Henrich . I think that the friendship haven’t limits and only the sentiments can pull down the prejudices and the obstacles. Welcome into my life, my new friend!
Hi Vittoria, Thank you for the kind words. The evening was definitely our pleasure, you are a good cook and a perfect hostess, and it’s a great pleasure to meet new people and find out how much you have in common, even though you come from different countries. I’m sure we can do it again some time:)
Agreed, that’s a great idea and we’d jump at the chance to do something like that, too, if it happened in Turkey. :) Our post memorable experience of going to Italy to visit a friend was going to their cousin’s house for what can only be described as an Italian feast. Food, in situations like this, always makes for the best memories. :)
Julia
It’s good fun, and a nice way of getting to know new people. We tried something similar in Antalya once, when we lived some days as paying guests with the family of a friendly man, we had met on the street. A warm and memorable experience. In my book, Turks always get top marks for hospitality and generosity:)