Alla Pergola Pizzeria

Alfio

➤ Strada Gardesana Occidentale 7/B, I-38074, DRO, Italy

Carta • Pizza • Caffè • Pasta • Italiano

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"This restaurant came recommended by the owner of our hotel. It did not disappoint. They had large menu with something for every taste. Allergens were clearly marked and they had good choice of gluten free options, including pizza. There was a good choice of local wines. Our bill was just over €100 for four people including wine starter and dessert. Delicious food!"

Alle Bocce

➤ Via Zandonai 8, 38074, DRO, Italy

Carta • Caffè • Pizza • Pasta • Fast Food

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"family and hand, good pizza and various beers, but also restaurant menu. in the center of the village of dro, easily accessible and with a beautiful and large canopy to eat outdoors even when the sun beats or rains and of this time outdoor spaces are always well accepted."

Lo Sfizio

➤ Piazza Repubblica 15, 38074 Italia, DRO, Italy

Carta • Pizza • Caffè • Kebab • Fast Food

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"A family run bar and restaurant. Lovely people that work hard. With tables inside and also outside on a shaded terrace, this is the perfect stop off for drinks, lunch or dinner. Everywhere is spotlessly clean and the bar and kitchen sparkle. The menu includes a great selection of pizzas and also other fast food to eat in or takeaway. The food looks excellent and this place is equally popular with locals and tourists. We've stopped here before and our welcome was just as warm. Very convenient when cycling along the track north of Riva by the River Sarca. We will return whenever we can. Lovely."

Pizzeria Genzianella

➤ Via Zurlon 1, Cavedine, Italy, 38073, CAVEDINE

Carta • Pizza • Pasta • Europeo • Pizzeria

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"This place took some real effort to find as all GPS apps were happily recommending routes that involved one way street to wrong direction. Eventually it really was worth it. Affordable, good service and place being really busy indicated that this is popular and good place, despite of its remote location. Recommended!"

La Casina

➤ Localita La Casina N.1, 38074, Drena, Italy

Carta • Vino • Carne • Gelato • Italiano

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"Let me start by saying that La Casina may be the most beautiful country restaurant I even ever been in, and I have been in several in several countries. The enormous terrace shaded by a pergola of wisteria, allowed for tables (made of stone) to be widely spaced. It reminded me strongly of the French Laundry in the Napa Valley, but was if anything even more beautiful and gracefully proportioned. For some reason (though they knew I spoke English and barely a dozen words of Italian — they knew this because I had phoned ahead for a reservation), they assigned us one of the few waitresses who didn’t seem to know English at all. Fortunately, all the younger staff (the runners, etc), knew some English and a few of them knew English very well. Now may be as good a time as any to mention that the entire restaurant, from Executive Chef to Maitre d’, to all the floor staff, consisted of women. In America that would very likely be illegal in a restaurant not run entirely by one family. In Italy it was merely a curiosity. It didn’t make any difference that I noticed; I suspect that many people probably didn’t notice it. The food was imaginative — often an imaginative tweak of some northern Italian dish that didn’t really need any tweaking. In almost every instance it was somewhat more imaginative than it was good. For example, I began with risotto with fresh berries the most successful dish I ordered. The slight sourness of the fruits — raspberries, strawberries, blue berries, and a black berry or two — worked well with the rice and creamy cheese (fontina? clearly not parmigiana). The texture was both creamy and nutty, a state not easily achieved in a restaurant, where the slow cooking required of a traditional risotto is usually broken up into stages so that the final dish can be finished off in a matter of about 10 15 minutes instead of the usual 40. The result in many restaurants is often a dish devoid of the slight crunch of the best risottos. This one, however, was perfectly executed. The flavours, though unusual together, worked well together. My daughter began with a spaghetti flavoured with sardines and capers. She didn’t like it much, so we switched. I thought it was delicious if perhaps a little bland. Bland being the operative adjective for nearly all the food. As with the rice in the risotto, the spaghetti was cooked perfectly, properly al dente. With my first course I had an Italian Riesling, made by a winery called Kelner, which was complex, substantial, and very slightly peppery (a favour note I don’t generally associate with Riesling). It was “real wine,” as my close friend Paul (who knows more about wine than anyone else I know) might put it. I alone had a second course, which consisted of the smallest pork chops I have ever seen (about the size of normal lamb chops) that were grilled and served with the strangest polenta I have ever eaten, gelatinous and largely lacking in flavour, though to the extent I can remember any flavour it was thyme, a little too much thyme. This was accompanied by a so called ratatouille that bore almost no relation to the classic dish. It consisted of barely cooked and largely flavourless rondelles of tomato, daikon radish, and courgettes, with almost no seasoning at all, not even salt. Something is clearly wrong when a tomatoe in Italy in July is lacking flavour. The meat was over cooked and leathery it's always a risk with lean pork, but it can an should be avoided in a kitchen that clearly has ambitions. It was a nice idea, sounded very appetising on the menu, but it was not well achieved. The polenta was frankly abominable, resembling sea slug. Now, I happen to like sea slug, but not when it is called polenta. And I happen to like polenta when it tastes of maize and has a texture of, well, of polenta, not of sea slug. With my second course I drank an Italian Pinot Noir that was splendid — somewhere between a French Pinot Noir (more red Sancerre than Burgundy) and a Northern California Pinot Noir, with lots of zip to it. The wines, together with the setting, were the best part of the evening. We carried on to dessert, as one sometimes does even while knowing it’s going to be a risk. Meggie had a strawberry extravaganza (a sort of strawberries six ways), while I opted for the house version of tiramisu. Again, loads of imagination, lots of technique, beautiful presentation, but the flavours were, as with too much of the food we ate, simply under seasoned and unexciting (not subtle, but bland), as though the chef had been suffering a bad cold. There are lots of ways to tweak a classic tiramisu that can work — but making it too obviously an homage to something concocted at El Bulli was not, in my view the best way to go. It did not help, in my view, that it arrived as a pale pink globe on a bed of crumbled chocolate cookies. What, I wondered, is this? I continued to wonder it right through to the end. In sum, the setting was inspiring. The wines were eye opening. But the food was not as good as it should have been, bright ideas perhaps, but marred by a lack of flavour and a well judged sprinkling of salt and pepper. Lest some of you wonder if perhaps I might have been suffering from Covid, I can assure you that I was not. Proof was that I tasted the wines perfectly well."