A Town Among the Hills, Immersed in the Notes of Jazz

“Heart of the hills”: this is how Nizza Monferrato is often described, and you just need to travel one of the roads leading here to understand why. The town is immersed in a landscape of warm and reassuring beauty: vast meadows, big trees watching the endless rows of vineyards that stretch for tens of kilometres. We decided to visit Nizza Monferrato after seeing on the Internet some reproductions of old wine labels, drawn by a famous painter from Alessandria, Franco Sassi. The Monferrato houses in his paintings, his farmhouses immersed in fog and in landscapes of colours sometimes warm, sometimes blurred, have enhanced this area and continue to intrigue tourists. Sassi was a great friend of Arturo Bersano, founder of an important wine company, as well as of the Museum of Peasant Life and Wine Prints Bersano.

Admiring the old presses, quarter-casks, glasses and goblets, thick to last over time, as well as a whole series of tools for working the land, was the first stop of our day. A section of the museum is entirely dedicated to a rare collection of prints and labels from the last four centuries, within which there are also numerous creations by Franco Sassi. During our walk in the centre we admire several beautiful churches, such as the 13th-century Sant'Ippolito, left abandoned for centuries and rebuilt in the 18th century, the Church of San Siro, built in 1311, and above all, the 18th-century Cathedral, dedicated to San Giovanni in Lanero. The symbol of Nizza Monferrato, however, is its Town Hall, dating back to 1353, with the ancient bell tower, called El Campanon. After a few steps we reach Palazzo Crova, presumably built in the 18th century, on the remains of an ancient castle.

Today home to the municipal Library, the palace preserves many precious stuccoes and frescoes. And it is precisely in Via Crova that we decide to stop for dinner, attracted by the sign of the Osteria Eneo. We settle into the room with its elegant and warm atmosphere, and our gaze is immediately drawn to the posters portraying great world-famous jazz musicians. “This place, open for ten years, and run by us since 2006, is also known for the jazz evenings we organise periodically. We invite only big names, among others Bobby Durham, Joey DeFrancesco, Mickey Roker, Tootie Heath, and Jimmy Villotti, to whom Paolo Conte dedicated the song “Jimmy, ballando””, Marco tells us, the host who runs the restaurant together with Giancarlo and the very talented chef Flavio. “Our cuisine is based on seasonality, we offer the dishes of the area. But we also like to revisit the specialities of tradition.

For example, we don't have the classic bagna cauda on the menu, but we make dishes based on bagna cauda”, they tell us. After a tasty opener, the little fried panissa with salami, our dinner in fact begins with a cardoon and toma tartlet with bagna cauda, boiled cardoon with poached egg with bagna cauda, a speciality offered both with and without truffle. We also taste the excellent cotechino in a spelt bread crust with fondue, the smoked young beef girello, and the Osteria's “trademark”, the fantastic salt onions: large onions cooked for a long time in salt, and filled with chicken liver pâté and pork capocollo. We follow these exquisite appetisers with the typical and very good tajarin made by hand, to order, and dressed in various ways: with mushroom ragù, rabbit and hazelnut ragù, or with artichokes and ciapule, that is dried tomatoes.

We also taste the potato gnocchi, also homemade, with Castelmagno d'Alpeggio at 1800 metres, with Raschera or with sausage ragù. Some of us opt for the ravioli with three roasts, dressed with roast sauce, a kind of magic potion for the palate. We wash it all down with excellent selected wines, available also by the glass or in a carafe, including labels from small local producers. We thus taste, at an accessible price, Grignolino, Dolcetto, Barbera and Nebbiolo. We continue with the herb tagliata of young beef, the pork fillet in aromatic bread with a cannellini bean velouté, the crunchy testina with red sauce and sweet-and-sour spring onions, and the very tender braised pork cheek, cooked for 24 hours in Barbera, and served on a bed of purée.

Our day in Nizza ends by giving in to the sweet temptations: the amaretti and hot chocolate semifreddo, the irresistible warm dark chocolate tartlet, the orange biscuit and Renetta apple ice cream and the upside-down pear cake with ricotta mousse. We bid farewell to Nizza Monferrato certain that the refined jazz, the breathtaking landscape and the exquisite flavour of the specialities we tasted will make us return here very soon.

Francesca Bertha

FOR INFORMATION:

Osteria Eneo Via Crova, 11 Nizza Monferrato (AT) Tel.: 0141/702546 Closed on Wednesdays. Open all other evenings. About 25 seats. By reservation (over 15 people), also open on Sunday at midday.