Truffle town Alba is a culinary connoisseur’s dream destination

Alba in Italy is a culinary connoisseur’s dream destination. This truffle town in Piedmont, Italy, is known for its high-quality wine and food.
Alba is a dream destination for travelers looking for luxury, without needing to spend a lot of money unless they want to.
Most want to.

Money can’t buy luxury

The Province of Cuneo, where the truffle town Alba is located, has a glorious history. There are plenty of sights to see and the Langhe vineyards belong to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

“There is just about everything here.
The tourists who come here are also not traveling for the first time, and are not looking for a mass tourism destination.
They’re looking for luxury, and luxury is something you can’t get with money.”

– Winery owner Riikka Sukula

Alba, and the whole of Piedmont, is a destination for luxury travel.
However, luxury here does not mean luxurious hotels and other luxuries that can be bought with money.

The luxury of Piedmont lies in unique experiences.
Couples or mini-group tours, winery visits, and quality tasting experiences.

Even a connoisseur can get by with a small bit of money if he wants to, especially if he focuses on the aperitifs served in restaurants early in the evening.

Alba is for gourmands,
no matter the budget

However, most tourists arriving in the city are middle-aged couples who want to invest in quality.
Table wines are not popular to drink here, tasting top-level Barolos is.

Tourists usually have their purse strings loose when they arrive in Alba. As I recall, the average tourist leaves around 150 euros per day in the city.
The truffle town of Alba is not a destination for backpackers, although nomads can fit in here.

Alba is still not a destination for middle-aged and rich folks only. At our restaurant dinners, young Italian couples and groups of friends sat at our neighboring tables. Everyone was still clearly after the food.

Alba is mainly visited by gourmands: The city is known not only for its white truffles but also for the Barolo and Barbaresco wines of the region.
Alba serves as a good base for getting to know the area’s vineyards.

The truffle town Alba is less known than its products

• Ferrero Rocher
• Nutella
• Lavazza

Who doesn’t know or have tasted these brands?
– All these brands come from Alba.

The city of Alba is one of Italy’s chocolate cities and is also known for its coffee.
Lavazza I do enjoy, but I have to confess that Nutella causes me downright sprinkles.
I’m more of a dark chocolate lover. However, so are Italians in general.

Alba’s white truffles are of course the most famous product, but the white city is also famous for its tasty hazelnuts. And many other delicious dishes. The delicacies enjoyed fresh on the spot are the best of Alba’s products.

5 Piedmontese dishes to taste

• Vitello Tonnato
• Tartar
• Agnolotti del Plin
• Brasato al Barolo
• Sautissa ëd Bra

Vitello Tonnato

Eaten cold, Vitello Tonnato is usually enjoyed as an appetizer.
I could eat this as a starter, main, and dessert.
It’s simply delicious.
Thinly sliced ​​veal slices are topped with tuna sauce. Sometimes also capers.
This platter doesn’t need anything else.
Be careful not to swallow your tongue with the vitello tonnato.

Tartar

Raw minced meat is one of those foods that you don’t like to touch except in very reliable restaurants. In Alba, I wouldn’t be particularly worried.
Olive oil and lemon juice are sprinkled on Alban tartar.
Often there are also those famous truffles on top.

It sounds wonderful, but our only experiment in Alba wasn’t completely successful. Neither of us liked our tartar, so we’ll have to give this another chance later at another restaurant.

Agnolotti del Plin

Let’s start with the fact that in Italy every small village has its own pasta. Not the pasta dishes, but the kinds of pasta themselves.
One of my Roman friends gave a rough estimate that there are about a thousand different pasta species in Italy!

Let’s continue on this basis with Alba’s pasta.
Agnolotti del Plin is, as the name suggests, pinched pasta, pressed with your fingers.

So plin is similar to ravioli, but while ravioli is made from two square pieces of pasta, plin is made from one piece of dough.
The filling is usually pork and/or beef and the spice is often sage.
Traditionally, Agnolotti del Plini was made from meat scraps left over from feasts.

Brasato al Barolo

Brasato al Barolo, as the name suggests, is stewed beef in Barolo wine.
Does this need more introduction?
Think meat you can cut with a spoon, this is exactly that.

Sautissa ëd Bra

Sautissa ëd Bra, i.e. Bra sausage, is the local raw sausage.
We didn’t test this at the restaurant, and I don’t even remember how commonly sausage was offered on the menus.

We bumped into these local delicacies a bit by chance at the grocery store.
One evening we stopped by to get steaks and zucchini to cook at home. (Yep, we call home all the places where we spend the night in our nomadic life.) The meat cutter cut a bit bigger steaks than we wanted, but we assured him it’s not a problem.
So the man puts huge pieces of that local raw sausage in the bag.
That’s how we got a perfect dinner for the next day.

This herb-seasoned sausage is made from pork instead of beef for historical reasons. A fairly large Jewish community once lived in the area. In the 19th century, Bra’s butchers got an exception to use beef for production. Today, Sautissa ëd Bra may contain twenty percent pork belly in addition to beef.

+ Cheese as a bonus

Piedmont is also known for its cheese. We also replaced our entire dinner a couple of times by enjoying the cheese and charcuterie trays. Castelmagno, Toma, Caprino, and Rocchetta are delicacies worth tasting.

4 grapes, 5 Piedmont wines and regions

• Nebbiolo – Barolo, Barbaresco
• Barbera – Barbera D’Asti
• Cortese – Gavi
• Moscato – Until

As winery owner Riikka Sukula stated when we interviewed her, Italy’s Barolo is the only wine region besides France’s Champagne where even a small estate can be profitable. The quality wines made from Nebbiolo, Barolo, and Barbaresco, are of course the first wines that come to mind from the region, but did you know that the region also produces high-quality white wines? White wine lovers should definitely try Cortese di Gavi.

7 Alba restaurants to taste

• Aldente Trattoria Italiana
• Bistrot Duomo
• Cafe Art
• Caffe Rossetti di Marziale Sandra (Nettisivuja ei ole, mutta osoite on Piazza Rossetti 4)
• Osteria dell’Arco
• Vincafe
• Vinoteca La Sacrestia
• 100 vini Caffe la Brasilera

This list does not represent the best restaurants in Alba, but the places we chose according to our own taste.
We decided on some based on reviews we read in advance, and others based on what looked nice when passing by.
In one of them we ended up when no other place was open.
The list also includes two restaurants where we would have liked to eat, but at the end of August, they were closed due to the summer holidays.

Cafe Art

We arrived in Alba on Sunday evening and our apartment was located a little bit outside the center.
All the restaurants seemed to be closed, and so were the grocery stores.
Cafe Art, located on the corner of our apartment, saved us from getting starved. The kitchen wasn’t open there either, but the waiter offered to make us some snacks.
The tray with ham, sausages, and pizza slices was so tasty that we returned here another evening.
The pricing was also in the aperitivo spirit: We bought a bottle of wine, so we didn’t charge anything separately for the food.

Bistrot Duomo

After a few days, we moved right into the heart of the truffle town Alba.
We knocked on Bistrot Duomo’s door several nights in vain. Although the furniture was clearly being arranged for the dinner, the door remained locked.
Naturally, it opened after the holidays on the first day of September, the day we already left for France.

Osteria dell’Arco

We had read such flattering reviews about Osteria dell’Arco that we definitely wanted to test the place’s offerings. But that’s just how it was during the summer, they also were on vacation. We had to leave disappointed from behind the door.

100 Vini Caffe la Brasilera

Fortunately, there were plenty of other options available. We replaced Osteria dell’ Arco with 100 Vini Caffe la Brasilera, located on the other side of Piazza Michele Ferrero, which Vitello Tonnato we went to devour twice.

Caffe Rossetti di Marziale Sandra

Around the Alba Cathedral, i.e. Duomo Square, there were also replacements for Bistrot Duomo.
Right next door, Caffe Rossetti di Marziale Sandra is probably the cheapest in the square, and the food was impeccable. I sometimes kept an office here when the internet in our apartment wasn’t working.

Vinoteca la Sacrestia

As the name suggests, the Vinoteca la Sacrestia, located behind the cathedral, has a long list of local wines. We visited here a couple of times to taste both wines and food with satisfaction. We especially recommend this place for those who are after Piedmontese wines.

Aldente Trattoria Italiana

At Aldente Trattoria Italiana we tasted Alba’s famous Tartar. The restaurant itself was quite nice, although their tartar didn’t sink in very well.

Vincafe

Vincafe also turned out to be an office, but not mine. While we were munching our aperitivos, the waiter came to us and commented us being Finns! When I replied that he recognized us well, he said with a grin: You talk as much as Jyrki Sukula (a famous Finnish chief living in Alba with his earlier mentioned wife Riikka Sukula), so you can’t be from anywhere else but Finland.

In Alba, Finns are therefore not considered to be silent as often is the case. When I told to Riikka Sukula about the episode the next day, she told me that Vincafe served as her office in the early days of living in Italy.

When is the best time visit the truffle town Alba?

If you ask me, any time!
If the city and region are not already familiar for you, I would recommend autumn.
Especially for a foodie.

October is the time of white truffles and that’s when the vineyards are perhaps at their most beautiful. The harvest is about to end, but the Harvest Festival is at its best!