Reale - Castel di Sangro
The dining room is at the bottom of the three large windows on the left
Rating: 15/20
Where: Castel di Sangro, Italy
When: Dinner for 2 on 17 September 2022
Cost: Tasting menu 170 Euro, Wine Pairing 100 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, #15 on Top 50 Restaurants list (2022)
Why: Curious culinary concoctions, rarely delicious, but consistently unusual
Reale is located pretty much in the center of Italy - halfway between north and south, and halfway between the west and the east coasts. For us, it was a 2 1/2 hour drive from the Rome airport. The restaurant and its associated hotel Casadonna are located in a former monastery just uphill from the small town of Castel di Sangro. I don't know what purpose the dining room served in the original monastery, but it has very high ceilings and stone floors, the tables are spaced widely apart, and while it is not (monastery) quiet, it is thankfully not too echoey either.
For our dinner, we were able to choose between a tasting menu and an a la carte menu. Optionally, up to three dishes from the a la carte menu could be added to the tasting menu. Interestingly, the tasting menu was entirely vegetarian, but the a la carte menu offered meat and fish. We chose the tasting menu without any further additions, which was wise since we wound up pretty full. To be fair, our “feeling full” wasn't so much due to the total amount of food served, but rather due to the serving speed - our dinner of 14 courses took only 2 1/2 hours. The first few courses in particular arrived at a breakneck speed.
A wine pairing was offered as well, with good wines that mostly paired pretty well with the food - sometimes unexpectedly so, for example a red wine with a cheese-filled, sauce-less pasta.
Our dinner began with a dish simply called "carrot". Fair enough, since ostensibly that was the only ingredient being used here. We got a carrot extraction, sliced carrots and a carrot puree hidden inside a pyramid created by the carrot slices. Pretty, especially if you like the color orange. The extraction (think: soup) was lovely, with a nice acidity that made us suspect a vinegar-like ingredient besides the carrots. The solid part of the dish was both sweeter and significantly less exciting - essentially it tasted just like unexceptional boiled carrots 15.
Two loaves of bread were served during dinner, both warm or hot, and both with excellent crusts, but otherwise not too special. No butter or olive oil were ever in sight, so the main use of the bread was to clean up the sauce on the plates (if you were fast enough to get to it before the plates were whisked away - see the serving speed mentioned above) 16 (mostly for the crust).
Breadsticks were available as well, but besides being extremely long and thin (requiring some dexterity to pick them up in one piece), they were unremarkable.
Dish number two was called "zucchini": cooked zucchini slices were draped on top of zucchini puree, and the whole dish was seasoned with tomatoes (I think) and cardamom. My first bite was a wallop of cardamom that overwhelmed almost all other taste sensations - not ideal. Subsequent bites made the dish feel more integrated, and more palatable as a consequence. This quickly became a trend in our dinner: the first bite of a dish was surprising and weird, but once one got used to the flavor experience, further bites were more coherent and pleasing - I'll rate the dishes on the latter and not on the first impression (there's probably a moral in here somewhere) 16.
Next we received a dish of compressed watermelon topped by a black olive pate and marinated tomatoes. Similar to a bruschetta, but with watermelon instead of bread. I kind of wish they'd stuck with the bread, since the watermelon was a bit too sweet for the otherwise excellent tomatoes 16.
Lettuce was the star of the next plate, and it was not as a salad. Cooked lettuce had been infused with gin, and was served over sour cream and a lettuce reduction. The lettuce came across as somewhat bitter, but this was well balanced by the creamy and salty sauce. An succinct description of this dish would be "different" - definitely the most interesting dish of the evening 17.
Capellini that had been cooked in tomato water came next. The pasta was very al dente and chewy, and the tomato water imparted a bit of sweetness and vinegary notes to the dish. An interesting idea to cook pasta in something other than water, but the result was less exciting than regular pasta with a good sauce would have been 15.
In the next course, two kinds of eggplant were served lightly cooked and seasoned with rosemary. Next to them: dollops of tomato puree and of peach caramel. On the positive side, I liked the smokiness of this dish. But unfortunately, the eggplant was severely undercooked, resulting in a really tough texture - not what you want to see in an eggplant, and close to inedible. Whether a mistake or done on purpose for some unfathomable reason, the result was bad 13.
Thankfully, things were looking up again with our next course: ravioli filled with sheep ricotta. The cheese fillings were quite substantial, making this one of the heaviest servings of the night. Like most dishes, the first bite was almost overwhelming due to its cheesiness, but on the following bites, the dish was delicious and went excellently with the paired red wine. My favorite course of the night 18.
Back to odd combinations in the following course: radicchio served in a peanut sauce. The first bite was bitter (from the radicchio), the second sweet (from the peanuts). An interesting combination that actually worked better than it should have had any right to 16.
A tomato and strawberry gazpacho arrived next. Very sweet from the strawberries, this felt unbalanced compared to an ideal gazpacho 15.
Easily the least photogenic dish of the night was a piece of bread soaked in caramelized red onion juice, montepulciano wine and a sage extraction. The bread had been heated, causing the juices to integrate. More spongy and airy than a bread pudding, slightly sweet, and overall a bit heavy. Different, but lovely in its own way 17.
Fried endives and potatoes were served over a sauce of endives and capers. Again, a bitter dish (clearly the kitchen has a preference for those), and overall a bit weird. The sauce took some getting used to, but was a good acidic balance to the fried toppings 16.
The pre-dessert consisted (unusually) of linguine pasta. The pasta was seasoned with lemon, chili, and parmesan. The result was (in order) very sour, very spicy, a bit creamy, as well as quite bitter (no surprise at this point). This was a palate cleanser that smacked the palate around until it didn’t know up from down. An assault on the taste buds that left them waving the white flag. And a chore to finish 13.
Our dessert was a fig marinated in sugar served with fig caramel, rice vinegar and a fig leaf sauce that was flavored with anise. The fig was surprisingly not that sweet, but that didn't really matter since the overall taste was entirely dominated by anise. In effect this dish felt more like a cough drop than a dessert. Thankfully, the paired cocktail was much better 13.
Three final bites concluded the dinner. First, a praline of white chocolate, caramel and coffee was wonderful (18 if rated separately). The two other offerings left us a bit non-plussed: a slice of melon and some frozen grapes. The quality of these fruit was fine, but not extraordinary. It's puzzling why a restaurant would serve a dish that any guest could prepare just as well, maybe to contrast with the weirdness that came before? Overall 14, but only thanks to the praline.
Our dinner at Reale was interesting and different. The kitchen loves bitter ingredients and strong flavors that require some mental adjustments from the diner. The first bite often comes as a shock, and only after a few more bites a dish reveals its charms (or lack thereof).
Unfortunately, a dinner that's trying for something different does not necessarily mean that the result is delicious. Among all the courses, only the ravioli were something that I'd order again, and even they took a few bites to get used to. A few dishes were almost inedible (the eggplant, linguine, and fig). I'm excited by experimentation in the kitchen, but not at the cost of the result being a chore to eat.
I'm a bit confused by Michelin's three stars, what we saw deserves a single star at best. Even more puzzling is the restaurant's 15th position on the Top 50 Restaurants list in 2022. Their raters must either value out-there-ness over tastiness, or they ate something entirely different from us.
Overall: Experimental and interesting dishes that rarely are delicious, and sometimes nearly inedible. If one wants to eat something unusual and different, then this is a good (if somewhat out of the way) stop, and the adjoining hotel is very nice indeed. But if you just want an excellent, delicious three-star meal, then this is not it, not even close 15.
