The morning view was clear to the snow capped Alps, The Maritime Alps, to our west, and they are stunning! They form the border between Italy and France.

We took off for the 20 minute drive to the Self Service Laundromat in Alba. It’s always fun for us and it was again. Figuring out how the machines work is nearly impossible without the help of a friendly soul who happens to be there to rescue us. While the clothes washed, we took a walk and got some coffee. We are pretty familiar with Alba and enjoyed remembering the streets and places.

Came back for the dry, which only took 15 minutes. Put the clean clothes in the car and walked to a restaurant I found on Google. Trattoria da Sergio proved to be a great pick. We got the last table in the non touristy Trattoria with its Sardinian influenced menu. The food was really good. Outstanding was my appetizer of calamari stew/guazzetto:

After lunch we drove back south towards Novello and stopped in Barolo for a nice walk about. Grabbed this shot:

And this one of the Barolo Castle and forsythia from where we parked:

Drove back to Novello for rest time.

The main event was dinner at ANT restaurant and it was spectacular, which is an understatement. They do one seating at 8:30. There were about 16 people at 5 tables. Tiziano works the front and Alex, the kitchen. They are an amazing team! We started with a very sweet little homemade aperitivo before everyone walked into the wine cellar to choose a wine. We chose a bottle of sparkling white made from the local nascetta grape. There is no menu here. In fact, you don’t know what you’ve eaten until either Alex, Tiziano, or one other chef tells you. It is such an adventure. This process makes you really TASTE the food in depth and try to pull out all the flavors. There were seven tasting courses plus 3 desserts! And everything is plated meticulously on beautiful ceramics hand made especially for ANT by our friend, Diana Baur. My favorite was the, almost traditional and the least beautiful, pasta course–ravioli stuffed with kale and veal cheek with an umami bomb sauce of shiitake mushrooms, miso and butter:

My other favorite was a slice of soft, bright orange winter squash with a crumble of pumpkin seed and sausage and a pecorino cream on the bottom. So creative–so much flavor and so beautiful.

Alex, who came and sat with us often, felt just like one of Josh’s old friends. It was so comfortable being with him–I even scolded him about smoking! And we talked a bunch to a friendly, younger couple from Torino who sat at the next table. We didn’t finish dinner until after midnight. Worth every minute. What a night! We agreed that this was one of the top three dining experiences of our lives. simply amazing.

Luckily we didn’t have far to go since our apartment is right next door!