Antico Ristorante Pagnanelli
Founded in 1882, this restaurant in a large country house is situated next to the Pope's summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, about 25 minutes southeast of Rome.
Pagnanelli's lovely terrace shares with its neighbour a spectacular view of the atmospheric Lago Albano, a mirror of water in the crater of an extinct volcano. The dining rooms_one large and a couple of smaller ones are beautiful, too, in elegant country style, and the welcome is so warm, complete with a Bellini aperitif, that we loved the place before we tasted a bite. Although the menu offers a variety of meat and seafood, one look across the lake and we simply had to have a lake fish.
We proceded it with two mixed antipasti, montagna and vegetale.
The former included an assortment of lonza (thin slices of cared pork), pear cheese, rughetta and mushrooms; the latter was made up of perfect au gratin and marinated peppers, zucchini and eggplants, a dish that can so easily cross the line into banality.
That was followed by fresh tonnarelli (a long pasta) with a piquant but not heavy sauceof pomodoretti (small tomatoes) and galletti mushrooms flavoured with parsley and carrots.
We also tried the richer and more delicate ravioli with creamy cheese filling and walnut sauce.
Our lacustrine main course was slender, lean, simply cooked eel (a specialty of Lazio's lakes) and rolled filletts of scardola, a bland white fish, in a tasty sauce of onionsand herbs-with too many tiny bones. Desserts included very nice homemade ice cream, of which we tasted pinoli (pine nut), coffee, and crema, or custard. Tiramisù made with fresh strawberries was nice too. This was the only one of the restaurants we tried that displayed a serious interest in wines, with over 1,600 different labels; the friendly sommelier, in full regalia, answered our request for a good and interesting Frascati (almost a contradiction in terms) with a Casale Marchese 1995 Frascati superiore Bonifacio VIII.
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