La Subida: Friuli Venezia Giulia Taste Soloist

Walter Filipitti’s book The Taste Soloist, heavily supported by Stefano Scatà’s photography, will lure you closer to a Friuli Venezia Giulia visit and witnessing a powerful expression of ancestral driven wine and food culture. Photos, recipes, and tales featuring a cooperative of the region’s best knife, cheese, prosciutto, vinegar, wine, and artisan food makers are perfect foils for a landscape of intoxicating rolling hills that eventually cozy up to the horizon’s more distant Alps.

As a local county agroindustrial councillor says in the book, “it’s true that food expresses people’s identity, but it is equally true, in my opinion, that it expresses a community of those who produce…and those who consume as well.” One of the soloists, La Subida, was our home during an attempt to join in this expression of identity through consumption. In Boston we always enjoy eating at home because the food and wine becomes our own expression of who we are. So we made a point of eating at our temporary home inside La Subida’s restaurant. After bouncing around the rolling hills of Slovenia and Italy’s Collio and Carso land of plenty (and while La Subida is not your average trattoria, staying completely on point without missing a beat from course to course), dinner here served as a pinnacle expression of the region’s mashed up borderline cultural fabric we witnessed in its hills.

We drank one orange and one red wine (Gravner and Radikon)

This is how much regional expression you get for € 60 . It sits as one of our top meals so far this year (and a favorite to finish strong by the end of the year)…never to be overlooked if the Taste Soloist book or this post tickles your fancy enough to pay a vist to the pastoral village of Cormons:

Ricotta salata and yellow polenta & herb