The bride’s father rowed her from the Orta San Giulio landing to the Municipio dock where the wedding would take place. Wearing fairy-tale white, she stood in the middle of the wooden boat, looking as though she would break into an aria and swan dive into the lapis-blue water. A short distance away lay the island of San Giulio with its castle and blur of trees forming an ethereal backdrop. The boat rocked slightly when it came abreast of the landing. The bride held out her bouquet for balance and stepped forward into the outstretched hands of the groom. We applauded. I’d never before seen a boat rowed by someone in top hat, cutaway morning coat, and tails.
Lago d’Orta put a big, glorious kiss on a memorable day. That night at the dinner, the bride and her father danced. He had choreographed the complicated movements for weeks, and there had been a minor tiff over the amount of practice. No matter now—they dipped and twirled and she maintained her grace, even in high heels. We guests sat at round tables under the stars, listening to the lake water’s lapping. We who’d traveled many miles to share candlelight, music, and the moon luminous through a veil of silver clouds. Heartfelt toasts, winded toasts, the cutting of the cake: So they were wed.
THE BRIDAL COUPLE, now happy with their baby girl, may dream of the night swim when the lake turned ink-dark, the drifts of flowers on every table, or the wretched flight delay out of Milano. Ed and I best remember suffused blue evening air and the fortuitous position of the long, squared U-shaped piazza, the fourth side being the water, its greensward edge lined with boats ready to take you to the island. Surely one of the most felicitous town plans in Italy.
We’ve returned to explore what we had no time for during the wedding. William, with us for all of Piemonte, is joined by his bulky tripod, lenses, and cameras, and thus so are we. I’d fantasized about staying at Villa Crespi, a Moorish extravaganza and a member of the reliably luxe Relais & Châteaux group. All booked! Never mind. Piemonte isn’t short of fantastic places to sleep and eat. We discover Hotel Castello Dal Pozzo in nearby Oleggio Castello. A castle and a grand villa, gardens, terraces, and a refined restaurant, Le Fief. From our room, we see the blue splotch of Lago Maggiore in the distance.
We arrive in time for lunch. Is this strange? That I find formal restaurants relaxing? The crisp table linens, good cutlery and crystal, understated flowers, the little stool for my handbag, the attentive waitstaff, the quiet so conducive to conversation—all testify for this hour or two we will be superbly fed and charmed. No matter that we are in tennis shoes and wrinkled linen. William is the “young gentleman.” And what would he prefer to drink? Not a blink when he requests a Coke with his pasta. I order salad with green and red tomatoes and big pink shrimp. Ed’s choice is the most interesting. His salad is topped with a peeled soft-boiled egg that has been dipped in bread crumbs and deep fried, a golden ball. Cut into it and out slips the sun. (Light-years from a Scotch egg!) Slivers of summer truffle elevate the concept. After all this and a glass of local white wine, we’re ready to explore.
HOW PROFOUNDLY CHANGED a place becomes without cars. In Orta San Giulio, you easily slip into a lost-in-time state of mind. The human scale returns. Low cafés and shops, all pastel and frescoed, face the tree-lined space along the water. Birds twittering and the slosh of wake are predominant sounds, and what’s growing indicates a lucky microclimate: palms, oleanders, and tea olive. William photographs the incandescent glow inside a large white morning glory.
The main industry seems to be the production of gelato; there’s a shop every few steps. Am I constantly asking William if he’d like a cup or cone? Why do I feel a twinge of disappointment when he declines? I’m too fond of the two-scoop cup of pistachio and chocolate. Since, traditionally, gelato isn’t made in the winter in Italy, this must be a ghost town in January. At that point, locals must repair to the Enoteca Al Boeuc for some sustaining vino rosso. In June, what’s most attractive is the Orta Beach Club, where you can swim and rent kayaks. Lake swimming is the best: no fear of sharks cruising below you. In such water, limpid and fresh, I even like to get my hair wet.
Along the promenade, boatmen stand around chatting in groups. It’s easy and cheap to hire a Chris-Craft–type boat to take you to Isola San Giulio, which is so close you could swim if you weren’t liable to be drowned by one of the speeding launches. It’s also easy to arrange longer boat trips around this smallest of the famed northern lakes.
WHAT’S ON THIS small island? A few villas, a square bell tower, a castle, a restaurant with a view, and a cloistered group of Benedictine nuns, who while away the hours mending vestments or baking communion wafers and a bread called pane di San Giulio. They dwell in silence. All over the island are the abbess’s signs extolling the merits of quiet and meditation. The twelfth-century basilica was built over an earlier one that probably dates from the fifth or sixth century. Though not impressive from outside, the interior is extraordinary. Frescoes everywhere. The earliest date from 1421. On a column, I find a graphic San Lorenzo, martyr and patron saint of cooks. Two men with long forks appear to be about to rotate him on the grill while—wide-eyed and hands in prayer—Lorenzo approaches medium-well done.
Elsewhere on the wall of the basilica, Giulio sails from Greece to the island on his outspread cloak, steering with his staff. Yes! With one wave of his hand he frees the island from a besieging serpent-like dragon. We’re at an intersection of faith and fairy tale. Two stairways lead down to a crypt where San Giulio lies in a silver mask and robes.
Intent on the paintings, I almost missed the ambo. A new word for me, it’s the raised pulpit many old churches have for speaking or reading the gospels to upturned faces. San Giulio’s serpentine ambo, of dark green serpentine marble, is carved with mythological beasts struggling with animals. One of the birds resembles a monster pigeon. A griffin fights a crocodile, a deer is attacked by a ferocious centaur. A good versus evil lesson, no doubt. There are the Evangelists’ symbols: Luke’s winged ox, John’s eagle, Mark’s lion (looks more like a pussycat), and Matthew’s angel. Amid them stands Guglielmo da Volpiano, a revered holy person of the island in the tenth century.
A SMALL FERRY runs about the lake, stopping at villages. On Thursday, many locals take the trip to Omegna for market day. We drive the eight kilometers and stroll around the lively town. The lake ends here and close mountains cast reflections in the water. A spate of six- and seven-story apartment buildings follows the curve of the shore. Not pretty but they must offer fabulous views. A stream runs through the old town, with more picturesque houses built along the banks.
Ravenous, we stop at busy Pomodoro, a simple local café that specializes in sfilatini, pizzas rolled in the shape of baguettes. The fillings are endless: Gorgonzola and apple, pesto and lardo, fontina and potato, truffle and porcini, squid and shrimp. William orders the grilled vegetable one and it arrives, long as a celery stalk. Ed tries the fried perch from the lake. I should have chosen the sfilatini, but ordered crespelle with fresh tomatoes instead; they were bland. William shared.
WILLIAM HAS SELECTED Pàscia in nearby Invorio for dinner. We’ve always had great fun introducing him to food. At two months, he squirmed and shook his fists when Ed placed his espresso or a clove of garlic under his nose. “Here’s a strawberry,” Ed would say, “you’re really going to like these.” Last year in Venice, he got wind of something called the tasting menu and he has never looked back. This has become expensive. It’s also enormously pleasurable to see him open up to unfamiliar foods, to listen to his responses. Picky myself, I love seeing him take on Ed’s philosophy: Try it.
Paolo Gatta, the chef, is thirty. As I’ve seen in many places on my Italian tours, he trained elsewhere then brought home what he learned. His restaurant is in a converted house whose pastels and glass look kin to mid-century Miami. We’re seated in a curved room lined with windows. Paolo comes to the table to discuss what’s up today. Because his orto is flourishing, we will have a vegetable meal. His favored oil is extracted daily from sesame seeds. “We’re in your hands,” Ed tells him, “and, yes, we’ll have the wine pairings.” For William, there will be a procession of inventive fruit-based drinks.
So it begins—and doesn’t end for a long time. Raw, tiny spinach in a savory broth; Jerusalem artichokes marinated for two weeks, a miniature caprese, a spoon of puréed apple, carrot, parsley. A taco with Japanese prunes. A confident chef improvising from his garden. The wines—generous pours—come forth: a Franciacorta, a Ligurian white, another white from the Dolomiti, and a big local nebbiolo. An interruption for a palate cleanser of sparkling water with basil. Everything on small plates. Paolo’s surprises keep everyone talking. A dessert finale: saffron wafers over vanilla gelato, various delectable biscotti, and apricot soup with pea shoots. “Are you sure those are peas?” William asks.
A FEW KILOMETERS away, Stresa on Lago Maggiore looks immediately familiar. It was the setting for a videotape Italian course I took years ago. I almost expect to see milling about the people who taught me to order coffee. Lined along the water are the Art Nouveau hotels, Villa e Palazzo Aminta and the Grand Hotel des Isles Boromees, where Hemingway wrote part of A Farewell to Arms. These flower-festooned confections call up a gentle nostalgia for tea in the afternoons and voile sundresses with inherited jewelry, and perhaps a game of whist. Hydrangeas are blooming. Not just tidy shrubs with baby-face-sized flowers, these mound and spread and climb, smears of blue and pink growing out of stone walls and tumbling down in a cascade of flowers. After Orta, this lake feels enormous. At sixty-nine kilometers long, Maggiore is the second-largest northern Italian lake. Dotting the flat azure expanse are the fabled Borromean Islands—Isola Bella, Isola Madre, Isola dei Pescatori, and Isola San Giovanni. There’s much to be said for islands in lakes; every one must have a compelling story—a mystery or a romance to guard.
Along the shore, boat rentals are easy. And there’s gelato at the quay. Balancing our hazelnut and peach cones, we hop on board and take off for an hour’s spin on the calm waters ringed with mountains. The Borromeo family began building palazzi and fabulous gardens in 1632; in the Italian way, the dynasty still owns and lives part-time in their magic kingdoms. We debark on Isola Bella and take a quick walk around but do not visit the famous palazzo with a many-terraced pyramidal garden, home to white peacocks. Edith Wharton in Italian Villas and Their Gardens quotes a Bishop Burnet writing in 1685:
There lies here two Islands called the Borromean Islands, that are certainly the loveliest spots of ground in the World, there is nothing in all Italy that can be compared to them.
I buy a flouncy, smocked sundress for our neighbor Chiara’s little daughter. Ed calls her from the market stand. Bad connection. “What size dress for Adele?” Chiara and her mother, Fiorella, are on the beach with the children in Forte dei Marmi. We’re trying to show her the dress on the phone. Static. It’s starting to rain. “Eighteen months. Perfect.” Many ciao-ciaos while the market vendor waits. We rush back to our sleek boat and view the other islands through a scrim of rain. Invigorating, out on the water, full throttle.
WE’RE HUNGRY FOR a truly local dining experience with traditional cuisine. I call Pinocchio in Borgomanero. A storm hits as we’re leaving. We wait it out in the hotel’s castle wine bar, relaxing on the covered loggia with a Campari soda and a view of the wet lawns. Even the rain seems green.
At the restaurant, we’re greeted by a collection of carved Pinocchios, a passion of the chef-owner. His daughter, a dignified signora, greets us warmly, as if we’re old friends. After last night’s extravaganza, we resist the elaborate degustazione menu. Still the antipasti plates begin to roll. Fried frog legs, as well as batsoà, an ancient preparation of pig trotters boiled for hours then deboned (labor!), bathed in vinegar, breaded, and fried. The name is ironic, from bas de soie, silk stockings, along the line of the silk purse from a sow’s ear—and the humble feet are transformed. Another starter from deep in the tradition, frittata rognosa, is a flat frittata with cheese, sausage or salume, pancetta, onions, and lots of celery. What’s the rognosa? Mangy? “Something lost in translation,” Ed says. “I think it also means bumpy.”
Following these delights, William only wants agnolotti, the ravioli-type pasta stuffed not with the usual spinach and ricotta but with three white meats: goose, chicken, and rabbit. Much to ponder on this traditional Piemontese menu. This is an inclusive cuisine—every part, no matter how interior, is utilized. The much-loved finanziera of Turin, William reminds me, includes everything from brains to testicles, even a rooster’s comb.
The signora is happy to discuss the menu. Sliced goose liver scaloppine, little veal kidneys in Marsala with sweetbreads and hazelnut butter, and, to William’s astonishment, tapulone di asino. Donkey in a mince preparation—tapulone comes from a dialect word meaning “chopped.” The tough donkey meat must be long simmered in wine. This dish goes back, she tells us, to the founding of the town. A group of hungry pilgrims rested for the night and ate their own pack animal. Apparently, they woke the next morning in great clarity and decided to found Borgomanero on the spot.
We know the raunchy wild salad puntarelle, and here is the catalogna we saw in the Torino market—a lettuce with a dandelion-shaped leaf on a long white stalk. Ed selects calamaretti, little squid-shaped pasta, served with squid. I order a filet of beef. The white cows of Piemonte are famous as the best beef in Italy. The chef sears the filet on either side then finishes it in the oven on a bed of aromatic hay and under a cloud of meringue. The signora presents it with a big smile, knowing I will be amazed at the toasty mound of meringue.
“How does this work?” I ask.
“The beef becomes very tender.” She rakes away the puffy cloud, just as you would the salt crust on a fish before serving. I’m intrigued although dubious that hay and egg white have great transformative powers, but it is the most meltingly tender beef I’ve ever tasted. Equally eccellente: the Cumot Nebbiolo d’Alba DOC, suggested by the signora, who knows a thing or two about wine.
We don’t order dessert but it arrives anyway: a plate of little pastries, chocolates and meringues over vanilla gelato with a foamy zabaglione sauce. We manage. As we linger over coffee, we talk about the two extremes of local cooking we’ve experienced. Last night’s experimental, high-concept vegetable dinner and tonight’s deep-rooted presentation of papa-in-the-kitchen’s grand traditions of the area. Ed sips an Averna. “Let’s don’t decide which we like better. Let’s like both.”
ONLY THE THIRD breakfast at Castello Dal Pozzo and already the friendly waiter knows that William will have hot chocolate and that my cappuccino should be decaffeinated. He seems genuinely disappointed that we’re leaving. We are, too. Shouldn’t we have taken a swim out to the island?