I feel sorry for people who go on holiday for reasons other than eating and drinking. What a pain it must be, worrying about what the weather's doing or how busy the pool is or how much equipment to haul down the beach in 35 degrees celcius, when the rest of us can travel in the bargainous off-seasons and be untroubled by throngs of tourists as we hop from bar to restaurant to bar.
So if you have no interest in the beach, and would rather sell a kidney than fight through hordes of sweaty holidaymakers on the hottest days of the year, I can thoroughly recommend Northern Italy in winter. Thanks to a combination of still-fierce Covid restrictions (you need to wear a mask to even walk down the street in Veneto, which is a bit of an irritation even if you're sympathetic with the general thrust of the thinking behind it) and the usual seasonal drop in footfall, the streets of Verona were pleasingly tranquil, and its bars and restaurants, though largely open and operating normal hours, comfortably rather than overly populated.
There was a special kind of privilege, then, being two out of a total of four diners booked into 12 Apostoli on a cold Tuesday night in February. Knowing an entire Michelin-starred kitchen brigade and front of house would be prepping, cooking and serving for just two tables all evening brought with it a kind of extra responsibility as a diner. All these people, dedicated to making your evening special, coming into work knowing they'd not turn a profit that evening but deciding to do it anyway, it was all rather humbling.
I'll forgive them, then, the slightly wince-inducing decision to call their spread of exquisite appetisers "Snack Instagrammabili". They were lovely things, all of them, from the fluffly cheese croquette that brought to mind a posh Cheeto, to the meaty, umami-rich Cantabrian sardine on toast and the dainty little bowl of onion consommé, and the suggestion they'd been put together just to look good on social media did them, nor the food, any favours. Having said that, here I am taking photos of them and sharing them on social media so I suppose I'm in no position to moan.
An example of how Japanese techniques are quietly influencing many fine dining menus all across the globe, this gorgeous bowl of "chawanmushi" (savoury custard) topped with smoked fish and salmon roe, ate every bit as well as it looked. It was so good, in fact, that we probably need to find a better way of describing fish custard to people, because if you're put off by the name you really are missing out.
Fried skate fritter was one of the first actual courses on the tasting menu, daintily done and with a good meaty filling of fresh fish, served with something they called "herring mayonnaise". It's easy to be skeptical about pushing too many different fish elements into the same dish, but this worked brilliantly, the mayonnaise just lifted by a subtle spritz of the sea.
In the next dish, a jerusalem artichoke foam - ethereally light with an earthy, rounded flavour - covered a few select cubes of cotechino, a large, loose-textured sausage that requires boiling for several hours. To be completely honest there was something about the lack of variety in the textures here that threw me somewhat, despite the flavours and seasoning being spot-on, but my dining companion thought this dish was wonderful so there's a second opinion for you.
As you might have hoped for a fine dining restaurant in the north of Italy - I certainly bloody did - the bread course was absolutely stunning. Served alongside literally faultless sourdough, the kind of thing you worry about filling up on but then do anyway because it's so irresistable, was a fiery olive oil of clearly exceptional quality (exclusively served at this restaurant, we were told), some super whipped butter and - my favourite - "salsa verde", an entirely unseasoned (and all the more beguiling for it) blend of herbs and vegetables, dark green and intensely vegetal. This bread course is a reason to visit 12 Apostoli by itself.
I have been served lobster and licorice before - in a restaurant on lake Como in fact - so clearly it's a bit of a fine-dining speciality of the area. But whereas previously the combination was bewildering and jarring and faintly disgusting (and far, far more expensive, but that's Como for you), here the licorice just subtly lifted the seafood flavours and didn't distract from the generous chunks of fresh lobster. I should point out, though, that the risotto rice was undercooked and crunchy, which isn't really a great look for an Italian restaurant at any level never mind one with a reputation such as 12 Apostoli's.
"Acqua, farina e salsa segreta" probably sounds better in the native Italian than "Water, flour and secret sauce" but turned out to be a very enjoyable arrangement of braised snails, puntarelle hearts and fusilli with "vizcaina" - a Spanish style sauce with chillies and tomato. Maintaining a strictly seasonal menu in the depths of winter can be a challenge for some kitchens, but making use of unusual (to me at least) elements like snail help keep the interest levels up even when the variety of ingredients is curtailed.
I love sweetbreads even when less carefully cooked, but here, accompanied by an intense beetroot purée and a glossy, richly truffle-y Perigord jus, they were given the opportunity to absolutely shine. The offal itself, golden brown and crisp on the outside, bouncy and moist within, was glorious of course, but equally worth the price of admission was that jus, a masterclass in classical technique and exactly the kind of thing you go to places like this (and pay prices like this) to enjoy.
Dessert was an attractive modernist arrangement of candied pineapple cubes, saffron ice cream and shards of "marron glacé" (candied chestnuts) which by sheer coincidence that very morning I'd been watching people on Veneto television collect from the forest floor as part of a local news segment. They looked delicious simply roasted and eaten there and then, but in 12 Apostoli, given the haute cuisine treatment, they added a lovely seasonal toasty texture to the final course.
Final, that is, apart these pretty petit fours, which included a chocolate truffle and soft passionfruit meringue, all as attractive and intelligent and exact as most of what had come before. Not wanting the evening to end too quickly (though I imagine the staff had their eye on a rare early night, not that they were unprofessional enough to show it) we ended the meal with a glass of distillato - the generic name borne of the fact grappa must be made to a very specific method, and this backyard potion was a bit too under the radar for that. Great stuff though, and sent us back off into the chilly Verona streets with an even warmer glow than we had already.
It should be of no surprise that ingredients of this quality, cooking of such technical skill (risotto aside), and all the other trimmings and frills of world-class restaurant dining, don't come cheap. But really, £200/head (the total was €475 for two) including plenty of wine is pretty much the dead centre of what you should be prepared to pay for this kind of thing, across most of the European continent at least, and we had absolutely no complaints on that front at all. It's a simple transaction - you get what you pay for.
And what we got, in the end, was an effortlessly enjoyable evening in probably the best restaurant in town, and a further shining example of the versatility and generosity of Italian cuisine. For further examples from a part of the world that boasts a different delightful speciality every ten minutes' drive in any direction, watch this space, but it's no great spoiler to say that I didn't have a single bad, or even unmemorable, meal in my entire 7 day stay. And that, my friends, is what good holidays are made of. Who on earth needs beaches?
8/10
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