Osteria Il Grano Di Pepe (modena)

I feel truly lucky to have friends that don’t have kids that actually invite us (ALL of us) out to lunch with them. And that these friends are foodies!

Not only do they prepare 7 course gourmet meals for us when we go over to their house for dinner, but they keep their fingers on the pulse of culinary excellence in and around town keeping us up to date on what’s going on and where we should be eating.

Osteria Il Grano di Pepe

Such was the case a while back when they asked us if we wanted to have lunch with them at this relatively unknown gourmet restaurant in Ravarino, just outside of Modena, Il Grano di Pepe by Chef Rino Duca.

The chef is Sicilian and creates Sicilian inspired fusion dishes that are so beautifully prepared that long before you can taste them you devour them with your eyes.

Fine Dining With a Toddler

We’ve always been “schedule” type of people, not that we had a choice. My little guy gets hungry, tired and excited at the same times each day. The one positive thing about this, is that we can usually plan around his naps. He ate his lunch, fell asleep in the car on the way to the restaurant and slept for a solid two hours, just enough for us to enjoy our very gourmet lunch, good conversation and fantastic wine.

What We Ate

We each ordered the tasting menu for 38 euro, but substituted the cous cous with the Verrigni spaghetti in a sea urchin sauce. We drank a bottle of Stralusto di Cerosa (2008) from the Guccione Winery, a completely biodynamic Cellar from Sicily and finished off the meal with yummy desserts.

Squid tagliatelle with tomato panzanella and pistachios

Octopus with seaweed pesto and herbed potato cream

Pumpkin, red mullet and verbena granita

Deep-fried Sicilian red shrimps with fig chutney

Verrigni spaghetti in a sea urchin sauce with Pianogrillo organic olive oil

This was a fantastic meal. I’m not really well-versed in the whole extremely gourmet food scene, but I’m studying (this is the yummiest studying I have ever done too!). Needless to say this meal sparked in me a deep and profound interest in real gourmet cooking. I’ve been to a lot of fancy restaurants in my life between New York, Paris and Milan but admittedly this is the first time I’ve paid for it myself! When work is footing the bill you can go to some pretty amazing restaurants, but this was definitely one of the best and most expensive I have ever been to and when the bill came it wasn’t so hard to swallow (see what I did there!). The meal was approximately 80 euros each for lunch, which is around $110 a person, a little more than what we usually spend in a pizzeria, but not that much considering I had gone on a culinary adventure. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing with you the big surprise I gave my husband for Valentine’s Day, it will be the experience of a lifetime, so feel free to visit tomorrow to find out what I gave him and how I gave it!!