Restaurant: Ristorante Babette
Location: Poggibonsi, Italy
Date: June 19, 2011
Cuisine: Tuscan Seafood
Rating: Great food, great value
After our self selection failure on Saturday, we got another restaurant recommend from our host (the owner of our villa). He sent us to this casual but very good seafood restaurant in Poggibonsi.
As usual there is a nice outside dining space.
And a gigantic menu.
This being all seafood we got both a prosecco.
And a local white from San Gimiangano. This is one of those joints where the wine is like E10. I like this light quaffable, almost Greek-style, white.
Caprese.
One of my friends and I ordered this “assorted fish appetizer, min 2 people” which was E10 a person, it came with this and EVERY dish until the pastas! An amazing assortment. This one was “Tuna with balsamic dressing.”
Marinated white anchovies and onions.
Crostini with white I think is a fish row mayo.
Marinated Salmon with red peppercorns.
What I think are winkles, or little sea snails, in a delicious garlicky sauce.
Octopus pulp. Also garlicky.
Muscles.
Scallops stuffed with a kind of pesto scallop paste.
Some tasty but undetermined shellfish “stew.” Wow, that’s a lot for two people and E20 total.
Home made pasta with a kind of tomato pesto.
White Risotto with mixed seafood. This was good, and unusual in that usually seafood risottos have some tomato in them.
Risotto with squid.
Strozzapreti with Fish ragu. This was highly unusual (for me) and really good. It was essentially a ragu made using shellfish instead of ham. It was very salty, with a significantly briny taste, but very tasty. The al dente shells were a fantastic foil.
Pizza Margherita.
Mixed fried fish. Lightly fried and delicious.
Branzino, simply grilled and filleted at the table.
A very very typical fish preperaration all over the Medditeranian, but done very well here.
The final presentation of the fish.
Not only was this restaurant a bit different, being all seafood, and very good, but it was an incredible deal. The bill was less than E20 a person and we had an incredible amount of food.
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