An hours' bicycle ride from Padua (optional with an ice-cream or coffee break in Selvazzano Dentro) or one and a half hours from Vicenza
gets you to La Buona Terra near the village of Cervarese Santa Croce, an organic farmstay, popular party location with families, educational farm for kindergardens and farm restaurant. You can stay either in one of the clean, rustic guest rooms and holiday homes located inside various farm buildings (advanced booking required), or on the camping site on the farm. A popular place with children -- there are not only cows, chicken, horses, donkeys, dogs (no cats), and frogs here, but also a spacious swimming pool. (Less popular among the kids: to ask the farmers, Luisa and Domenico, to remove the cleaning robot in the mornings.)
After breakfast (organic with a few exceptions, and usually with freshly home-made cakes made with the farm's own organic flour) you may pre-order lunch and/or dinner (around 8 pm), except on Mondays. Expect hearty home-made farmer's kitchen, home-made pasta, left-over soups, a grilled chunk of home-made bread topped with olive oil and an equally thick slice of sopressa salami from the farm's own pigs, freshly grilled vegetables, rustic meat courses from the farm (you may even be served a hearty stew of chicken necks) and (often) organic wines from nearby wineries. On weekends the farm restaurant is open to the public, but you are asked to phone in in advance (+39 328 077 0977). Vegetarians are gladly catered for with the four-courses "menu verde" while the omnivore one is dubbed "menu rosso", and as the farmers' daughter is a vegan, do not hesitate to mention if you are, too. Children are equally welcome and pay less. On summer weekends dinner is often served in an informal garden party style with antipasti plates and pizza-style foccachia bread, often accompagnied by life music.
There's also a farmshop selling the farm's home-made products: eggs, sopressa, preserves and liquors. Officially it keeps open on weekends between 15:30 and 19:30, but unless there's a bigger party of visitors around take this with a grain of salt and ask Luisa or an employee if you want to buy something.
One of the bicycle tours may lead you to the South-Western slopes of the Euganean Hills, to
Ca' Orologio in Baone. Among vineyards and olive groves you will find Maria Gioia Rosellini's dedicated organic winery, producing natural wines of exclusive taste. You may enter the 16th century Venetian villa to taste and buy, or decide to rather stay in these magical surrondings and make use of the bed-and-breakfast
offer (better book in advance, though). The breakfast itself is only partially organic, depending on the availability of organic products in the village supermarket (which is rather limited). You have the opportunity to cook lunch and dinner yourself, and serve it with a glass of Ca'Orologio wines.
2022-06-25 17:30:00
[Italy, Veneto, Colli_Euganei, Euganean_Hills, Padova, Padua, Cervarese, Baone, organic, biologico, accommodation, farms, agriturismo, camping, cycling, wine, breakfast, lunch, dinner, restaurant]
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Missing the mondane reputation of neighbouring Rimini eating out in Pesaro is not about posh restaurants. All the organic places I found offer simple, home-made food that suits both, lunch and dinner: pizza and the local variety, piadina (a warm wrap made of thin bread and a veg or non-veg pizza fill), simple pasta dishes, risotti and main courses.
A few meters from Teatro Rossini in Centro storico, the old city centre, the small friendly Pizzeria Bio al Teatro serves pizza to go along with organic soft drinks, beer, prosecco and wine by the bottle. All pizze are a 100 percent organic and vegetarian if not vegan, pre-baked on trays in the kitchen behind the sales counter, sold by the piece and re-heated while you wait. Decent fast food, although their pizza base resembles an airy foccacia rather than the thin, crispy traditional pizza round baked in a wood-fired stone oven. There are some bar chairs and tables inside to sit and eat on the spot as well as a couple of recycled wooden benches outside. The place opens only in the evening.
For lunch (or dinner) head for Da Peppe Pesaro Centro, approximately five minutes away located in a traffic-calmed street connecting busy Via 11 Febbraio and Viale Donato Bramante. This local restaurant chain
uses organic flour for their home-made pasta and piadine, offers grain-based organic salads, and some of the veges as well as the olive oil are also organic. Unfortunately drinks, non-vegetarian and some other ingredients are not. When ordering pasta you have to specify the pasta shape and the sauce to go with. The food is simple and tasty, and since it is prepared on the spot requires a little patience. The staff is friendly, but expect the service to be relaxed.
A further five-minutes walk East-North-East leads you to Chiccoteca, a cosy, simply-styled certified all-organic restaurant cum cafe open daily all day, with an arbour in front facing (comparatively) silent Via Buozzi. It will serve you both, breakfast, and simple meals for lunch and dinner (including -- you guess it -- home-made pizze and cascioni, pizza pockets similar to a calzone), and of course the obligatory coffee (tisane if you prefer) cum cake. Very unusual for no-frills eateries in Italy you will be served glass and earthenware, no plastics.
Supermarkets
Just around the corner you will find the Chiccoteca supermarket, a small, pleasantly furnished organic full-retailer, closed on Sundays. If you are in need for organic food items on a Sunday make sure you arrive near Teatro Rossini before 1 pm, in time for the nearby Coop supermarket branch stocking a decent selection of organic veges, dairy products, cookies and other food items.
Ice-cream
Apart from Coop supermarkets, there's a second chain in Italy you can trust to offer real fare: the ice-cream makers of Grom. In Pesaro, however, there is no Grom branch, so you have to rely on the following rule of thumb: Avoid gelaterie where the ice-cream is piled up and heavily decorated to attract customers from a distance. Real ice-cream presented this way would melt, not to mention hygienic reasonings. So stick to the ones where the ice-cream is hidden in steel containers buried in the freezer and preferably covered with a lid.
The one I found is Panna & Cioccolato near Teatro Rossini. Apart from generally yummy all-natural ice-creams, ice-cakes and smoothies (centrifughe) they also have one organic ice-cream variety on offer: Mascarpone. As with other gelaterie making artisan all-natural gelato the interior is cleanly furnished in lab-style, the workshop proudly presented, and you may have a glimpse on the ice-cream makers at work through the shop's window front.
The beach
Although overpriced low-quality fast-food on the beach promenade still is the norm, Pesaro beach offers better options: For the full-fledged beach experience including organic cocktails head for Bottega Beach within Bagni Alfredo right in front of the lower building of the Hotel Excelsior. During the high season you can party day and night indulging in vegan organic ice-cream, piadine, pizze, salads, alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic beverages and small meals. During the low season starting with a party at 3pm on the last Saturday in April this beach shack keeps open on weekends and public holidays. All food and beverages are also available to take away.
The only organic place in town calling itself a restaurant is Da Peppe Pesaro Mare located a short walk westwards next to Bagni Tina. Noisy with efficient, though not overly polite staff it serves basic, but delicious seafood dishes which are not on offer in other Da Peppe branches in addition to the regular Da Peppe fare consisting of partially organic home-made pasta, piadine, soups and salads.
Acommodation and bicycles
About half an hour by bicycle, west of Pesaro Centro a pleasant family-driven organic farm, Badia, offers bed and partially organic breakfast in clean and simply furnished rooms under the roof of the farm house. The owner, Federica, will happily help you to rent reasonably priced bicyles from the compentent Pesaro Bici workshop.
In case you plan to stay for a longer period you may try to register for the city's free bike sharing scheme C'entro in bici in the comunal information desk (Sportello Informa&Servizi del Comune di Pesaro) behind piazza del Popolo. You are required to fill in a form available from their website, pay a 10 Euro deposit and will receive a personal key for the bikes.
Both, the bike shop and the information office will provide you with a cycle map covering the Bicipolitana in Pesaro, a nicely constructed and signposted network of dedicated bicycle lanes. Number 3 (in Openstreetmap marked as Pista ciclopedonale Umberto Cardinali) leads you from the city centre alongside the banks of the river Foglia -- crossing allotments, abandoned factory buildings and a maze of six-foot tall reed -- to Centro Rossini, halfway to the Badia farm.
2015-08-28 12:35:11
[Pesaro, organic, biologico, pizza, ice-cream, supermarkets, coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, fastfood, vegetarian, vegan, farms, accommodation, vegan, takeaway, cycling, Italian, agriturismo]
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