The first time I visited Turin, 16 years ago, I understood that it was a Sunday dinner kind of town. Back then I was just passing through, a fledgling journalist on my way to interview Sophia Loren, who was on location in the mountains of nearby Courmayeur. I had no idea that I would marry a Turinese and make the city my home. I felt a curious frisson of recognition, though, when I took a walk through the center of the city, wandering down boulevards lined with elegant shops under covered arcades, through spacious piazzas in neighborhoods whose architecture ranged from Baroque to Art Nouveau. It was late on a Sunday morning, and from the palace of the dukes of Savoy in the Piazza Castello to the Mole Antonelliana, the massive 19th-century steel and glass spire that is Turin’s Eiffel Tower, I saw bourgeois families strolling after Mass. Fathers in handsome loden coats, mothers in fur, children in shetland jackets with velvet collars, old women in the beautifully cut tweed and cashmere outfits that make northern Italian grandmothers the most elegant in the world. Carrying newspapers and chivying manicured dogs, they clustered around cafés and confectioners, drinking cappuccino, greeting friends, and emerging with elaborately wrapped packages of pastries. Everyone was on their way to one of those monumental Sunday noon meals that cement family ties with ritual foods that speak of solidity, tradition, prosperity. I could picture the dining rooms with the patina of age, the heavy furniture, the old pictures, the bored children, the white-haired aunts with their small talk, and I could almost smell the food: roasts and soups and some kind of soporific starch—pasta or risotto or polenta—designed for facilitating postprandial naps.
Turin, set in the foothills of the Alps in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, is an ancient city that has undergone many transformations in its 2,000-year history: from Celtic settlement to Roman colony to capital of the ducal state of Savoy and first royal capital of Italy, to postwar industrial center of Italy, as closely identified with Fiat and Olivetti as Detroit is with Ford and General Motors. Turin was the cradle of Italian independence: It was the political center of the Risorgimento, the movement for political unification that in 1861 forged the territories of the Italian peninsula into a single modern state. Turin is a city perfumed with a wistful longing for the gracious pace and aristocratic grandeur of earlier days. Above all, it is a city defined by social attachments, by neighborhoods, by families.
Some years later, my first formal visit to Turin was, appropriately enough, on a weekend. By that time, I’d heard unflattering descriptions of the city—which is not much loved by other Italians—from friends in Rome and Milan. I’d been warned about the industrial pollution, about the fabled snobbery of the inhabitants, about the uneasy coexistence of the factory workers—whose families were transplanted from southern Italy after World War II—and the middle-class northerners who run the economy. However, I was captivated immediately, especially when my fiancé brought me to Sunday lunch at his brother’s villa in the hills. On our way, we stopped at a pasticceria—confectionary shop—decorated with dim, ecclesiastical mahogany and marble to pick up a package of hors d’oeuvres called salatini. Turin’s French heritage—it is about an hour from the French border and was for centuries the capital of the Duchy of Savoy—is evident in these canapés, which range from pastry shells filled with quail egg and caviar to ruffles of foie gras and shrimp to miniature pastry mushrooms stuffed with savory mousse.
Though I didn’t know it then, the pasticceria was the legendary Peyrano Pfatisch, a century-old institution renowned in Turin. Peyrano is famous for its chocolate and, along with other master confectioners like Gerla and Calcagno, forms part of a tradition that has made Turin famous throughout Europe since the days when the city’s chocolatiers vied for the custom of the Savoy court and the Swiss came to Turin to learn the art of roasting and preparing cocoa beans. I only saw that the place was packed with well-dressed customers buying ornately constructed cakes and pastries and bulging packages of gianduiotti—the unctuous chocolate hazelnut creams originally crafted in Piedmont. They were waited on by solemn ladies in white caps and aprons, who seemed to know all the clients by name. “Buongiorno, Signor B … Buona domenica, Signora A …” I realized that I had entered the Sunday ritual I’d glimpsed so many years before.
We ate in the garden, in early October sunlight. The scene was cinematic: at a long table on a leaf-speckled lawn enclosed by the faded pink walls of a 17th-century villa and looking out over rolling green slopes crowned by the dome of the Basilica of Superga, the Baroque masterpiece that is the burial place of the Italian royal family and one of the chief landmarks of Turin. The fall air had the fermented perfume of ripe grapes and figs. We looked each other over, my future in-laws and I, as we nibbled the salatini and sipped spumante, and then switched to local red wines, a Barbaresco and a Barolo, as we went on to the centerpiece of the meal. This was a Turin and Piedmont classic: bagna cauda. Just olive oil, garlic, and crushed anchovies, blended into a smooth creamy sauce to be scooped up with a variety of sliced raw vegetables—peppers, fennel, endive, and that Piedmontese cousin of the artichoke, the cardoon. To follow, my future sister-in-law served agnolotti, the stuffed pasta native to Turin, in sugo d’arrosto—gravy from a roast. The roast itself was soon presented, a tender piece of the Piedmont beef called fassone, considered among the best in Italy. And we finished with another specialty from Peyrano: a rich, dense cake of chocolate with a marzipan and buttercream topping called a savarin, which is kin to the airy French savarin in name only. After coffee and gianduiotti, the men excused themselves to doze in hammocks and lawn chairs while the women told me about Sundays in Turin in the days before Fiat, when people used to stroll for miles through the woods and fields to visit their neighbors after lunch.
I realized that day that my future in Turin would be intimately linked with food. In this I was not alone. Foreign sojourners have, for centuries, praised the province’s gastronomic glories. In the days when the city was a Roman military colony known as Colonia Giulia, Julius Caesar took time out from recording his transalpine conquests to extol the wines of Piedmont’s La Morra district, today known as Barolo. And Rousseau, in his Confessions, wrote of the sensual pleasure he found in simple meals of peasant cheeses and breads. Among them were most likely grissini, the thin breadsticks said to have been invented in 1688 by a royal doctor to help the digestion of an ailing Savoy prince.
When I married and moved to Turin, I also felt inspired to write about gustatory pleasures. In a short story called “About Fog and Cappuccino,” I described finding in Turin the perfect cup of cappuccino after a long quest in the bars of northern Italy. The pleasant research I did for this story—in which coffee is equated with romance—led me to discover the famous cafés of Turin, vestiges of its ducal and royal past. As in Prague, Paris, or Vienna, they have for generations been arenas for aristocratic persiflage, intellectual gossip, even revolutionary ideas. On rainy mornings I would meet girlfriends at elegant shrines like the gilt and marble San Carlo, in the Baroque piazza of the same name, and the tiny Art Nouveau Baratti & Milano, near the Teatro Regio, for cups of coffee that were light, often perfectly mixed, with a sprinkling of cocoa and raw sugar.
At the same time, I discovered another Turinese drink, the famous bicerin, or “little cup,” a small but explosive concoction of concentrated espresso and chocolate topped with freshly whipped cream, that is best at Caffè al Bicerin, near Guarini’s gorgeous Baroque church Il Santuario della Consolata. A favorite of Nietzsche’s and Puccini’s, Al Bicerin is a tiny, low-ceilinged establishment that resembles a tavern from the Harry Potter tales and has been run only by women, formidable ones at that, since it opened, in 1763.
So it was that I began to understand the idiosyncratic charm of Turin. My “new” house—a 600-year-old fortified villa overlooking the city—is filled with echoes of past generations, and I quickly discovered that, as in all provincial cities, life here is peaceful, repetitious, based on tradition.
For me, the first sign of spring is the sight in early February of confetti scattered in the streets by costumed children as part of the carnival season. That, and the fantastic carnival displays of chocolate masks, toys, and animals in the windows of confectioners. So intimately linked are chocolate and carnival in Turin that a figure from traditional Piedmontese carnival masques—an impish 18th-century gentleman called Gianduja, who is also one of the symbols of the city—gave his name to gianduiotti, which are supposed to be the same shape as his tricorn hat.
As the days grow warmer, I’ll see old people wandering the hillside fields near my house gathering dandelion greens to eat boiled or in salads. This is also asparagus season, a moment of glory for Santena, a nearby agricultural town, where the restaurant Andrea serves a five-course all-asparagus menu, from antipasto to ice cream. With Easter, competing chocolatiers make their window displays as ornate as possible. And May and June bring the fabled cherries of Pecetto, a tiny suburb of Turin. On weekend afternoons, the roadsides are lined with farmers with sun umbrellas and baskets of dark red, pink, and yellow cherries.
It is in fall and winter, however, that Turin really comes into its own culinarily. One of the world’s greatest gastronomic fairs, the Slow Food convention, takes place in Turin every other autumn. Piedmont’s noble red wines, such as Barolo, are, of course, legendary and marry perfectly with another regional specialty, white truffles, which have their epicenter in the medieval town of Alba. During truffle season, my brother-in-law, Valerio, a large, genial man famed as a gourmet and as an epic host, haunts the foggy streets of the truffle fair at Alba, where scouts for famous restaurants all over Italy haggle with tight-lipped Piedmontese hill farmers, their skeletal truffle-hunting hounds by their sides. Valerio, of course, has his own private network, and before giving one of his Rabelaisian dinner parties will disappear into the backcountry for entire afternoons, emerging with truffles the size of a child’s fist.
Every day we gather grapes, walnuts, crisp Martin Sec pears, and the large, flavorful Tonda Gentile hazelnuts that give gianduia its classic buttery texture. My children and I go for rambles in the woods near our house, searching for chestnuts, which we retrieve in the proper fashion by stamping on their prickly hulls and then fishing them up gingerly with gloved hands.
As winter’s fog and rain draw near, it is time to investigate the interior life of the city, which, as in many outwardly conservative places, is peculiarly intense and a little kinky. Any Italian teenager will tell you that Turin is known for a very wild, very late-night, and very druggy club scene, centered on the notorious riverside zone called i murazzi. But there are more esoteric mysteries: Famous for one of the world’s great enigmas, the Holy Shroud, Turin has a dark metaphysical soul like no other Italian city’s. Not by chance did it give birth to tragic geniuses like Primo Levi and Cesare Pavese, as well as the romantic adventure writer Emilio Salgari—whose exotic Far Eastern landscapes linger in the imagination like opium dreams.
Beyond this, Turin has traditionally been known as a center of witchcraft, forming one corner of a “triangle of magic,” with the cities of Lyon and Prague. It is a reputation so accepted that there are actually black magic tours of the city that take place, naturally, at night, recounting innumerable goings-on with a whiff of brimstone, from the pagan rites of the original Celtic tribes through medieval alchemists to devil-worshipping artists.
In the winter I like to reacquaint myself with the Egyptian Museum, a 17th-century palazzo filled with the largest collection of Egyptian art outside Cairo, plundered by Napoleon’s troops. (One urban legend has it that Turin lies under a curse because of a lost canopic jar holding a pharaoh’s heart; another is that the secret ingredient in the highly classified formulas of famous Piedmontese vermouth makers is powdered mummy.) Then there is the faded grandeur of the Savoy royal palaces in the city center, as well as Stupinigi, the extravagant royal hunting lodge; and the shock of postmodern fantasy that is the Cinema Museum, set in the base of the Mole Antonelliana. One of my favorite museums is the Castello di Rivoli, a 17th-century Savoy castle partially destroyed during World War II and rebuilt into a sumptuous patchwork of antique brick and modern glass that has become a venue for contemporary exhibitions. Another is the Palazzo Bricherasio, a Baroque gem set in the center of town that hosts quirky international shows, from Fauvists to Tibetan Buddhist art.
With the first snows, the streets of Turin are deserted on weekends as everyone heads for the ski slopes. In fact, the Alpine Club of Italy was founded here in 1863. The Turinese adore Sestriere, one of the sites of the 2006 Winter Olympics, a resort with magnificent runs but a notable lack of period charm. I prefer Gressoney, in the Valle D’Aosta region, with huge pines, unspoiled villages, and a fin de siècle castle where the Savoy family once vacationed. Here, after a morning of skiing, we settle down in the sun at an outdoor table of an inn called La Genzianella and devour steaming bowls of polenta concia—stone-ground yellow cornmeal mush mixed with mountain butter and local Toma cheese.
A heavenly array of mountain cheeses and cured meats like lardo (thinly sliced herb-marinated lard) and mocetta (prosciutto made from chamois or ibex) form the final, the Alpine, facet of Turin cuisine. You can find them all over the city, in the farmers market at the Porto Palazzo and at restaurants like Trattoria della Posta, at the base of the Superga hill. This small, unpretentious place specializes in cheeses and serves a memorable platter of slices that range from Toma to Castelmagno.
Suddenly another year has passed and it is again carnival season. Although it seems that life here moves as slowly as an afternoon visit to one’s great-aunt, the stately pace carries with it sudden flashes of recognition of the crucial landmarks of life—birthdays, christenings, marriages, funerals, departures, arrivals—all celebrated with food. It is this timeless atmosphere of tribe and tradition that accounts for Turin’s peculiar hold over its residents. My husband once said: “There is a kind of mal du Turin [nostalgia for Turin] that leads people who have once lived here always to long for it, always to return.” Hearing this, I realized that it was my exact feeling. I have spent a great deal of time on adventures around the world and returning to my own beloved America, but when I come back to my adopted city in Piedmont I have an ineffable feeling of comfort and attachment. Turin, for all of its exasperating conservatism, is also memorable and nourishing at the most essential level. Just like all those family Sunday dinners.
The Details
Staying There
Turin Palace Hotel In a city not known for its great hotels, this four-star, despite its slightly faded beauty, is charming (Via Sacchi 8; 011-39-011-562-5511; from $169). Villa Sassi Live like the aristocrats who inhabited this pink 17th-century palace, outside of the city center (Strada al Trafano del Pino 47; 011-39-011-898-0556; from $293).
Eating There
Andrea Hotel Ristorante The all-asparagus menu is a rite of late spring and early summer (Via Torino 48, Santena; 011-949-2783). Ristorante del Cambio 1757 You’ll find traditional Piedmont fare with a French accent at this historic jewel where the Count of Cavour was a regular (Piazza Carignano 2; 011-543-760). Porto di Savona A classic trattoria for bollito misto or fritto misto, where almost everything from vegetables to macaroons is fried (Piazza Vittorio Veneto 2; 011-817-3500). La Prima Moreno Chef Moreno Grossi’s seafood bagna cauda is a thing of beauty, and his restaurant is one of the city’s finest (Corso Unione Sovietica 244; 011-317-9657). Ristorante Da Michele Custom-made pizza (Piazza Vittorio Veneto 4; 011-888-836). Trattoria della Posta A nirvana for cheese lovers—practically every dish here revolves around it (Strada Mongreno 16; 898-0193).
Being There
Chocolatiers and Pastry Shops
Confetteria Avvignano Piazza Carlo Felice 50 (011-541-992). Pasticceria Gerla Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 88 (011-545-422). Pasticceria Ghigo Via Po 52/b (011-887-017). Pasticceria e Confetteria Peyrano Pfatisch Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 76 (011-538-765).
Cheese shops
La Baita del Formaggio Via Lagrange 36 (011-562-3224). Borgiattino Formaggi Via Accademia Albertina 38 (011-839-4686).
Cafés
Caffè al Bicerin Piazza della Consolata 5 (011-436-9325). Caffè Baratti & Milano Piazza Castello 29 (011-440-7138). Caffè Mulassano Piazza Castello 15 (011-547-990). Caffè San Carlo Piazza San Carlo 156 (011-561-7748).
Wine Bars
Antica Enoteca del Borgo Via Monferrato 4 (011-819-0461). Casa del Barolo Via Andrea Doria 7 (011-532-038). Il Refettorio Via dei Mille 23/d (011-887-422).