Long and Late Dinners

One of my favorite things about my experience in Italy was the dinners. Dinner in Italy is a whole event. It is slow and filled with many courses. What I loved about how slow the dinners were was they allowed you to enjoy the company of those around you. You get to have long and deep conversations. Not only this but the slow pace allows you to enjoy each dish you have and digest it before the next. All of the dinners we experienced went something like this. First, you enjoy a pasta dish. For our first night, we had a risotto (the yellow dish pictured). You will then move on to your main dish. This is normally some sort of meat dish. Then lastly you finish with a dessert. This usually takes around 2 hours. Something else that I noticed is common at dinners is after you have finished everything you are normally asked if you would like an espresso. I thought this was a cool thing that you enjoy a coffee after your meal.

All of the dishes above were from our welcome dinner. Each of them was delicious. We made sure that each course came spaced out so we could enjoy each one. This was my second favorite meal out of the whole trip. The pasta below was from my favorite and longest dinner of the trip which was at Poggio Alloto, The dinner here was around 3 hours long and we had about four courses. We shared details about each other and got to know everyone much better.

Bolognese from Pasta Making Class that we ate at dinner that night