Sinalunga: Life Lessons and Home-cooking

Pici all’aglione (thick spaghetti in a garlicky tomato sauce) with arugula is one of our favorite dishes at Ristorante Da Forcillo in Sinalunga, just over the border in southern Tuscany – and Pino’s choice on a recent lunch there. I asked peppery elderly server, Melis, for the pappardelle con sugo d’anatra (a wide fettuccine pasta with duck meat sauce).   The tasty Tuscan dishes are cooked up by Angela (with an assistant nowadays) while son Fabio serves at table and other son, Stefano, mans the bar.  Angela came out of the kitchen as we finished up our pasta dishes and she happily chatted with some of her customers.

Ristorante Forcillo, Sinalunga

Pici all’aglione topped with arugula

Angela and Melis

Pappardelle with a sauce of duck meat

Angela shares her stories with Pino

Tuscan home-cooking at Ristorante Forcillo

“E’ bello,”  she replied with a smile when I asked this elegant eighty-three-year-old Forcillo cook her feelings about long years in the kitchen of their family restaurant.  Coral earrings dangling under beautifully coiffed hair and wearing a gold necklace and attractive beige sweater, Angela seemed ready for a stroll in her native city of Siena, rather than just out of the kitchen after cooking up soups, pastas and grilled meats for her customers.  She chatted with us as Pino started in on his grilled pig livers on bruschetta,  cannellini beans on the side – a Da Forcillo specialty – and I set to the spinach sautéed in olive oil and garlic.

Angela talks to Pino about the restaurant choices

Grilled pig livers on bruschetta, a Forcillo favorite dish

Cannellini beans with bruschetta

 

“I love being here, where humanity passes through,” she added.  “I like getting to know the people who come here, observing how their characters are formed.  And I always realize that others might have problems worse than my own.”

As she adjusted our silverware, made sure we had enough bread, she concluded, “We need to focus on simplicity in life.  We need to be realists: to realize that tomorrow can be better – but it can also be worse.”

You have to love this about Italy:  you can enjoy the best in savory home-cooking (southern Tuscan in this case), while learning life lessons from the people cooking it and serving it.

Ristorante Da Forcillo is one of those places. “We’ll be back,” I told Stefano as we stopped at the bar area on our way out.

Stefano and Pino at the bar

 

Click here to read about nearby Trequanda, another southern Tuscan favorite

Read about Petroio, not far away

Montisi is yet another southern Tuscan gem

Read about Tuscan gem, Anghiari and its artisan market

Read about another favorite spot in southern Tuscany for pici all’aglione