Where Life Takes You: Focaccia di Recco: Ristorante Alfredo

Sunday lunch time, we found ourselves together with D in front of Ristorante Alfredo in Recco, the birthplace of the famous focaccia col formaggio or focaccia with cheese.

Wait a minute, Recco? Isn't that on the Ligurian seaside? How did we end up there?

Well, the day actually started pretty early that morning, as we set out to the Serravalle factory outlet, about 1 hour from Milan. It was time for us to finally pick up some 'real' dishes, and there was a Villeroy & Boch outlet there. It's a good thing we got there around opening time. Apparently, a long weekend plus the coming holiday season means only one thing: shopping crowds. There was a short queue getting off the highway but we found parking easily and there weren't too many people around. Two hours later we were done shopping and ready to leave. If there's one thing I don't like, it's trying to shop when there are too many people around and it's a huge effort just to see what's on the shelves. By noon, the parking lots were full and there were people running around in the parking lots trying to reserve a spot from people that were leaving. It was that crazy.

We were congratulating ourselves for leaving the crowds behind and for a productive shopping trip. Nice dishes, check. Plus a couple other things. Birthday boots for me, check. Cast iron grill pan, check. Shoes and jeans for S, check. Shirt that D needed to change into, check.

And lunch? Well, we had these famous leftover paninos from the day before (they'd made a trip to the car show in Bologna with the guys and came back uneaten). Not very exciting, especially when someone suggested, why don't we go to Recco for some focaccia? It's only an hour away.

(And I thought only Malaysians were willing to go the distance for good food).

D had been here before with a friend and this was supposedly one of the best in town. First came the pizzata, a focaccia with tomato sauce and the famous formaggio, cheese. Not sure why it's called that, as it really has nothing to do with pizza.

Yum! The thin and light layers of dough with delicious but not over-powering layer of tomato sauce, and then the melted cheese hidden in the layers. Mmm... This was a local dish not found anywhere else.

Then we had the original focaccia col formaggio. Again, the thin layers of dough with melted cheese inside. It is made with crescenza, a mild tasting rich creamy fresh cheese, very similar to cream cheese.

Now I know what the real thing tastes like. It's actually quite commonly found even in Milan, labeled as focaccia di Recco. The pizzata was a nice added bonus.