Four wheels bad, two wheels good. Beena gets whisked off on a whirlwind trip around Italian towns and restaurants all fuelled by Menabrea beer.
As well as avid moped rider, Franco Thedy is chief executive of Italy’s premier beer brand Menabrea.
Before I embark on the bike though, there’s the serious business of some ante meridiem drinking to tackle in Menabrea’s first and longest running brewery, here in the historic town of Biella.
The town of Biella itself is a maze of yellows, all encircled by verdant green hillsides. With its sloping cobbled roads and its steep narrow alleyways adorned with slumping yellow houses, it is typical of this region. Window boxes sidle next to painted shutters releasing large tangles of red and pink flowers.
The brewery sits here, paying homage to the first of many, where things are done traditionally. They have even retained the wooden structure, which marks the old site of a religious pilgrimage, while overseeing the bottling plant is an image of the black Virgin, or Madonna Nera di Oropa.
Although slowly increasing in availability in the UK, Menabrea is still only really found in braches of Zizzi, despite it being a hit in nearly 40 countries, including South Korea. Just don’t ask them about the rabbi who nearly duped them into paying to have its transit into the Promised Land blessed in order to make the beer kosher. (Kosher beer?)
On route, we pass the piazza, which by 8pm closes its roads to cars, and instead it becomes a haven for market stalls and musicians. During the hot daytimes, old women shuffle at the town’s soporific pace and streets dive down steep and narrow alleyways where I would stand no chance of fitting my post-satiated girth.
Remarkably, the dairy’s use of locally grazed cows – all of them known by name, ensures their butter is inordinately creamy. Their cheeses, all turned each day by hand and finally wrapped by hand as well, have stamina without being overbearing.
In true Italian form, the first hint of the evening means preparations for dinner. Franco’s motorbike whisks my now sleep-deprived body into the hills of the town. Tuscan-like green landscapes unfurl as we whizz past slumping houses and navigate cobbled alleyways and suddently approaching roundabouts. The others take more conventional means, such as taxis. Arriving at the salubrious district of the town, we reach terrace restaurant Villa Carla.
We dine on breaded porcini mushrooms and a soufflé with a cheese and beer mousse, macaroni filled with stewed chicken and beer, pork glazed with rhododendron honey and served with rosemary gnocchi and with a clever beery twist. Everything is finished, despite around-the-table satiation. Yet there’s more and, despite being replete, professionalism makes me acquiesce to a sorbet made with light beers and a strawberry jus. Oh, and the odd cheeky cherry liquor. We finish, little past midnight, after a 20-hour stretch of eating, drinking or thinking about it: Perfectly exhaused
Turino
Set along its straight Romanesque roads, Turin, or Turino as its now known, with its wide boulevards and red and yellow painted homes, wouldn’t look out of place in France. Its grand baroque shopping areas and streets are covered with arches, once built to shade the now defunct royals from the blazing afternoon sun.
Turino was awakened in 2006 from a post-industrial malaise, thanks to the advent of the Winter Olympics here. In Turion beats a cultural heart thanks to its slow foods and art scene and there’s few better spots to showcase Italy’s finest than its very own Harrod’s food hall: Eataly. Turino boasts the first ever Eataly store here, Turin Lingotto.
An amble round the store shows a full embrace of high-end, sustainable Italian food with great displays including huge tangles of hair like pasta through to great wheels of cheese and wallet-stretching chocolates.
Taking a quick stop for gelato here with its deep, bitter chocolate and fresh pods of vanilla, I ask our Italian host how is it Italians manage to eat so much and look so svelte. “They’re vain,†she chimes. “Italians love food but love to look good too. So the gyms are full– you just never hear about itâ€Â. Right now though, we can shelve all thoughts of exercise and turn our thoughts, like in true Italian spirit, to dinner again.