Grandinetti Hotel Ristorante Bar — Hotel in Parenti

A spacious and largely empty hotel, Grandinetti appears to serve mainly as a reception venue for weddings. This lends the place a slight shade of The Shining, southern Italian style, but the place came alive on the Saturday evening on which I stayed there. There is a wood-fired oven for pizzas, which is a popular take-away option for the locals. The pizzas are made by the family grandfather and may be served to you by the owner's young son - very much the family business. The kitchen is run by a two-man team who draw on the local raw materials for their dishes. I had a plate of penne with a ragu of mushrooms freshly picked from the Sila national park. Washed down with home-made wine made with grapes bought from Ragusa, in Sicily, that more than did the job. Well, along with the customary antipasti and the complimentary potato croquettes that is. If that last item sounds odd, it shouldn't. The people of the Sila are justly proud of their potatoes and what the Grandinetti provides is no microwave dinner affair. Fresh and soft, the fluffy breaded pods disappear quickly in the mouth in a puff of taste. The accommodation is standard Italian three-star hotel fare. Comfortable but not luxurious. Hot shower, clean, TV that is complicated to operate and will only show rubbish when you turn it on anyway. That sort of thing. The 40 euro price tag struck me as reasonable, but then again I had been cycling all day when I arrived and would have paid 100 euros for a bale of hay to lie on. The Sila is known and admired by Italians, but little known to outsiders. Time to change that perhaps. People are marrying less these days and those that do prefer to do so by the sea, says the owner of Grandinetti, which is set deep inside the gorgeous but apparently insufficiently glamorous mountains. Fine, those marriages probably won't last long anyhow. Moral of the story: Go to the Sila, drop by or even possibly stay in Grandinetti and get married in the mountains, or divorce is pretty...

We stopped in this restaurant for lunch and even if it was calm outside the waiter took us in a busy room behind. Families and customers who were used to come there for their Sunday lunch were taking their time and enjoying their meal. It was copious, no menu, just the day suggestions. We did not eat pasta in first course as we saw the large portions offered for the second course. Starter was a plate with local ham and cheeses. Grill...

Soggiorno nel novembre 2022 durata 5giorni per motivi di lavoro. Camera spaziosa, toilette nuova e pulita. Gestione familiare anche se l'hotel è davvero grande. Sempre gentilissimi, la cena è stata di sicuro conforto dopo il lavoro in campagna: specialità di funghi (mazze di tamburo gratinate con salsiccia Top) e carne, ma anche la pizza è molto buona. Da segnalare ad ottobre la sagra dei funghi (purtroppo era avvenuta qualche settimana prima del mio arrivo, ma se mi ricapita ci andrò sicuramente). È possibile acquistare anche prodotti (funghi, pomodori secchi, patate silane ecc). Ovviamente la notte è super silenziosa nell'isolamento...