Antica Cantina — Restaurant in Orvieto

This fabulous resto was recommended to us by Maribel, a foodie friend in Bologna. She urged us to go and try what she described as “the best pasta she’s ever had” - which is saying something given that Maribel teaches pasta making!

On our first visit (yes, we repeated - the next day!) we ordered the Ombrchelli Alla Norcia per Maribel’s advice.

But a unique antipasti also caught our eye - Pear Carpaccio! Thinly sliced pears formed a base for arugula, pecorino, walnuts, drizzled with a sublime balsamic reduction. This dish blew our minds. This small plate is a symphony of flavours and textures: sweet, crisp pears, tart and sweet balsamic, sharp pecorino and rich, earthy walnut umami for days, and the fresh, peppery arugula dazzled our tastebuds and lit up all our food brain’s pleasure nodes! This dish alone is worth the visit.

But back to the Ombrchelli Alla Norcia. The perfectly cooked pasta was gently bathed in a creamy sausage sauce with shaves truffle. Each bite was a flavour and texture treat, and we could have ordered this all day every day that we were in Orvieto.

The next day we returned to try some of the dishes that caught our eye on the first visit. We fell in love with the Rosemary cannellini cream on hot toast with spiced Tuscan pork lard. While you may be averse to the idea of eating pork lard please do you best to set that aside so you can try this superb appetizer (*and don’t forget to have a lovely glass of Tuscan red wine to accompany - magic).

For our mains this day we jumped straight to a couple Secondi plates: Roasted pork shank in prune sauce; and, the classic Meatballs in tomato sauce. We had enjoyed several Lo Stinco (pork shank) during our two month Italian adventure, and this one was top notch. We enjoyed every morsel of the rich meat, as evidenced by the “after” photo! The meatballs were delightful as well; perfectly cooked and complemented by the richly prepared tomato sauce.

On this day we enjoyed a side dish of roasted sweet onions, and indulged in a fabulous chocolate pear cake for dessert (these folks rock pears!).

Both lunches, including delicious house wine each day, totalled 83€ - great value for money and quality. This is a fantastic osteria that we can not recommend...

Salad , meatballs were delicious. But anything good was completely colored by the following: My husband’s rigatoni came out after everyone at the table were abt 75% through with their entrees. Smh no excuse it was dried pasta!! They didn’t realize that he hadn’t received his entree. He had to ask where his entree was. It was clear they had obviously forgotten . They apologized but still that’s a very uncomfortable position to place a customer in- to be sitting there with no food while everyone is eating!! Also right next to us -were parents with a baby who was loudly crying and screaming continuously for abt 45 min. The parents did not remove themselves and their baby from the restaurant as one would have expected I’m a parent and when our children were young, if they were loud in any way, we would take the food home and leave the restaurant right away. I would never want to make other people uncomfortable or to interfere with their enjoyment in a restaurant. I’m not sure what a restaurant can do But it was unfortunate that the parents were either unaware, or didn’t care or thought it’s find to subject other patrons to their loud screaming and crying baby. SMH It’s clearly not the baby’s fault. We were looking forward to this family meal and it was a big disappointment. Some of the food was good but that’s not enough to compensate for poor service and loud and very unpleasant...

We really enjoyed the food there, especially with most items that are gluten-free. The menu is not big but the food is really good. I specifically enjoyed the triples. It was cooked really well. The waitress was really patient in explaining the menu and making sure we knew what would be getting.

I really wanted to give it five stars but the service was so slow. We would love to try all the gluten-free deserts but could not bear the possibility of waiting for one hour for the deserts to come. We even walked up to pay to save time. It is a shame as the restaurant was...