La Limonaia — Restaurant in Turin

A place for connoisseurs. It's a very sophisticated restaurant, built in a former warehouse, on the back of an unsuspecting condominium, but tastefully furnished and effectively transformed into a huge veranda overlooking a courtyard overflowing with plants, both decorative and aromatic. The latter are also used by the kitchen, which also overlooks the courtyard. The menu is simple, but well structured, with starters and appetizers (two distinct sections), first courses, second courses and desserts. In the menu, the dishes are mentioned in a succinct manner, but the waitress will explain them to you in great detail on their articulated and sometimes exotic composition. The wine list is endless, making it almost difficult to decide. Even about drinking, it's pleasant and certainly useful to have a chat and ask the highly trained waitress for a suggestion. The dishes are so composite and original that you will spend some time just having the dishes described and discussing them, almost always also learning about some original and unusual ingredient, on which you may ask any questions, be told and then comment with waitress and between diners. For example, talking about a particular aromatic herb we never heard of before, she went out for a moment in the courtyard to take a sprig, to show it to us, let us touch, smell, taste it and ultimately to allow us to really get to know it! In short, it is certainly a very "cultural" place, which ranges between world ingredients and gastronomy, but always maintaining firm roots in the Italian and Piedmontese traditions. Never boring, always interesting, a lunch at La Limonaia is like a little journey. Very friendly service, but also informal and relaxed. Not a...

We liked the design and feel of the restaurant and we had a good table, however the tasting menu took four hours! We were exhausted from all the waiting, the plates were small yet we had to wait around 20 mins or more sometimes between each one.

The food was tasty and the chef is obviously creative but some of the combinations just did not work for me at all.

Also there were so many children and what looked like a new born baby at 10 pm for dinner in a posh restaurant! Some of the kids were loud or crying and others were watching cartoons on iPads and iPhones. For a romantic date, it felt at times like we were...

L’esperienza presso La Limonaia lascia spazio a sensazioni contrastanti. L’ambiente, fin troppo artefatto nella sua ricerca estetica, mescola suggestioni e suggeriscono uno scarso equilibrio, mentre appare del tutto ardita la scelta di lasciare a vista il tetto in coibentato, che stona con l’ambizione del contesto.

Il servizio risente di una certa freddezza e mancanza di attenzione. In un contesto che si propone con prezzi da ristorante stellato, ci si aspetterebbe un’accoglienza più empatica, una gestione della sala più partecipe e meno meccanica.

La carta, per contro, sorprende piacevolmente per la sua scelta lessicale: sobria, chiara, priva di altisonanti tecnicismi, comunica con onestà e misura la proposta gastronomica. Una forma di umiltà che, in un panorama spesso incline all’enfasi verbale, va riconosciuta e apprezzata.

Sul piano gastronomico, spicca un risotto (Castelmagno d'alpeggio, bergamotto nero, capperi e limone) preparato con competenza e vero equilibrio. È senza dubbio il piatto che lascia il miglior ricordo. Per il resto, i sapori sono corretti, ma nulla che possa giustificare l’eccessiva ambizione dei prezzi, che appaiono in più punti disallineati rispetto alla sostanza dell’offerta complessiva.

Un’ulteriore nota critica riguarda la carta dei vini priva di proposte al calice, lacuna non trascurabile per un locale che dovrebbe favorire l’abbinamento ragionato e accessibile dei vini alle singole portate.

In definitiva, La Limonaia si muove in una zona d’ombra identitaria, dove il progetto pare ancora indeciso tra l’essere un bistrot d’autore, una trattoria elegante o un ristorante ambizioso. Per ora, ciò che restituisce è l’immagine di una trattoria ricercata, ancora in cerca di un’anima...