Le Calandre (Rubano, ITALY) ★★★★★

Le Calandre is a 3-star Michelin restaurant located in the small town of Rubano, about 3 hours drive from Milan. We made it to Rubano from Milan despite a minor glitch with our GPS that saw us totally deviated from the original path.

According to some online journals, the restaurant has recently gone through a facelift and now sports a new minimalist design.



We showed up half an hour late from our reservation time, so in order to make up for the lost time, we quickly jumped on the tasting menu (€185).

They started us off with a few amuse bouche. First up was a deep fried octopus ball and other nibbles made of raw fish that I couldn't remember well.



We were still at the amuse bouche. This was a very delicious tuna stuffed with caviar capping off a really nice collection of amuse bouche (8/10).



Next, they started pouring us with their signature dishes first with a "cuttlefish in the black cappuccino".

It was a warm cappaccino of cuttlefish mixed with potato cream. The creamy texture was quite appealing to the taste buds but the actual taste was not as good as expected (5/10).



A change of pace with the next dish - risotto with saffron and liquorice powder. This is yet another one of their many signature dishes from young chef Massimiliano Alajmo.

I have always liked the rich saffron flavor to go with my risotto and the liquorice powder really helped to put the finishing touch away on this one (8/10).  



I had the raw beef with fresh white truffles as my main course. Young Massimiliano Alajmo personally came up to me and told me to try eating it with my bare hands.

That was a wonderful dish. I tried to follow the instructions from the great chef by taking a little portion of each ingredient, beef, truffle and cream sauce each time and that was extremely flavorsome (8/10).



The other main course was a roasted suckling pig with mustard foam and coffee powder. That was both juicy and very tender. Extremely tantalizing for our palates too (7/10).



Knowing that we were already quite full, they waited a while before serving up our dessert. When our dessert finally came, they brought along a small projector to show us a short clip while we enjoyed dessert. That was supposed to be a sensual experience!

If there's an improvement area in the menu, perhaps dessert would be one. I had the strawberry foam with mint sauce that was refreshing but not nearly as special as any of the previous dishes (4/10).



The other dessert was a medley of small sweet bites. That was another average offering (4/10).



Of course, we could not miss the opportunity to take a photo with the youngest three-star Michelin chef, Massimiliano Alajmo (at age 28).



Service was obviously impeccible and definitely 3-star worthy. The cuisine itself we thought was quite good but could be better. There was a lack of wow factor that one might expect from a 3-star Michelin restaurant.

Nevertheless it was still a very memorable dining experience that is highly recommended. If you are travelling from Milan to Venice, this is definitely worth a stopover.

Food Rating: 8.5/10
Price: €€€€

Address: Via Liguria, 1 35030 Rubano, Italy 
Tel: +39 049 633000

Website: www.alajmo.it/pagina.asp
S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants: 32nd (2011)