Unlike the infamous Mille Miglia (Thousand Miles) endurance race that was banned in the 1950s following a particularly devastating crash, the annual amateur re-enactment – with the same name – doesn’t slap down a thrill a minute. What it does boast, however, is one of the most beautiful rally routes in the world, traversing a course of cobbled streets, Tuscan hills and lofty mountain passes. The event draws thousands of spectators each year, all of whom share a love of classic cars: only models that participated in the original races – held between 1927 and 1957 – are welcome to enter. Even so, more than 400 teams cruise in with their vintage rides from all corners of the globe.
While the route varies slightly each year, these ancient engines always rev to life during May in Brescia, at the foothills of the Alps, where motor races have been held for more than a hundred years. If you don’t happen to own a 1951 Jaguar XK120 or a 1927 Bugatti T40, make for one of the checkpoints and watch these charming beauties roll by.
We’re often so quick to associate Italy with summer, but we’ve we’re saying ‘no grazie’ to melted gelato and scorching pebble beaches in favour of the country’s off-season – winter! Keen to share a quieter side of Italy, Intrepid Travel is offering an eight-day Highlights of Italy in Winter tour beginning in Rome.
You’ll walk the crumbling ruins of Rome, float over Venice, wander the museums of Florence, explore the narrow streets of Pisa, and learn to make pasta in Bologna. And Mother Nature may even send you some snow (although that is extremely rare). There are regular departures between November and March, so if you want to avoid the crowds – and the sweat – this could be the way to go.
This Mayfair townhouse is actually an adult’s playground in disguise. Flawlessly designed, furnished and finished with an artist’s touch, Sketch offers a range of rooms for the adventurous soul, each with its own theme, bar and menu. Even the dress code is different.
One of its rooms, called The Glade, is reminiscent of a mystical forest, only it serves brunch and cocktails. The room has been decorated with a single twentieth-century French postcard printed onto hundreds of metres of paper and decoupaged to the walls. Order some Coteaux de l’Ardèche rosé and slip into this fairytale setting before moving on to one of the other rooms. We like the dreamy pink setting of the Gallery, decorated with 91 of artist David Shrigley’s works.
You might be surprised to hear there’s a craft beer revolution happening in Estonia, and it’s the Põhjala Brewery leading the frothy charge. The team behind Põhjala – several Estonians and a Scotsman – are, of course, beer enthusiasts. Their industrial-style brewery is so impressive, they also offer behind-the-scenes tours so visitors can see fermentation magic taking place. Beers are brewed and aged in oak barrels and many are infused with ingredients like bark and sap straight from Estonian forests.
There are 24 taps pouring the good stuff, ranging from IPAs to barley wine. Meanwhile, a Texas BBQ menu ensures those imbibing remain well fed at all times. Our absolute favourite feature, however, is the on-site sauna, which can be rented by the hour. Gather your mates and a few bevs then kick back while sweating it out. Cheers to that!
A nondescript door with a sign that says ‘Staff Only’ is the lone clue you’ll get that you’re close to stumbling upon Korobok, a secret underground bar in Moscow. Owned and run by the esteemed White Rabbit Group, who also own Tehnikum next door, Korobok is perhaps best known for being the bar with no menu. Instead, head barman Evgeny Shashin and his team of world-class mixologists will whip up a cocktail in accordance with your preferred tastes.
Each drink also comes with a perfume – carefully curated to enhance the cocktail you’ve ordered. Talk about personalised service! Korobok means boxes, or matchbox, in Russian, which is a telling name considering the bar itself is just a single chamber that looks more like a lounge room. With dark leather couches and dim lighting to create a warm and inviting space, you won’t regret having to search a little to find this watering hole.
The Fife Arms Hotel is a Braemar landmark. A former 19th-century Victorian coaching inn, this grand lodge dominates the historic Scottish highlands town. Recently restored to its former glory, it reopened as a 46-room guesthouse in December 2018.
Owners Iwan and Manuela Wirth have worked tirelessly to craft a classically Scottish experience at the Fife Arms, with an emphasis on showcasing seasonal produce (yes, that includes plenty of whiskey), displaying a collection of Scottish art and sharing the history of Braemar through individually designed rooms that pay homage to local people, places and events. Don’t forget to bring your kilt.
Awash with tradition and heritage, and casually studded with historic structures spanning almost three millennia, Rome can feel like a city living on past glories. Many restaurants around the city’s tourist hubs offer lookalike menus with classic Roman dishes like cacio e pepe (pasta served with cheese and pepper), or cona di gelato, which goes for about AU$6 around the Colosseum and Spanish Steps.
But just one metro stop south of the ancient world’s most impressive stadium, chefs in an emerging neighbourhood are reinterpreting the city’s culinary traditions with a contemporary attitude. Prices are lower, flavours are bigger, and there’s a good chance the refreshing limone ice-cream on offer is crafted from citrus fruit foraged directly from local orchards.
On the River Tiber’s southeastern bank, grittily authentic Testaccio has long been a proud working-class neighbourhood. More than a century ago, the area housed Europe’s biggest slaughterhouse, and many of the abattoir’s lower-paid workers – dubbed la vaccinara – were gifted the quinto quarto (fifth quarter) of the cow and pig parts no one else wanted. Tripe, oxtail and other organs were incorporated into traditional Roman cuisine, and now Testaccio’s eateries and market stalls are resurrecting these classic ingredients with a modern twist.
The Trapizzino empire incorporates two stores in New York, but the original Testaccio location is still the best. After merging the triangular shape of traditional tramezzino sandwiches with pizza dough, Roman chef Stefano Callegari crafted hearty fillings to accompany his pillowy pockets of fluffy pizza bianca. New wave fillings include Ethiopian-style zighini (beef stew), but the flavours from the days of la vaccinara are the most popular with Trapizzino’s loyal regulars. Washed down with craft beers from Italy’s Baladin Brewery, tramezzino crammed with tender oxtail or tripe, tomato, pecorino cheese and mint are regularly devoured by revellers overflowing from Testaccio’s late-night clubs and bars.
For somewhere to eat during the day, Mercato Testaccio is an essential destination. Fruit and produce vendors offer fresh, local ingredients, and at stalls selling some of the area’s best street food, chefs channel the market’s historic roots into their reinvented Roman cuisine. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll also find some of Rome’s best Sicilian flavours.
There’s more sandwich action at Mordi e Vai, with panini crammed with an ever-changing range of fillings. Mainstream flavours include spicy salsiccia (sausage) or polpette (meatballs) in a rich tomato sauce, both best enjoyed when the hearty fillings soak through Mordi e Vai’s crisp ciabatta buns. Traditional cucina Romana is expressed through more challenging fillings like coratella e carciofi (a robust mix of heart, lung and artichoke) and the classic flavours of trippa alla Romana (Roman-style tripe), cooked slowly to a creamy texture capable of converting even the most ardent of tripe sceptics.
Elsewhere in the market, it’s Rome’s classic pizza alla palla that receives a contemporary makeover. Traditionally baked in a rectangular shape, cut off in slabs and sold by weight, CasaManco’s versions, crafted by husband and wife team Andrea Salabe and Paola Manco, have assumed cult status in Rome since they launched in 2017. Served on rustic wooden platters and more akin to a crispy-based flatbread, the pizzas feature traditional combinations like prosciutto and fig or anchovy and zucchini flowers as well as the elaborate but balanced blend of mortadella sausage, ricotta, Sicilian blood orange and honey. Fruity prosecco is available at an adjacent stall for just AU$3 a glass. The Sicilian theme is reinforced nearby at Emporio di Sicilia’s market counter overflowing with the best of flavours from Italy’s southernmost province.
Deliciously bitter chocolate from the Sicilian town of Modica partners with crisp cannoli pastries dusted with reputedly the world’s finest pistachios from the town of Bronte, while some of Rome’s best arancini are arranged carefully in neat rows. Infused with saffron and often filled with melanzane (eggplant) or a meaty ragu sauce, Sicily’s signature rice balls are a culinary legacy of 175 years of Arab rule in the ninth century. Served warm and crunchy and teamed with a zingy glass of cola-like chinotto, they’re yet another tasty contender for the title of Rome’s best twenty-first–century street snack.
METHOD
Combine the rice and 500ml (2 cups) water in a pan. Add a pinch of salt for seasoning, then bring to a boil and cook slowly over a very low heat. Make sure you stir frequently until all the water has been absorbed.
After dissolving the saffron in hot water, stir into the rice along with parmesan and finely chopped Italian parsley.
Once this mixture has cooled slightly, stir in the butter and one egg.
Beat the remaining egg and season with salt and pepper.
When the rice mixture has cooled further, form into eight to 10 balls about the
size of a mandarin. Keeping your hands wet will prevent the rice from sticking.
Form a small depression in the middle of the ball and carefully place a small amount of the mozzarella, peas and pistachios.
Seal the opening, dust the rice balls with flour then roll in the beaten egg and, finally, the breadcrumbs. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to set the breadcrumbs.
Heat 5cm of oil to 190ºC (it’s ready when you drop a cube of bread into it and it goes golden in about 10 seconds). Fry a few of the arancini at a time until golden (about 4–5 minutes). Drain on paper towels before serving.
Much to the driver’s bewilderment I halt the city-bound bus in the middle of a four-lane highway by an industrial wasteland on the fringes of Tirana. Thankfully there’s a bridge to my destination: a greige-looking area that boasts a medley of tyre warehouses, half-built houses, water towers and train tracks that would definitely constitute Stephen King territory come nightfall. It’s a stifling August day but the burly mauve clouds are threatening rain, the mountaintops of Dajti National Park no longer visible.
After 20 minutes of meandering, hopefully, along bitumen punctuated by dirt track, the tractors and bicycles are suddenly replaced by parked Range Rovers and Mercedes. And, like a mirage, the tall gates of Uka Farm appear. An organic family-run restaurant and winery that was founded by Albania’s former minister for agriculture in 2014, Uka is set among nearly two hectares of farmland and boasts the youngest winemaker in the country at its helm.
It’s one of a growing legion of local restaurants that seeks to revisit the traditional food cooked for centuries by grandmothers in modest country kitchens, and to pay homage to the rich, Mediterranean produce this soil has long nurtured. The menu at Uka is an ode to these simple pleasures: country-style bread, grilled wild mushrooms, platters of cheese from the Albanian Alps and a ‘village salad’ of rosy tomatoes, plump green olives and sweet carrot ribbons. Even the interior is pared down and distinctly rustic – think red gingham tablecloths, pine chairs and wood-fired brick kilns – to ensure the focus remains on the food. Subsistence farming has long been a way of life here, but only now is a farm-to-fork diet starting to be seen as a source of pride.
“We were closed for almost 50 years,” says Albanian chef Bledar Kola of the communist rule over the Balkan state. “When we came out we were like a dry sponge that soaked up all the water.” For a populace that was practically imprisoned within its own borders – with few allowed to leave and even fewer allowed to enter – almost any influence from the outside world was deemed cosmopolitan and aspirational. During those days, under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, chewing gum was rare enough to warrant shared use and the arrival of bananas was so monumental that it’s stained indelibly onto the memories of many Albanians.
Walking the streets of Tirana now it’s hard to imagine such austerity reigned only 25 years ago. The capital might be scarce of skyscrapers but it harbours more leafy coffee shops and restaurants than any other city I’ve ever wandered. By sundown bars in the trendy Blloku district overflow with beautiful young creative types languorously smoking cigarettes and drinking glasses of local red.
It’s families that fill the Great Park of Tirana, where ladies sell sunflower seeds by the lake and kids cruise around on trikes. Here, hiding below an apartment block with scalloped balconies, lies Bledar Kola’s new restaurant, Mullixhiu. Having spent the best part of his working life abroad – performing stints at Michelin-starred London restaurants and even Copenhagen’s Noma – Kola came home in 2007 to a country that was very different to the one he left: “Before the 90s there were not so many restaurants in Tirana. We also have a very strong influence from Italy so it’s rare to see Albanian restaurants, but we’re getting more open-minded.”
The Slow Food Chefs Alliance, which launched in Albania in mid-2015, has helped instil a growing sense of honour in local cuisine. But the hangover from Hoxha’s days still encumbers the city’s kitchens. “We have a lot of fresh vegetables in Albania, but eating them is considered a poor man’s diet,” says Kola. “When Albanians come to visit us at Mullixhiu they get irritated because only one dish on our 10-course degustation contains meat. For 50 years everything we had was rationed – people have missed it.”
With its collision of Greek, Italian and Turkish influences, it’s flabbergasting Albanian food isn’t feted globally. Vibrant city centre restaurants serve mixed mezze platters, citrus and pomegranate salads, thick stews and stuffed, roasted vegetables. In the dimly lit dining room of Mullixhiu it means a more contemporary stroll through Albania’s greatest hits. Small glasses of tart cornelian cherry juice. A crisp nest of kadayif (finely shredded filo pastry) perching atop a creamy and sour pool of yoghurt and olive oil, dusted with a salty hit of grated black olive. A bowl cradling petals of dehydrated cabbage – the sweet, concentrated tang offset by an earthy punch of powdered porcini mushroom. Then there’s japrak, the dill-spiked rice with a tender hint of verbena. The al dente curves of eggplant tossed with figs in a gooseberry and purslane sauce. A pocket-sized filo parcel concealing a quail’s egg. And the dynamite stick of blackberry ice-cream served within a bramble.
Although the technical mastery is on point, it’s the quality of raw product that is king for Kola. “Now I’m focusing so much on Albanian ingredients,” he explains. “If you don’t use the produce of your country it’s like being married and cheating on your wife.” The Slow Food Movement’s Ark of Taste project also seeks to shine a spotlight on foods that are at risk of extinction. In Albania there are 43 products on this list. Items such as mishavin, a delicate white cheese made by shepherds in the Albanian Alps; trofta e egër e Cemit, a wild trout from its freshwater lakes; and verëtrëndafil i egër, a rosehip wine from its southern valleys.
Mrizi i Zanave, an organic farm restaurant perched near the Montenegrin border in northern Albania, is the country’s original slow food trailblazer and proud parent to Mullixhiu. After toiling for years in restaurants in Italy, Albanian Altin Prenga and his brother Anton came back to their small home town, and with a ‘build it and they will come’ attitude, opened the restaurant in 2009. Such has been the success that even today tables book out weeks in advance.
A year after opening, Mullixhiu is still building its own reputation – and that of Albanian cuisine – meal by meal. Locally based ambassadors and foreign journalists covet Kola’s dishes, booking private dinners and visiting in their droves, but locals take a little more convincing, he says. “If foreigners come and tell us something is nice only then do we value it,” he says. “We have a very rich cuisine, but to revisit it isn’t easy.”
Kola’s modern take on the traditional dish of japrak sees whipped sour cream replacing yoghurt and nasturtiums taking the place of vine leaves.
Serves 2
INGREDIENTS
1 spring onion
1 bay leaf
10ml olive oil
130g parboiled rice
sprig of fresh dill, chopped
vegetable oil, for deep-frying
100g whipped sour cream
10g lemon verbena powder or lemon myrtle
2 nasturtium flowers for garnish
METHOD
Finely chop the spring onion and cook slowly with the bay leaf and olive oil over a low heat until softened.
Pour in 100g of the rice and continue cooking for a further three minutes.
Add 1 cup of boiling water and bring to the boil before covering the saucepan. Allow the rice to cook – without stirring – over a medium-low heat until it’s cooked but retains a slight bite, and all the water is absorbed. This should take around 20 minutes. Prior to taking the pan off the heat, remove the bay leaf and mix in the chopped dill.
In the meantime, heat the vegetable oil in a heavy-bottomed, tall-sided pan until it reaches around 160°C. If you don’t have a deep-fry thermometer for measuring the temperature then simply slip in a grain of rice and wait until it pops up in the oil and starts to crackle. Once the oil is hot enough, slowly feed in the remaining rice grains and wait until they are lightly golden and crisp before removing onto a paper towel to absorb the excess oil.
Arrange the dill and rice mixture on the plate as desired, before garnishing with the lemon verbena powder, the two nasturtiums and the sour cream whipped to a foam. Finally, top with the deep-fried grains of rice.
Hate doing the washing? Us too. Unless, of course, sorting the laundry also means sipping on cocktails. Introducing Lavomatic, a quirky Parisian bar that serves up mojitos with a side of freshly laundered towels. From the front, this 10th arrondissement establishment looks like just another laundromat – we’re talking washing machines, dryers, soap, the lot.
Press the right button on the correct washing machine though, and watch a secret door open to reveal a hidden staircase leading to the bar. The metallic, sterile laundry environment is replaced by one that resembles a cool, comfortable apartment. With cosy, cushion-filled nooks, swing chairs and an extensive drinks menu, this spot just made doing the laundry a whole lot more enticing.
Forget everything you know about the Mykonos party scene, at Scorpios there’s no doof-doof music, no sweaty, gyrating bodies and definitely no overpriced alcopops. Ideally situated on the sun-kissed southern tip of the island overlooking Paraga Beach, Scorpios is designed to represent a contemporary interpretation of the ancient Greek agora – a gathering place for people to come together to socialise and collaborate. The rustic space, much of it open-air, is littered with wooden cabanas, whitewashed walls, knitted hammocks and a quirky assortment of straw baskets, rugs, and light fittings.
There’s even a boutique bazaar, which stocks a carefully curated selection of products by local artisans – ensuring you can party in the hottest organic slip dress, should you forget yours. You’ll need to arrive early if you want to secure one of the highly sought-after cabanas by the water – the ideal spot to treat yourself to a Mediterranean feast from the 200-seat restaurant. The setting sun signals a change in tempo, and before you know it you’re kicking up your heels at the chicest party in Mykonos.
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