Antiche Sere, Turin, Piedmont

You just know, the moment you cross the threshold of this backstreet osteria, that it will be good. The two wood-panelled dining rooms – one which you step directly into from the front door, and one tucked away at the back – are simply furnished. Starched lace curtains hang from the windows. The tables are laid with plain cotton cloths, and cutlery and glass tumblers denote each place setting. There are no pictures on the walls, no unnecessary adornment. Nothing to detract from the serious business of good eating.

We arrived at seven, to be beckoned smilingly in by one of the three slim and handsome young women who run the place. Had we booked? No. Then we could have a table, but only until nine thirty. That would be fine. But now, she said with charming assertiveness, we must go for a walk, because the restaurant did not start serving until eight. Having walked a mile to get here, and sensing that this would be worth the wait, we obeyed and patiently sipped beer for an hour in a bar down the street.

Offered a choice of tables when we returned, we opted for one in the front room, better to watch the comings and goings. The menus, written on thick orange sugar paper, proposed just a few dishes for each course. At our hostess's advice I ordered a modestly priced Barbera from the list of mainly local bottles. First came an unexpected appetiser from the chef – a salami of pork and boiled potatoes, soft and pink, with a texture something like a sopressa, but coarser, and earthily raw when spread onto the crusty bread of which we had a basketful, and followed by a mouthful of wine.

It was partway through my next course, gnocchetti with sausage, and after a further couple of glasses of wine, that the word sublime came to mind. It was simply the most appropriate description of the moment's experience. The gnocchetti melted away in the mouth, the sausage sufficient, though there was barely half a sausage-worth of meat, to lend fennely flavour and knobbly texture, and a scant juice. Outside it was black. Inside, the restaurant had now swelled with diners, mostly Italian and seemingly known to the hosts, and was warm and bright, filled with a heady mix of contented chatter and smiles. At regular intervals more hopeful customers entered, to be told the restaurant was full. How about tomorrow? Sorry, fully booked. We'd been lucky to squeeze in at all. The three women moved about the restaurant, taking orders and serving food and wine, with a warmth and attractiveness that was as easy on the spirit as on the eye.

Next, a thick slab of pot-roasted veal, succulent and tender, and rosemary roast potatoes. Then panna cotta and Piedmontese bonnet. We were invited to try a special Slow Food dessert (we were here for the Salone del Gusto) – mandarin ice cream from Sicily, served with a glass of local Asti. Then coffee. And a grappa. It was heading towards the appointed hour of nine thirty, when we would turn into pumpkins if we hadn't vacated our table. But I couldn't have eaten or drunk another thing anyway. We paid a ludicrously good value bill (the ice cream, the Asti and the grappa were complimentary) and I shook the hand of the handsome dark-haired woman in thanks. I wondered about a kiss, but decided it would be presumptuous.

We walked the mile back to our bed and breakfast, still surrounded, it seemed, by the warm, happy glow of the osteria. A bit like the old Ready Brek ad.

Osteria Antiche Sere, Via Cenischia, 9, 10139 Torino

Tel 011 3854347

Can't find a website of their own, but I'm sure those three young women are too occupied serving customers to worry about such things. Who needs a web site anyway, when you serve such good food to so many people? (This picture, by the way, is not of the osteria: I was too busy eating to think about a photograph. It's just a little piece of Torino that I glimpsed and liked.)

Ristorante - Pizzeria Casin dei Nobili, Venice

Casin dei Nobili's emblem is a mildly saucy rendition of two nubile young things, and signs at the bar cheekily refer to matters like how much half an hour costs and warnings not to manhandle the girls until you've paid the madam. None too subtle hints at the building's history.

Nubile young things are still employed here, but now they bring menus, wine and food, and a welcoming smile that's a refreshing change in a city with its fair share of sullen waiting staff. Our own NYT was especially cheerful and keen to practice her English. At one point her enthusiasm got the better of her and a plate of food destined for the next table dropped from her hand to the floor with a crash. No matter. She still smiled.

We shared a plate of warm seafood antipasti – octopus and squid and prawns and other things – then whole bass baked with thinly sliced potatoes and a crispy, salty, lemony fritto misto. All excellent. We skipped dessert, but couldn't resist a liquirizia with our coffee. We've come to know these licorice-cough-medicine drinks as 'Berties', for reasons which some of you will fathom, and I think they've become mildly addictive.

We left some time later, the happier, warmer, slightly fuzzier and fuller, and feeling distinctly less nubile than when we'd arrived.

Ristorante - Pizzeria Casin dei Nobili, Venezia, S. Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2765

Tel 041 241 1841

It's reassuring somehow that a restaurant can drum up so much custom without having its own website (or one that I can find).

Taverna del Duca, Amalfi, Campania

It's just coincidence that this restaurant in Amalfi is called the same as the one in Locorotondo mentioned in the last entry in this blog. There are probably hundreds of Taverna del Ducas across Italy. Like there are hundreds of Dog and Ducks across England, I suppose.

Anyway, it was here at this little restaurant that I ate a dish I'd not encountered before, and would be disappointed to see on the menu after a Tuesday. It was schiaffoni alla ragu della domenica, or pasta with Sunday sauce, and I enjoyed it, appropriately enough, on a Monday. Like many a Monday supper in our own home, the dish presumably relies on leftover roasted meat from Sunday. Whilst we have cottage pie with yesterday's roast beef or shepherd's pie with yesterday's roast lamb, they have pasta with Sunday sauce. I couldn't tell you whether the meat was beef or pork, but it was delicious, with the occasional caramelised burnt edge of roasted meat and a deep ragu of tomatoes and herbs and maybe red wine that spoke of long, slow cooking.

So why the picture of a guitar? Well, the service here was what you might call relaxed. Not sloppy or tardy, but casual. Our food was brought to us by a middle-aged chap with longish, thinning hair and a toothless smile, wearing a worn out jumper and jeans. Part way through the evening, he picked up a guitar and started to sing to the assembled diners. Except he sang so softly that no one could hear him. When he accompanied his playing with a kazoo (played just as inaudibly), it became bizarre. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Pepe.

Turned out that Pepe was a true wandering minstrel. On discovering we were English, he proceeded to regale us with tales of how he had worked in London as a young man. At the Café Royal, no less. And the Ritz. He punctuated his little tales with an occasional (soft) strum of his guitar. He told us how the people he had worked with had cropped up again in his life, unexpectedly, in other parts of the world. Strum. Like the boy from Naples who worked with him in London, before they went their separate ways, until he bumped into him in a park in Paris several years later. Strum. It was a small world. Strum. If truth be told, we couldn't get rid of him. Until he told us that he had a wife and five children to support and that he just worked in the trattoria to help out, they didn't pay him, and times were tough... we gave him a few euros, and he was off to the next table. Strum.

Next morning we wandered past the restaurant on our way down to catch a boat from the harbour. There was Pepe, setting up the parasols. He waved, as if surprised to see us. It's a small world.

Ristorante La Taverna del Duca, Piazza Spirito Santo, 26 - 84011 Amalfi

Tel 089 872755

La Taverna del Duca

Taverna del Duca, Locorotondo, Puglia

The town of Locorotondo pretty much does what it says on the tin. As you might expect of a town with five o's in its name, it's a round place that sits, like other towns in this region, atop a small hill that rises like a bump from the plain below. A neat and tidy town of bleached stone and whitewash.

Tucked away in the old part of the town, not that there really is a new part, La Taverna del Duca keeps itself to itself. From the outside it's just a door and a sign - no windows, no menu. Inside, the dining room of just half a dozen check-clothed tables is open to the tiny kitchen in the corner, dominated by a large wood-burning oven.

The no menu theme continues inside too. When we arrived, the owner, chef and waitress – yes, that's all one person – beamed us a welcome, directed us to a table and asked us in Italian what we would like to eat. We asked if she had a menu. Patiently our hostess, a woman in her early forties perhaps, with large and intense dark eyes, explained in single words, each one emphasised by pressing one forefinger against the other, that there was antipasti... pasta... carne... We agreed to the antipasti, so we were off the mark. And pasta, yes please. And the carne, why not? We really had no idea what we were about to receive.

The woman smiled and retired to her kitchen, quickly returning with a basket of roughly-hewn bread and a chipped ceramic jug of white primitivo wine. Then a plate of olives. Then a couple of plates of antipasti. Then a couple more. And more. There were smokily grilled peppers, small balls of burrata which burst into cold creaminess, sweet buttery ham, a purée of beans and a dish of humble cauliflower that was revelatory. While we ate our hostess busied herself in the kitchen, at intervals poking her head inside the wood-fired oven to check the progress of whatever was inside. Next, the pasta. Huge bowls of orechiette in a simple but delicious fresh tomato sauce.

Then an earthenware dish was brought to the table bearing a bubbling piece of braised meat: "stinco!" she proclaimed proudly. Stinco, we discovered, is shin of pork. At the lightest touch it collapsed off the bone into the wine and vegetable sauce that bathed it. Nothing accompanied it, and nothing was needed. When the shin had been picked to the bone and the wine jug was empty, Antonella (for by now this is how we knew her) insisted that we try her cake. When I declined she patted my stomach, as one might pat a drum to check its taughtness, then smiled and insisted I had a grappa instead. 'Piccolo, piccolo' I protested, weakly. A huge glass of grappa arrived. She laughed and patted my stomach again. Finally, coffee. Full, glowing, and very, very happy, we said our thank yous and farewells.

And were back next evening.

Taverna del Duca, Via Papadotera, 3, 70010 Locorotondo (BA)

Tel 0804 313007

This is one of the best places I have eaten in my life. Really. If you're within a hundred miles, make the detour.

La Stalla, Assisi, Umbria

I have a great idea for a restaurant with a difference. Find an old barn. Sweep it out (not too assiduously – a few strands of straw are all to the good). Paint the walls with grafitti and furnish the place with wooden tables and chairs, the older and more rickety the better. Cover the tables with gingham cloths and adorn with rustic cutlery. Now, and this is really important, construct an ancient log-fired grill in a suitable corner, one where the logs burn down to embers which can be used to cook food on huge grills above. You'll need plenty of logs. Big ones. Let the fire blacken the walls and the beams of the ceiling over time. Use the grill to cook all kinds of tasty foods, and serve simply, with jugs of wine, to the hoardes of appreciative diners who will beat a path to your door.

It's a great idea, but sadly (or happily) not an original one. La Stalla, a mile out of Assisi on the road, well, track really, to the Santuario delle Carceri, has been doing it for years. I had read about the place. I'd checked it out one lunchtime, and booked for that evening. (Some places are better in the dark. La Stalla is one of them.) But I hadn't been prepared for that evening's experience. Crikey, this was good.

It was smoky, in an appetising way. The cooking on the huge grill seemed to be no-one's responsibility in particular, but anyone who passed (sometimes we weren't sure if they were even members of staff or just passers-by) checked and turned the food. A sort of communal cooking. We ate sausage and quail, lamb and beef, all grilled to perfection. Nestled amongst the glowing ashes were dusty grey orbs that turned out to be baked potatoes. Lightly dusted off, then slathered with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, their flesh yellow and melting, they were the best baked potatoes I've ever tasted. Small earthenware dishes were placed on the grill too – cheese, baked with wine and herbs.

The tables are communal, and part way through the evening a single, elegant middle-aged lady graciously joined us and enjoyed a joint of chicken grilled, as everything else, on this enormous indoor barbecue. She smiled and acknowledged us, as if we had somehow joined the La Stalla club. Perhaps we had. The volume in the restaurant increased through the evening, as diners enjoyed the food and wine. The grill glowed like a furnace. Extra logs were added and the fire was stoked. More food was added to the grill. This was the kind of place you could settle in and stay long, long into the night.

For several days afterwards the smell of smoke lingered on my jumper and made me smile.

La Stalla, Via Santuario delle Carceri, 24, 06081 Assisi (PG)

Tel 075 812 317

Loads of reviews. No site of their own. The smoke probably stops them from seeing the computer screen. Just go. Go.