Brescia Restaurants

There´s ice cream sold at every corner in Italy. It´s hard to belive, that we Finns do eat more ice cream per person than any other country in Europe! One could thought,that Italians eat more. But I think they will buy more ice cream from gelaterias, when we Finns have those only in summer-usually we buy ice cream at supermaket, at boxes and wrapped cones.
BUt Italian ice cream is very good! Luckily some places sell it at Finland also.
This place had good selection, and good ice cream (we had had not so good the day before)

Favorite Dish: Straciatella (maybe because it´s not sold in Finland)

We came because of the good ratings this place had had at many pages. We saw the Englisg menu at internet, but it seemed not to be the same as in the restaurant. Most of the appetizer were different. We ordered them anyway. We choosed fried buffalomozzarella and calzones.
We got the pizzas first!! Then they came to say: Please wait for a while, so you will get your appetizers. It took some time, and after we had ate them, our pizzas weren´t hot anymore.
The fried mozzarella was little boring. I had never eaten one, and hoped it would have some spices or something-it didn´t taste so good-and it was 8,50e-witch was much to pay in Brescia.
The calzone had ricotta inside, and we thought we would have liked it, but it wasn´t so good. It felt like you should have been eating something sweet, because we have used to use ricotta at deserts and then there was salami in it. First it was just interesting, but when it did get quite cold (because of what happened) we couldn´t even finish our pizzas. We felt like ricotta coming out of our ears. Must say, that the normal pizzas looked very good-should have taken them.. So we didn´t actually enjoy this most expensive meal of our trip. We didn´t even take the dessert, because we lost our interest in this place.
Why didn´t I give 2 "stars" then? Because the normal pizzas looked good, and I´m sure they were better too.

Favorite Dish: -

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We were little hungry, but wanted to eat only something "small", so we came here and ordered "chicken and popateo medallions, and had no idea what we will get. When they came we laughed. But never mind-it was better than chips. Maybe little too salty and could have had more sauce, but not bad. Who knows, maybe we could even try them again, if we see them somewhere.
And like allwasy in Italy-the white wine was good and cheap.
We were planning to visit again because of the beer-selection, but then we decided to taste beers in Finland-wine is the thing in Italy!

Favorite Dish: Should I say those medallions? We didn´t taste anything else. The cold paninis looked o.k. as well, most of people were eating them.

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I found this place with google, when I wrote "brewery Brescia". We allways try to find some local beers from small brewerys. This was quite far from the centre, but we wanted to visit it anyway.
When we came, it looked like the whole place is closed. We had came by taxi, so it was a little shock to see downstairs closed. Luckily we just walked upstairs, even if we thought there was some private party, but it was open normally.
And we did even get to eat outside, because they had a big balcony/terrace there.
We choosed pizza, because we had red they had a good choise of pizzas. There was a good choise but most of them seemed to be quite the same with one litte difference. But it seems to be common in Italy anyway. And they must we right with they pizzas anyway ;) We just don´t like ham so much, and no seafood either so we had so many pizzas and pizza-slices with salami, that I belive I won´t eat salami for next months :D
But the pizza was good anyway, very salty, but good. We had salami, buffalo-mozzarella and sundried tomatos in our pizzas.
We came because of the beers. The wheat-beer was good, but the other two were little boring-like any other lagers. There was no dark beer at all (maybe the beers change in different times-we have noticed that in some countries you don´t find dark beers in summer!)
We didn´t get to eat outside in the garden (witch looked nice at photos), but I think the place was worth of visit anyway.
By the way. If you are not from southern Europe, I must warn you! This is one of those places, that there are no normal toilets! The toilet is a hole in the floor. You should not drink too much their beers to be ably to visit the toilet ;) I must say, theese toilets are terrible to me! It was even one reason why we didn´t stay longer there. You have to use them if you taste beers!

Favorite Dish: Pizza was good, mozzarella tasted really good in it. We also had garlic-bread witch was quite simple (slice of bread with oil-and garlic I suppose-we didn´t tste it-we use so much more ourselves) but the bread was allmost free ( 0,30e for each!!) so it was nice to have when waiting. Service was fast anyway. Place was half empty that day, but it was wednesday at september. Could be more traffic at summer and weekends.

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We went here twice, so I gues you could say we liked it a lot. If they would have had an English men, we might have found lots of goods at their menu, but now we had to choose from the ones we understood. The waiter was friendly and tried to translate everything we asked, but since we don´t eat everything (seafood for example), we didin´t want to ask too much.
They brought us some grilled bread with olive oil (it wasn´t free, but it was only 3e for two,huge portion) and we liked the housewine also. They would have had some better wine for 4e extra (this was 8e for one litter!), but we wanted to taste this, and it was good enough for us. We know much more about beers, we can tell many things about them, but in wine we mostly know" dry/semi-dry/sweet and good or bad" :D Most of the Italian wines are our good for us.

Favorite Dish: Cotletta Milanese (we tried to have chicken at the next time, but they were out of it, so we atecotletta again!)Gnocchi was also good, and spaghetti aglio e olio. It could have had much more garlic if you ask me, but not bad anyway!

Dispite of the fact it is not in the Old Town and even it was rather difficul to find, the Osteria del Quartino was a very pleasant surprise during my visit in Brescia. I read somewhere it was an old cloister; actually you have to walk down some stept to reach the dining room. it is run by 3 brothers with accurancy and great passion. You can have there a good sample of the traditional cuisine of Brescia and the wine selection is also huge. It is very famous (a lot of celebrities went there as you can see from the pic) so it's better to book before going. The kitchen is open until midnight but closes on Sundays all day long and on Sat. midday.

To enter l'Osteria La Grotta is like jumping into the past, especially if it not so crowded. The walls are nicely decorated and the ambience is easy going, service very quick and accurate. Dishes respect the tradition of Brescia and the cellar is also well equipped. It is always open until 1 am, so you can stop just for a snack. Closes on Wed.

Favorite Dish: I tried the casoncelli di carne (homemade pasta with meat sauce)

The most representative dish in the Brescian culinary tradition is casonsèi, large ravioli stuffed with Parmigian cheese, spinach and eggs. Other popular dishes are strangolapreti ("priest stranglers"), elongated dumplings made of spinach, bread, eggs and cheese. From Mantua, we have the tradition of tortelli di zucca, stuffed with pumpkin, almond cookies, fruit mustard, raisins and pine nuts. A real delicacy! Also not to be missed, especially in the fall and winter, is polenta taragna, made from buckwheat, cream cheese and butter. Among the soups, mariconda is typical: bread and egg dumplings flavored with nutmeg and Parmigian cheese and cooked in broth.
Among the meats, Brescian gastronomy offers tripe, lepre in salmì (wild hare), mixed kabobs and uccelli scappati ("escaped birds"), which, the name notwithstanding, is actually pork wrapped in sage leaves. Also, typical, manzo all’olio, a very popular braised beef dish. One dish much loved by Brescians is polenta and game birds, which is eaten during hunting season.
Lake Iseo fish is highly-prized: try the baked tench with polenta. And for those with strong palates, there's lumache alla bresciana, snails cooked with spinach and seasoned with abundant grated Parmigian cheese.
Cheeses: from the mountains, we have puìna (a cow's milk ricotta), rosa camuna and the goat's milk cheeses, while the plains provide robiola and quartirolo; from the Lake Garda area, we have the famous formagelle di Tremosine. A very aromatic cheese called bagòss deserves a special mention; it is made from the milk of cows that have grazed in the summer mountain pastures, rich with wildflowers and aromatic herbs, and then aged for two years.
Wine: perhaps due to the influence of Venice, the Brescians are notoriously great wine-lovers and there is certainly no lock of production in Brescia: from Barbera, Marzemino, Schiava and Sangiovese grapes come the DOC reds such as Botticino and Cellatica. The hills of Lake Garda have two areas of DOC cultivation: Lugana, a dry white, and Garda Classico, which can be white, red or rosé.
Even more famous are the wines of Franciacorta, an area south of Lake Iseo: whites, rosés and reds, or a prestigious sparkling wine. Franciacorta DOCG is the most prized Italian sparkling wine, produced from Chardonnay and/or Pinot nero and/or Pinot bianco grapes. The characteristics of Franciacorta wines are: fine, persistent perlage; deep straw yellow color with greenish highlights; a mellow, but decisive, scent of yeast accompanied by delicate hints of dried fruit and cloves; pleasantly flavorful and fresh in the mouth.