La Taverna dei Sapori

On the base here in Naples, there is an office set up called ITT (Information, Tours and Travels). The ITT is in charge of setting up different tours around the area, they do one day tours which can last a couple hours to all day, and they also do extended tours around Europe, that range from overnight to week long tours. They try to set up at one one-day tour every day for people to do, John and I had signed up for one a while back but it was canceled. I was checking the website a couple weeks ago and the one they had set up for yesterday sounded like a lot of fun. I brought it up to John and we thought we would give it a try.

Yesterday's tour was a wine tasting, and dinner tour, so it didn't start until later in the afternoon. For these tours they have a bus that goes from Carney Park to Capo and then to Support Site to pick up everyone participating in the tour. It then drives everyone to the tour and when it is over back to your vehicle at one of the 3 stops. This is nice because we don't have to worry about finding the place and trying to park the pick-up anywhere.

The wine tasting was at a winery in Cuma, which is south of Naples a little ways. We left Support Site around 5 and traffic was horrible trying to get to the winery. The weather yesterday was typical winter Italian weather, rainy and cold. When we got to the winery it was still trying to rain so the owner showed us around the inside and told us about the different wines they make. The winery is undergoing some renovations so they have a place set up outside for the actual wine-tasting. Since the weather wasn't cooperating we went to the restaurant for the wine-tasting and they dinner. The restaurant we went to and the winery were owned by the same people which made everything run smoothly.

The restaurant we went to, La Taverna dei Sapori, was very small and family owned and operated. The woman who owned it was very nice and spoke very good English. She was also the only cook for the restaurant, and had one waiter. After we tried a few of their wines it was time to sit down and enjoy dinner. A traditional dinner here in Italy consists of 5 courses, and this is exactly what we got last night.

We started off with the appetizer which consisted of Bruschetta, some type of grilled eggplant, a sort of quiche, and some potaotes. Sorry I don't know the exact names of all the foods. Next was the antipasto, penne pasta in a white sauce with ham and zucchini. This was so good but really filling and we still had 3 more course. The next course is the meat course, and we had grilled pork-chops with steak fries. Again very good, with more food to come. The 4th course was the dessert and it was chocolate. This is how I explain what it tastes like, a mix between chocolate, fudge, brownie and cake with some pecans mixed in it. It was very rich but oh so good. The last course is limoncello and or caffe. Limoncello is a lemon liqueur that is usually served after every meal and it comes as either a shot or a small drink. I have tried it once and that was plenty for me, I am not a fan at all. Then caffe is the Italian word for coffee, they love their coffee over here and have some after every meal.

So as you can tell a meal over here consists of many different things and is not short at all. The owner not only cooked all the courses but also helped served. So in between cooking she was walking around talking to everyone, so it took us about 3 1/2 hours or so to eat dinner, not including the wine-tasting before. But all of the food was amazing and I have to say John and I will be going back to that restaurant in the future.