La Locanda

One of the real joys of our area is a restaurant known as La Locanda though it is correctly called La Locanda della Tradizione Abruzzese. I assume the correct name is the full name because the name La Locanda is used frequently in Italy for restaurants. La Locanda translates to "inn" and in the traditional universe of Italian restaurants would be among the lower categories; however, it has become fashionable for upscale restaurants to adopt this word as part of their name. The first time I ever encountered this was probably more than thirty years ago when visiting the Cipriani restaurant, Locanda Cipriana, on the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. Despite its name, the Locanda Cipriana is one of the nicest restaurants I have ever had the opportunity to eat in and well worth a journey, not to mention that the easiest way to get there involves walking through most of Venice to catch a boat to the island.

But back to La Locanda near us. If you have not already, I suggest you follow the hyperlink above to the home page and watch some of the photographs. While the restaurant is nice and the food very good, one of the most unusual things, for an Italian restaurant, is the front lawn and playground area for children. Since the pictures were taken the restaurant has made a major expansion that allows it to seat an additional 500 people for weddings and other celebrations. One of our Italian friends told us that the smallest weddings she ever saw here involved at least 200 guests so 500 is not an unusually large reception hall here and I have seen it filled on many occasions.

We tend to eat at La Locanda at lunch when it has specials that offer bread, bottled water, house wine, a choice of soup or one of three pastas, a choice of one of three meat or fish dishes, salad and coffee for 12 euro. In touristy areas of Italy such menus are common but unfortunately are frequently of low quality. La Locanda is located some distance from any tourist attraction and relies solely on locals, and at lunch, local business persons for customers. To attract that clientele it is necessary to have all the food be of very high quality and it is. We usually have some fruit for desert that adds another 3 euro to the bill but the opportunity to eat a large, high quality meal for 15 euros seems like a bargain to us.

At night La Locanda becomes a full restaurant and is particularly know for its steaks that are served on pietra da lava or, literally, lava stone. To me it doesn't look like lava stone but appears to be stone about the size of an American red brick that has been coated with a black enamel. The stones are heated extremely hot and the partially cooked steak arrives on top of the stone on a platter with various steak sauces. You cut up your steak and finish cooking it on the rock with the sauce of your choice. All this is a little unusual for Italy but the owner trained in France and worked in Canada for many years. The steaks are from Abruzzo Marchigiana beef and are excellent. These cattle are grown in the US.

The jewel of the steak at La Locanda is Chateaubriand with vegetables for two for 34 euro (17 euro per person). More than two people can eat, it only requires the addition of water and wine and desert to be a complete meal. It is served on a side tray so each person can take the meat and vegetable of their choosing to finish cooking on lava rock.

One of the joys of living in the Abruzzo (because of the lack of tourism) is that restaurants are generally extremely reasonably priced. La Locanda is my favorite example of that phenomenon, more to follow. I have compared restaurant prices between the Abruzzo and northern Italy, mostly Tuscany and Liguria, and persistently come to the conclusion that prices here for a similar quality restauarant are about 40% of the prices in Tuscany. Good for the pocketbook, bad for the waistline.