Yesterday, seeing the day that was in it (St. Patrick’s day), we decided to treat ourselves and go out to lunch. There is a restaurant up in the hills above Portaria and since we have been in Acquasparta I think it has changed ownership at least 3 times. The latest incarnation is called ‘Il Rifugio di Portaria’.

We decided to go here mainly to check it out so that we could recommend it, or not, to our guests. I didn’t have my hopes up to be honest but we were pleasantly surprised. The menu is typically ‘cucina povera’, traditional Umbrian fare but thankfully it was prepared with a bit of love and skill.

To start we picked the large antipasto to share. We think this is always a good guide as to the quality of the food in a restaurant, if it contains any frozen, deep fried items then you can pretty much guarantee that the rest of the meal will not be up to much. I am happy to say it was indeed large and not a frozen morsel in sight, tasty little home-made bites and the usual bruschette and salami, all very good.

For our ‘primi piatti’ we decided to have the days specials, a pappardelle with a goose sauce and pappardelle with wild boar sauce. Both dishes were very good, the boar sauce was rich and the meat tender, the goose sauce was probably the best we have had. Normally, a goose sauce sugo d’oca is more like a meat ragù and you would be hard pushed to tell the difference between them, but, this was really good with great flavour, minced goose meat and fresh cherry tomatoes, simple but very well executed.

We were feeling greedy so it was not too hard for the waiter to tempt us to a secondo, meat course. Again we just went with his recommendation and ordered the days specials, a wild boar stew and pork fillet cooked in a bread crust. To be honest after the large antipasto and the large pasta course we both did not feel like eating anything else by the time the meat arrived, will we ever learn? Anyway, again, both dishes were very good, the stew rich and Moorish with little tender pieces of meat and served with some greens, ‘cicoria’, think giant wild dandelion leaves, a bit like spinach but more bitter. The pork fillet was actually cooked in a hollowed out baton of bread and was so tender and really tasty, I will be stealing this method, served with little roast potatoes. We managed to eat a few forks of each before we surrendered.

So, a really nice surprise and we are looking forward to going back when the weather warms up a bit, they also do pizza from a wood oven, it will be a lovely spot in the summer and we will be recommending it to our guests. If we have one compliant, if you can call it that, they just need to cut down on their portion size, or maybe we need to learn to stop eating it all…..

You can get more info at their website, www.ilrifugiodiportaria.com