A few kilometres away from Cagli, where Nature starts overcoming the inhabited places, there is “Le Fontane” restaurant, where customers are welcomed by chef Valerio Ferri and his wife Flavia, who manage the place assisted by their daughter. Even before their cordiality, a welcome is given by the heady smells coming from the kitchen, perfumes which look like having captured the essence of the surrounding landscape.
“Le Fontane” offers rigorously local recipes, created using zero-kilometres products. The rich menu consists of a real list of typical food from the Montefeltro area, an enogastronomic itinerary that can be covered while comfortably sitting in the elegant restaurant.
Rich trays loaded with classical ready-sliced sausages or such peculiar ones as the “lonzino di cotenna” (salami made with pork rinds) are offered along with focaccia bread rigorously cooked in a wood-burning oven. The main course must absolutely be a dish of “passatelli” (egg pasta with meat sup), a creation of this area, while the “cresc’tajat” are a typical example of the poor cuisine of Marche, whose recipe is proudly saved here, cooked in a sauce of beans or chickpeas, obviously biologically cultivated. Meats are one of the musts of the restaurant and they are also required to be such typically local products as the Marche’s rib-eye steak and the “cinturello” sliced pork steak.
“Le Fontane” restaurant is strongly characterized by its territorial imprinting not just because of its recipes, but also because of its care for the collectivity. Valerio leads an association of restaurant managers created to help each other as well as to organize such cheerful social gatherings as great popular barbecues and the new “Hymn to the truffle”, an event meant to celebrate the most valuable product of the area. Here indeed truffles, both white and black, as well as many other high quality mushrooms, including porcino and St. George’s mushrooms, grow the whole year long on the mountains surrounding Cagli, that are real cornucopias rich with delicacies.
Cagli