a hidden room (with surprise) that is a little paradise

What makes a city, a city? The question is too difficult for a gastronome, but I would venture an answer: complexity. A country is simple, a city is a maze. Therefore difficult to know. The Sicilian Roberto Alajmo wrote a very tasty little book entitled «Palermo is an onion» to talk about the stratification of his home (about onions read the wonderful poem by Wisława Szymborska); and what is Turin? A gianduiotto? I would say, better, a cri-cri, because it hides its mystery (like hazelnuts like sugared almonds) and because it has countless colorful surprises all around. I came across one of these on Tuesday, and a love story was born from the encounter.

If it had been a romantic date, I would have arrived rather late: the Bar Franco has been there since the beginning of the twentieth centurywhen it was a piola, and the Franco family (yes, that’s the surname) has been running it for sixty years; then there was the father of the lady who works behind the counter. Well, better late than never. The Bar Franco is a Turin jewel, one of those hidden away from the mad crowd of the center. Right behind the Ponte Barra Restaurant, a stone’s throw from the Trattoria della Posta, you cross a little door and enter a secret paradise. The bar room is old-fashioned but well-kept, with preserves on the walls, shelves with bottles, especially the display cases that offer a theory of sandwiches, tramezzini, tarts, brioches which could win a challenge with the bars on Via Roma. But nothing fancy, eh: everything refined but true, just love for things done well.

There are the classics – tuna and artichokes, green tomatoes and tuna, raw salami, bresaola and robiola – but with our friend Andrea we choose what we love most: sandwiches with green omelette, with butter and anchovies, with peppers and anchovies. Added to these is a blackboard that offers simple but intriguing dishes of the day, among which we choose a salmon pastrami (i.e. fillet marinated in maple juice, spiced and smoked). But the best is to come: after passing the two rooms in which the customers chat placidly, you reach a small terrace in the middle of the greenery, overlooking – it doesn’t seem true – a stream and the forest of the foothills. Sitting at the tables you can hear the flow of water, the rustling of the branches, the chirping of birds. It’s so nice that we celebrate with a good crème-caramel. And we enjoy a place different from all the others, a sort of parallel dimension. This is also the beauty of the city: that it can make you believe you are in the countryside.

Bar Franco
Mongreno Municipal Road 4 011 898 0061
Vote: ***