We were meeting The Caller and his charming wife at a new location, this time at Ciao Italian Bistro in Fenton for a leisurely lunch.  Now The Caller lives out in the wilds of Michigan, where even the GPS on our phone system, let alone the phones always work.  So, we try to meet somewhere in between and this was a new restaurant for us to try in the city of Fenton.  It was funny, because my Bride and I, both have the same iPhone and the same phone service carrier and our GPS gave us two different routes to get to the restaurant.  Usually, she teases me that my iPhone knows that I like roads, instead of freeways, but the route was the same in the beginning using the freeway, but they diverged when we got on the roads, two different routes, same travel time, and we did get there.  We even got there early before the reservation, so she wanted to go to a bakery, since we had time.  As we started to walk to the bakery, The Caller yelled out to us from the parking lot, to get him a cherry pie, so we became a delivery service as well.  They went in and got the table, and they started with out us with cocktails. 

The restaurant had two parts, a long narrow bar side with booths, and the adjacent restaurant with tables and booths; we sat in the restaurant at a table and commandeered a booth to hold all the stuff we had bought at the bakery.  We are very casual diners and food tends to get shared, so we just ordered a couple of appetizers to start off with, along with the bread.  We had an order of Shrimp Luca, jumbo shrimp lightly breaded and flash-fried topped with a lemon garlic cream sauce and an order of Calamari, flash-fried and served with homemade aioli sauces.  We then all ended up with pasta orders; Pasta Rustica with sautéed Italian sausage, red onions, banana peppers and spinach in a roasted garlic marinara sauce tossed with penne pasta; Lobster Ravioli with claw meat stuffed saffron pasta, tossed with shrimp, spinach, and roasted tomatoes in a Sherry cream sauce; Pasta Primavera, penne pasta sautéed with onions, tri-color peppers, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes tossed in a garlic, olive oil, fresh herbs and lemon sauce; and Shrimp and Sausage Scampi with sautéed jumbo shrimp and Italian sausage with artichokes, asparagus tips, sliced garlic and fresh herbs in a white wine lemon butter sauce on fettuccine pasta.  All followed by sorbets and “Baked Alaska” with Neapolitan ice cream center.

We were going to start with a white wine and then go with a red, but all interest was leaning towards a red and we ended up getting two bottles of Vietti Castiglione Barolo DOCG 2019.  Vietti is a wine producer in Piedmont, known for their Barolo and Barbera wines, along with being one of the proponents of resurrecting the Arneis variety.  The estate began producing its first wines with the family name in 1919 and they were one of the original wineries to ship Barolo to the USA. Most of the Nebbiolo grapes come from the vineyards in the Castiglione Falletto which is a mix of sand, chalk, and clay soils.  The Castiglione Barolo is their traditional Barolo interpretation and the vines are between ten and forty-five years old.  The grapes are hand-harvested, separated by individual cru locations, then gently pressed, and the juice is fermented for almost a month on the lees for about a month in a Stainless-Steel tank.  Malolactic Fermentation takes place in wood, during the thirty months in large barrels and a small portion in barriques.  Each cru is vinified separately and assembled before bottling.  The wine was a dark ruby color that offered notes of plum, black cherries, blackberry, and secondary notes of rose petals and tobacco leaf.  On the palate tones of the black cherry was prominent and blended nicely with smooth tannins and a touch of classic leather, ending with a medium to long count finish of fruit, spices, and terroir.  We look forward to our next meeting with The Caller in the spring.