Follina: La Corte Restaurant. The Michelin star La Corte restaurant is
situated in the Relais et Chateaux Villa Abbazia Hotel. The seventeenth century
hotel is nestled in the Prosecco hillsides, near Venice, in a charming little
village which also boasts a fourteenth century Cistercain abbey. The elegant restaurant
is frescoed with scenes inspired by the local countryside, the surrounding
Palladian Villas, Veronese and Tiepolo.
Above: the Jardin d’Hiver is very much in demand during the
summer months and looks out onto the seventeenth century villa and the beautiful
and abundant garden, which is cared personally with love and devotion by the
hotel’s owner’s Ivana De Marchi Zanon.
La Corte Restaurant.
From the Puglia region, chef Donato Episcopo was awarded, in 2009, best emerging chef “Cooking for Wine of the Puglia Region”.
He has always worked in Italy as he believes that “Italian cooking really stands on it’s own and there is no
need to embellish it.” He trained under renowned chef Heinz Beck of Rome's highly acclaimed
La Pergola restaurant and with him drafted
two cookery books. “I consider myself a craftsman of great Italian cuisine,
I undertake to modernize the culinary heritage of the past.”
La Corte. The Jardin
d’Hiver.
Scampi in Tempura,
Trancietto di Ricciola Scottato, Pepperoni all’agretto di Mela, Ragu di Rape
Rosse e Finocchietto
Prawns in Tempura,
Seared Yellowtail, Sweet and Sour Peppers, Ragout of Beets and Baby Fennel
Riso Carnaroli
Grumolo delle Abbadesse
Carnaroli rice,
tiny chopped vegetables with saffron and a Balsamic vinegar reduction.
Torta Saint Honore
Hazelnut
Mille-feuille, custard perfumed with citrus, Marostica cherries marinated in Marzemino
wine.
Swiss Chards grow in the vegetable garden, which provides
most of the vegetable used in the kitchen.
La Corte. Straight from the vegetable garden,
tomatoes wait in the internal courteyard, from which the restauarnt takes it’s
name.