Prosciutto with black truffles and parmesan with confit red peppers
On this trip, we fell in love with Verona. Forget all the Romeo and Juliet stuff – it’s fictional after all, and all a bit tacky for me – Verona is charming and just very very pretty.
We managed to eat at so many places this trip and this restaurant is the only one where we went back twice it was that good.
Just around the corner from our our hotel (the wonderful Gabbia D’Oro), 12 Apostoli got its name from the 12 tradesmen who used to meet every day after work back in the 1700s when it was an inn. In was only in the early 1900s that it became a restaurant but still serves simple food, stunningly prepared.
I have to say that it was a bit more formal than I expected, but the staff there were so cheeky in a totally professional way that it lured us back a second time. On recommendation, we started with shaved prosciutto with black truffles and parmesan on a bed of rocket, with red pepper confit. I don’t really need to say any more, do I 🙂
shaved salami on grilled polenta
We also had a traditional Veronese dish, shaved salami on top of grilled polenta. The Italians don’t seem to season their polenta at all but the saltiness of the salami took care of that.
Mains we both stuck to pasta – D had the beef tortellini tossed in butter and sage and I had the papaline (which amusingly is translated to “skullcaps”) filled with marscapone and olives.
Dessert was a total revelation for me. I’m familiar with dessert carts, but not three. It was such a thrill being surrounded by so much sugar ! And we usually had eaten so much that we had no space for dessert but that night, we had three between the two of us. And there were two winners which I would never have dreamed I would even order let alone love.
Traditional Sicilian cassata
The first was a cassata. Now my knowledge of cassata is vanilla ice-cream with dried candied fruit that you can order in Italian takeaways back in Australia – not all that appetising. Apparently that is a type of cassata but the version that we were served that night was the traditional Sicilian version – sponge cake moistened with liquer, layered with ricotta cheese and covered with a shell of marzipan and topped with candied fruit and peel. It was absolutely gorgeous. Light, with no overpowering flavour of marzipan (which I don’t really like the taste of), just delicate and somehow worked beautifully.
Sliced orange with candied orange peel
The second dish was “an orange”. I mean, that makes it sound so .. dull, but essentially it was peeled sliced orange with candied orange peel. That was pretty much it. But the zing of flavour in that orange made all the tastebuds in your mouth sing. Honest.
We had to almost roll ourselves out of 12 Apostles that night but not before we made a reservation for dinner on our last night in Verona. Perfect way to start a visit to this lovely city.
12 Apostoli
Corticela S. Marco 3,
37121, Verona, Italy
Tel: +39 045 596999
Email: dodiciapostoli@tiscali.it
Closed Sunday and Monday evenings
Food is my happy place 
October 30th, 2011 at 12:39 am
You are making me hungry with all of this delicious looking food!
October 30th, 2011 at 2:14 am
I literally just stared at that first picture for a minute thinking what on earth is that? I wasn’t sure if it was a pizza or not. And mind you I mean this in a good way. It’s beautiful. What an awesome combination.
October 30th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Oh, that shaved salami looks interesting. Three dessert carts sound amazing. Would love to go there as well 🙂
November 2nd, 2011 at 8:02 pm
[…] the second time we went to the 12 Apostles, actually. We had had such a fun and delicious experience there a few nights earlier, and there was so many dishes that went unordered, we felt we simply had […]
November 4th, 2011 at 2:30 am
It has been awhile since we visited Verona but it is lovely. You just have to get past all of the Romeo and Juliet tourist stuff. We too have eaten at the 12 Apostles. I think you made a great choice on your restaurant.