After an entire decade of yearning to dine at this famous restaurant, we finally made it.

Tommaso and I visited Alba in 2013 for their annual white truffle festival as the area is known worldwide for their esteemed white truffles. Unfortunately during our visit, we weren’t able to get a reservation at Piazza Duomo as they were fully booked. This time around I made sure to book right when their reservations went live. Not only is this a three Michelin starred fine dining institution but is also currently #42 on San Pellegrino’s The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023. Chef Enrico Crippa was also a contributing chef at In Situ and he came to San Francisco to do a collaboration dinner with other well known chefs, which I worked.

Piazza Duomo is located in the main square of the small town of Alba. Quite picturesque and we can’t forget about their iconic hot pink facade and light pink dining room with frescoes.

Chef Enrico Crippa’s menu has a strong focus on vegetables, plants, herbs, and wild flowers that are harvested daily from their garden located a few kilometers from the city. During our visit, they had three tasting menus: “The Journey”, “Barolo” or “Alba White Truffle” (the truffle menu is only available during truffle season). We opted for “The Journey” and you had the option to add a few additional dishes which we did. Numerous tables around us got the “Alba White Truffle” menu and every time they would bring out the truffle cart and the guests would choose which truffle they wanted for their dinner and the servers would weigh the truffle to determine the price.

Our meal started off with a plethora of stunning amuse bouches. On the far right were fake olives where the black one was stuffed with langoustine tartare and the green one was stuffed with veal tartare. In the middle was a luscious foie gras cream with roasted corn and an airy Gingerino foam (a red Italian bitter) served with a peanut cracker. Next was the buttery Parmigiano Reggiano cracker stuffed with Parmigiano Reggiano cream. Behind that was an exquisite mini tartlet with dots of soy mayonnaise seasoned with garlic and lemon and garnished with beautiful edible flowers. The item of the far left was a crunchy pillow stuffed with smoked trout with a veil of furikake jelly on top. Behind that was the crispy spinach cracker with black garlic.

The last of the amuse bouches were riffs of other dishes. Barbajuan is a fritter typically stuffed with Swiss chard and cheese and their fried ravioli were stuffed with Ricotta cheese. The other bite was called baci di dama, a Piemontese sweet of hazelnut cookies with chocolate in between. Their savory version still had the sweet hazelnut biscuit but with liver pâté. A great combination.

This was a gorgeous array of vegetables dishes. Some favorites included the radicchio with a pungent green sauce with horseradish; pumpkin with salty hazelnuts; sprout salad; and a silky salted crème caramel with miso reduction.

The next dish was an add on which I had to get as it’s one of chef Enrico Crippa’s signature dishes.

The dish’s name comes from the fact that it originally had 21 ingredients of various leaves and then became 31, then 41, then 51, and now the chef has lost count. The salad changes with the season and when we tried it, it had well over 100 ingredients from their garden (all ingredients are listed in the booklet). What’s remarkable about the dish is that the various lettuces, herbs, and flowers are the seasonings as each leaf is unique in flavor with notes of acidity or bitterness or sweetness. At the bottom of the dish you’ll find a dashi which only seasons the last few leaves and then you drink the broth at the end as a palate refresher. A wonderful representation of their garden.

This was easily my least favorite dish of the night as I felt like the flavors didn’t come together or make any sense. On the large plate, there was a layer of bell pepper gelée topped with dollops of almond cream and pieces of sea urchin carpaccio meant to be eaten with the furikake chip on the side. The small bowl was almond ice cream with sea urchin cream and coffee powder. I didn’t see the vision of the dish.

This dish redeemed the prior dish as the flavors were harmonious. Tender pieces of prawns were enveloped in a Pecorino sauce with hints of spicy ‘nduja. The warm prawn broth on the side was comforting and a nice way to finish the dish.

Beetroot, an often polarizing vegetable, was the center of this dish and I happily enjoyed the numerous preparations. The beetroot tartare on the large plate was prepared like a Russian salad with its mayonnaise based dressing with a beetroot gelée on top. I see a reoccurring theme as they seem to like their gelées here which is fine but can be redundant. The mini tramezzino (sandwich) was super delicious with the herring cream and caviar. An umami bomb. The borscht soup was also very flavorful as they said the soup was made with meat, beetroot, and vegetables and then blended into a velvety consistency topped with sour cream and spring onion. The last dish was a borscht broth almost like a palate cleanser.

Of course I love bread service and theirs didn’t disappoint with grissini, hazelnut bread rolls, and a rustic sourdough type of bread.

Delicate sea bass was gently cooked and garnished with spring onion and served with a white wine and ginger sauce.

This was another add on, the potato dish with shaved white truffles. The potato cream was luxurious and underneath was a hidden quail egg flavored with lapsang souchong black tea. The tea and quail egg flavors were subtle as I’m sure they didn’t want to overpower the white truffles.

One of my favorite dishes of the night was this unctuous risotto flavored with chestnuts and lemon zest and finished with a chicken liver sauce and a dusting of cocoa powder. What made the risotto even more special was the mantecare process (the Italian word used in the risotto technique of emulsifying the butter and cheese with the rice at the end of the cooking resulting in a full bodied creamy sauce). They used a hazelnut butter which added another level of flavor and richness.

The final savory dish was squab prepared simply with its jus, a foie gras cream, a corn powder, and black cabbage. Perfect cookery on the meat.

The following dessert is a tribute to Francesco Clemente, a Neapolitan painter who painted the frescos in Piazza Duomo’s dining room. The gold seams are inspired by the Japanese technique called kintsugi where ceramics are repaired with gold which leaves a gold seam where the cracks once were.

The dessert was a piece of artwork with dazzling pastels and pops of gold. The cinnamon speculoos biscuit was the foundation topped with a creamy Mascarpone and white chocolate disk. On the side you’ll find a vibrant fruity grapefruit sorbet and a herbal tea of mint, rum, lime, and vanilla.

I’m so glad I finally got to check this off my bucket list of restaurants. What I respected and admired most was Piazza Duomo’s dedication to their garden and harvesting the freshest ingredients possible daily. The amount of labor and attention to detail is unparalleled and it doesn’t go unnoticed. While it wasn’t my favorite fine dining restaurant in Italy, I still thoroughly enjoyed my experience from the impeccable service to the creative works of edible art and to the lovely ambience so my rating is an 8/10. Of course we had to finish with a kitchen tour and say hi to my former coworker, Mattia, who used to be on a J1 visa at Benu. Grazie a tutti!