Places: Da Paolino — A Table in the Clouds

Pescocostanzo and the Art of Mountain Pasta

The Village in the Wind

If you drive high into the Maiella National Park, past forests of beech and long views of stone villages balanced on cliffs, you’ll find Pescocostanzo.
It’s a jewel of a town — all carved balconies, slate roofs, and air that smells faintly of woodsmoke and fennel.

At its edge, tucked into a lane that seems to lead nowhere, sits Ristorante Da Paolino.
From the outside it looks like another mountain house — low, stone-walled, quiet — but open the door and you step into a room glowing with firelight and the scent of simmering broth.

This is not a restaurant that shouts. It murmurs — about craft, patience, and the way Abruzzo cooks when no one’s watching.

A Family of the Mountain

Da Paolino has been part of Pescocostanzo’s rhythm for decades.
It began as a family trattoria, a place where hunters, shepherds and visiting skiers could eat hot food made the way their grandmothers cooked.

Today, the family still runs it much the same way.
Wood beams cross the ceiling; shelves hold demijohns of olive oil and saffron jars; every table has a white cloth and a sprig of thyme.
There is no theatrical menu design, only handwriting and the day’s weather written in the food.

When you talk to the owners, they don’t call themselves restaurateurs — just cucinieri di montagna, mountain cooks.

The Soul of the Menu

The food here reads like a topographical map of Abruzzo’s interior:

  • Taccozzella alla Pescolana, a thick, hand-cut pasta named for the town itself, served with tomato, guanciale and herbs.
  • Tagliolini di farina di castagne, chestnut-flour noodles with butter and sage, sweet and smoky as autumn air.
  • Fettucine di grano saraceno, buckwheat ribbons that nod to the mountain’s cold nights and northern winds.
  • Tagliolini cacio e pepe al tartufo, a rich whisper of Rome meeting Abruzzo’s truffle woods.

The pastas are made in-house, often by hand, their surfaces dusted with coarse semolina that catches sauce like bark catches snow.
The cooks treat dough the way some people treat dough as prayer: knead, rest, listen.

Nothing here feels industrial or hurried.

Taccozzella — The Local Signature

The restaurant’s unofficial anthem is the Taccozzella alla Pescolana.
The name alone tells a story: taccozzella, a small square or rhomboid of semolina dough pressed and cut by hand; Pescolana, “of Pescocostanzo.”

It’s a cousin of the taccozze and tacconelle found elsewhere in Abruzzo and Molise — a mountain pasta made from water, flour, and patience.
At Da Paolino, it arrives deep in a terracotta bowl, the sauce thick with guanciale, sweet onions and tomato cooked until it glows like the setting sun on stone walls.

This is not a delicate dish. It’s chewy, glossy, alive.
Every piece of pasta carries the mark of the hand that made it — slightly irregular, slightly perfect.

Locals call it “il piatto che scalda le ossa” — the dish that warms your bones.

Where the Ingredients Come From

Everything about Da Paolino’s cooking is hyper-local.
The guanciale comes from family farms around Rivisondoli.
The pecorino is aged in the cold caves of the Alto Sangro valley.
Zucchine, wild herbs, and mushrooms come from small growers and foragers who deliver directly to the kitchen.

Even the olive oil is from Chieti, not imported, pressed from Gentile di Chieti and Intosso varieties.
When the first snow falls, saffron from Navelli appears on the menu — folded into tagliolini or used to perfume local lamb stew.

Da Paolino cooks the landscape, not the recipe book.

The Texture of the Mountain

Mountain food has its own geometry.
It’s built for cold, for hunger after work, for comfort that lingers.
Da Paolino’s pasta follows that rule: always firm, never fragile.

The texture comes from slow drying, coarse flour, and the bronze dies they still use for certain shapes.
A strand of tagliolini here feels alive; it resists, then yields.

Even the sauces follow mountain logic — thicker, oilier, meant to cling.
A single spoonful carries the sweetness of sautéed carrot, the smoke of guanciale, and the perfume of thyme gathered behind the house.

Not Just Tradition

Yet this isn’t a museum.
Alongside the taccozzella you might find tagliolini con crema di zucchine e guanciale, a gentle modernisation that proves how fluid Abruzzo’s cooking can be.
The zucchine bring brightness, the guanciale depth; saffron sometimes sneaks in for colour.

It’s the kind of dish that could have been invented yesterday or fifty years ago — timeless because it’s honest.

Chef Paolino’s family describes these as “piatti di oggi con memoria antica” — today’s dishes with ancient memory.

A Place Between Seasons

In summer, hikers fill the terrace; in winter, the snow buries the doorway and the restaurant becomes a refuge.
Menus shift with the seasons:

  • Spring: lamb with mint, tagliolini with zucchini flowers.
  • Summer: peperoni dolci and ricotta.
  • Autumn: mushrooms, truffle, chestnut pasta.
  • Winter: slow braised meats and saffron tagliolini.

Every plate feels like a postcard from a different season of Abruzzo.

Atmosphere & Ritual

Dining here is slow.
Courses arrive one at a time, in earthenware bowls, with bread that still smells of the oven.
You pour your own Montepulciano, scrape your plate clean, and talk in low voices because the stone walls echo.

The owners move between tables, not with rehearsed politeness but with neighbourly ease.
If you linger, they might offer a taste of genziana liqueur or a sliver of pecorino still warm from the hearth.

This rhythm — unhurried, personal — is what distinguishes mountain hospitality from the coast.
Here, you eat like family, not like clientele.

The View from the Door

Step outside after lunch and you see the Maiella peaks, pale against the blue.
The air is thinner, sharper; bells from distant sheep scatter in the wind.

That’s what you taste inside Da Paolino — the altitude.
Each dish seems seasoned with it: the patience of snow, the scent of pine, the hum of history.

Fun Facts & Curiosities

  • “Taccozzella” is the local dialect diminutive of taccozza — a square cut of pasta from Molise and southern Abruzzo.
  • The kitchen keeps an old bronze die inherited from the founder, still used for festival pasta.
  • The chestnut-flour tagliolini were created as a way to use last year’s chestnut harvest — now a house speciality.
  • Pescocostanzo sits at 1,400 metres; it’s one of Italy’s highest inhabited towns and part of I Borghi più belli d’Italia.
  • In winter, the restaurant hosts a “Cena del Focolare” — a hearth dinner — where dishes are served by firelight only.
  • The wine list champions Tintilia del Molise and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, bridging both regions’ borders.

Reflection — A Lesson in Altitude

Ristorante Da Paolino isn’t famous, and that’s its magic.
It cooks for locals, not cameras; for appetite, not applause.

Here, you learn what Abruzzo tastes like above the olive line — dense, fragrant, and shaped by the cold.
The pasta is thicker, the sauces slower, the hospitality warmer.

If you believe that every region has a pulse, then Da Paolino is Abruzzo’s mountain heartbeat — steady, humble, golden as saffron on a plate of tagliolini.

And when you leave, the scent follows you down the road — wheat, woodsmoke, and the quiet confidence of people who never stopped doing things the right way.

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