Italian-style hospitality, good food and convivial atmosphere. La Grotta in Ventimiglia is the restaurant for everyone, where the food is genuine, sincere, tasty because it is the result of experience and professionalism
In the heart of Ventimiglia, along the Oberdan promenade that runs along the sea, there are many places to stop and savor the atmosphere while enjoying a typical dish or having a snack.
La Grotta is a historic eatery, its founding dates back to the postwar period and it has remained one of the most popular places for residents and the many tourists passing through ever since. Antonino Corigliano has been its owner for 18 years and has been able to maintain and amplify the restaurant’s reputation with its tasty dishes and pizzas.
Everything revolves around the fire, the beating heart of La Grotta. The fire that, in the center of the restaurant, prominently displayed, warms the ambiance, even figuratively, and becomes a reference point and stimulus for conviviality. On the fire that releases its aromas, crackling meats are grilled – Florentine, tomahawk, picana, lamb – and in the large wood-burning oven, pizzas, nearly fifty on the menu to please all tastes.
“We do classic cuisine,” says Antonino Corigliano, “fish first courses, traditional dishes, but what we do we care about doing well, and our halls and the dehors with veranda-about 280 seats-is always full because we have a large clientele of people young and old.
Classic offerings are favored by mature people, those with more intense, particular flavors by young people looking for new experiences; strong flavors like our pizza with mortadella and burrata or what we call ‘woman’s lips’ with minced meat, onion and nduja.”
Pizza, in fact, is at the center of the proposal. Antonino Corigliano has studied his “perfect” dough over the years, found it and taught it to his pizza maker, who now successfully replicates it.
A classic dough leavened a minimum of 36 hours, which is made using 5 Stagioni Red flour, a choice born of long experience. A flour that allows processing with very little yeast and results in a crispy, light and very digestible pizza.
“To the classic dough,” Corigliano continues, “I have added a dough that includes hemp inside: it is a popular trend, it encourages the development of a more rustic, intense flavor, which is particularly welcome; a crispy pizza as the modern style wants, a personalized recipe, a little secret.
But the value of La Grotta’s menu is also given by the continuous search for quality in the raw materials that are chosen according to seasonality, mainly on the territory “when there are artichokes from Albenga, there is never a shortage on our tables,” says Antonino, “as well as porcini mushrooms when the time is right.
Always open for lunch and dinner, La Grotta is a place for everyone to feel at ease pampered by the 15-member staff and to enjoy the best of Italian cuisine in a convivial atmosphere. It is the typical traditional Italian pizzeria restaurant that combines dining pleasure and quality with a joyful atmosphere. The right place to find relaxation and fulfillment.
With apparent simplicity, Antonino Corigliano offers the professionalism and commitment that characterizes much of Italian dining, the kind without stars or echoes.
