Siena 2018: Dinner at Antica Trattoria Papei

For dinner that night we were having a little trouble deciding where to go. If the weather had been better we might have splurged on one of the restaurants that line Il Campo. From what I’ve read online these restaurants are of varying quality and the main thing you’re paying for is the privilege of dining right on one of Europe’s most famous squares. After doing some research on my phone I suggested we try checking out the square that’s directly behind the Palazzo Pubblico and we headed out to take a look. There we decided to eat at a restaurant called Antica Trattoria Papei and this would turn out to be one of the best decisions we made on our entire Italy trip. The restaurant hadn’t yet officially opened for the night but the very friendly staff let us in and got us a table inside. That we night we had easily the best meal of our trip and it’s a shame that I was sick and couldn’t fully enjoy it. I had some incredibly delicious spaghetti carbonara while my parents had other types of pasta. For dessert I had some crema catalana, which is very similar to creme brûlée and originally came from Spain. Normally with this dessert you caramelize the sugar on the top with a blowtorch or a hot iron but at our restaurant it was actually ignited and a flame burned on top of the crema catalana for a minute. This made for a cool photo and video that demanded to be shared on Instagram. We left Antica Trattoria Papei extremely satisfied and if I ever find myself back in Siena I’ll likely hit them up again for a meal.