An amazingly delicious pasta menu at Cucina di Gio

For my boyfriend's birthday, he and I went to Cucina di Gio in Houthalen-Helchteren. Cucina di Gio is an Italian restaurant that makes its own fresh pasta which you can eat during a quick lunch or dinner. On the menu you can find a 3-course "Pasta Menu" for €32,50, a 3-course "Surprise Menu" for €42,50, a 4-course "Surprise Menu" for €52,50 and a 5-course "Surprise Menu" for €63. You can also choose to eat à la carte - meat, fish or pasta.

We went for the Pasta Menu that consisted of 3 different pasta dishes. I mentioned that I was a vegetarian and asked if the Pasta Menu would still be an option for me .They kindly said (to my surprise) that it would be no problem to adapt the 3 pastas to my diet.

Before we started with the 3-course meal we got an appetizer which was a truffle, mushroom soup with, on the side, a potato ball filled with scampi and turnip tops. For me the appetizer consisted of that same soup with a small eggplant on the side together with some Burrata and pesto. This starter alone was already very delicious and made me excited for the rest of the night.

The first pasta we got was fresh linguine with a sauce made from Pecorino cheese. This dish was my absolute favorite out of all the pastas we got that night; it was a bit heavy knowing

there were still 2 other pastas to come but still extremely good .

The next pasta was, again, fresh linguine with a pesto sauce made from pistachio topped with some calamari and a hint of lemon. For me of course this pasta was made without the calamari. This dish was excellent too and the tiny squeeze of lemon juice on top of it still gave me the "sea food vibe".

The last pasta, which made me very excited when it showed up at our table, was freshly-made ravioli filled with truffle and a butter-sage sauce, for me, and for my boyfriend it was ravioli filled with deer ragu. I was excited about this dish because I originally wanted to order it if we would have gone for à la carte meals, as I absolutely love truffle. This last pasta was the perfect one to end off our night with as it was light, not too much and sublime in taste and structure. Why it wasn't my favourite is just because the first one was suuuuuuper yummy and even the truffle for me didn't beat the flavours of that first pasta. Which may sound a bit strange as the first dish was just a casual linguine with cheese sauce, but there was just something to it that made me fall in love with it.

I absolutely loved our experience at Cucina di Gio, all plates were presented very beautifully and tasted even better. The meals also didn't follow up on each other too quickly which was perfect for me as every pasta did take some time to digest. I definitely recommend Cucina di Gio to everyone.

A bientôt!

Bisous