ristorazione — Modena · Emilia-Romagna
In the Modena countryside, along Strada Montecatini, an old silk mill (filanda) has changed its calling without losing its soul: today it is a trattoria of Emilian cooking, where the sfoglia (fresh egg pasta sheet) is still rolled by hand every day and the flavours of mountain tradition find a home just minutes from Modena.
Ten minutes from the centre of Modena, the road opens onto the countryside and the sign for La Vecchia Filanda appears among the fields. It is a family-run trattoria, open for dinner every day and also for lunch on Sundays, where the welcome is no mere formula: those who walk in are greeted with the same ease as a regular returning home.
The dining room reveals the character of the house at once: tables set with care, a fiaschetto (small flask) of wine at the centre, as Emilian custom dictates. The service — described in reviews as warm, professional and genuinely good-humoured — is run by the very people who keep the trattoria going. There is no distance between those who cook and those who bring the dishes to the table: it is the same family.
The heart of the trattoria is the kitchen: the sfoglia for the tortelloni — filled with ricotta, mushrooms, or potato and wild boar — is rolled by hand every day, with the precise thickness that reviews single out as a distinguishing mark. Alongside the fresh pasta, pappardelle with wild boar and venison stracotto (slow-braised stew) with polenta bring mountain Emilian tradition to the table in its most direct form.
From the grand fried porcini mushrooms to the house zuppa inglese (Emilian layered custard-and-liqueur dessert), every dish has precise roots. The full page is the next step.
