Your menu in Verona, where Romeo and Juliet dine with Amarone

The reality of a restaurant in Verona

Verona has something that no other Italian city has: the Arena di Verona and its opera season that transforms the hospitality of the entire city. When there is a performance at the Arena (June to September, 600,000 spectators per season), dinners are extended, restaurants stay open until midnight, and 15,000 people come out hungry at 11:00 PM looking for a place to dine. And most are foreigners: Germans (the most loyal audience of the Verona opera), Americans, French, British, and Austrians crossing the Brenner Pass. A German leaves Aida at 11:15 PM and needs to dine: your menu must be ready in his language to capture that table that is worth three times a normal dinner. An American enters your osteria in Piazza delle Erbe and asks for 'wine': he needs a menu that explains that Amarone della Valpolicella is one of the most complex wines in the world (grapes dried for 120 days) and that his risotto all'Amarone is the perfect pairing. A Frenchman does not know the bollito with pearà (boiled meat with breadcrumbs, broth, marrow, and pepper): a dish that seems simple but hides centuries of Veronese tradition. Verona receives 4 million tourists a year, and most come for Romeo and Juliet and the Arena, but they stay for the gastronomy when they discover it. The problem is that without a multilingual menu, they do not discover it: they order the most recognizable pasta and leave without trying the bollito, without understanding the risotto all'Amarone, and without knowing that your pandoro is the Veronese answer to Milanese panettone. The 12 Apostoli, the most famous restaurant in Verona (with Roman ruins in the basement), sets the standard. Your family trattoria competes for the same tourists. And a mistake with allergens when the opera ends and you have 50 people waiting for a table is not a luxury: it is a legal necessity according to Regulation EU 1169/2011.