High class cooking

Marchigiana fare tends to be pretty standard - you can count on great antipasti, especially the prosciutto, and normally a nice piece of meat thrown on the wood-burning fire for afterwards, with a mixed salad. A coffee, maybe a digestivo, and everyone is happy.
The food in Marche is generally excellent, even given its simplicity. This is still farming country, so the veggies were in the fields minutes before arriving on the plates, and the same, I suspect is true of the animals, although I would rather not think about that.
But basically it is not messed around with, very few herbs and spices, and seasoned mainly with lemon.
One exception to this simplicity of flavour is truffles. Marche is truffle country, and whilst in other places they cost the earth, here they are both reasonable and fresh. That is to say, they can be, but one of the reasons why truffles are so pricey I guess, is that they are famously fragile - i bought one in the winter and, despite following all instructions to the letter, it had no taste at all.
There are a lot of great pasta dishes with truffles in here, Ai Pini in Sarnano does the most lip-lickingly fabulous tortellini with cream and truffles - totally decadent, but worth the calories.
But Il Colle, a turn or two off the SS78 at Gabella Nuova, just out of Sarnano towards Macerata, is one of the few places I have seen around here that flavours meat with anything. The results last night when I went for dinner, were fantastic. We ordered fillet steak, cooked on the fire, and seasoned with a sauce flavoured with grated fresh black truffle, and fresh parmigiano cheese. The steak melted in the mouth, and the truffle sauce was so good we chased it around the plate with chips to try to mop up every last drop, washing it down with a Rosso Piceno Superiore called Notturno from the producers Cherri, from down at the coast near San Benedetto del Tronto. Highly recommended!