What’s the ideal baking time for a Neapolitan pizza? You’d be surprised, but a perfectly charred, chewy pizza only takes about 60 seconds in a 500°C wood-fired oven. Delivering lessons in gastronomical elegance, Odori Vermuteria Di Atene is a loving tribute to the old-world Vermouth-Bars that once peppered Torino. The team behind this brand new hybrid pub certainly knows its way behind the bar, as its first venture, The Clumsies, is already a cocktail legend. Taking things up a notch, Odori is, quite literally “a garden in a bottle”, built around the intoxicating smells of botanicals. The concept carries throughout the entire establishment, from the verdant wallpaper all the way to the herbaceous downstairs kitchen. Wormwood, one of the base components of vermouth, cleverly finds its way into drinks where it wouldn’t normally belong, like the Old Fashioned and the Mojito, while the Negroni, a quintessentially Italian, vermouth-based cocktail first mixed by Count Camillo Negroni in 1919, has its day in the sun: you can choose between the bottled and the custom versions, where you basically mix your own drink, using a variety of extremely tempting artisanal liquors.
The kitchen, which can be glimpsed through a transparent glass wall, is triumphantly led by Alberto Similidis and Sunday brunch is a real battleground. Walk-ins have little chance of getting within smelling distance of his extravagant menu, so make sure you book ahead of time and ask the servers to help you make the most informed food and alcohols pairings. Breakfast gets the Italian treatment with smoked salmon on house-made focaccia, topped with poached eggs and a beetroot hollandaise and that’s probably as far as you’ll get before you lose all self-restraint and end up ordering every single thing on the menu. Buon appetito!
Photo © George Kroustallis.
Photo © Odori Vermuteria Di Atene.
