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Foreign Grocery Friday: The Sweet Treat of 'Polenta e Osei' in Bergamo, Italy

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're trying out this new feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? Let us know!

When you're traveling through Italy it can quickly appear as though each city, each little town has its own specialty pasta, or pastry, or both. Well they really do, and in Bergamo--a medieval town about an hour's train ride northeast from Milan--the dish is a sweet trick played by making cake take the appearance of polenta. It's called "Polenta e Osei," which translates to polenta and birds, specifically little ones like uccellini, or swallows. The dish can be prepared as actual polenta with actual birds, but for the sweet Bergamasco version, it's only yellow cake with a chocolate bird.

The Taste:
To make the "polenta" appear to have the correct texture, the cake (topped with yellow fondant) is rolled in sugar crystals. These form the first impression upon biting in: "wow, this is pretty crunchy!" Alas, once beyond the sugar, you hit the plain yellow cake and the real money--the sweet, whipped hazelnut cream heart. We were tempted just to scoop this out and devour it without the dry cake around. On top of the whole thing is a dollop of apricot marmalade and, naturally, a perched chocolate swallow to complete the "Osei" requirement.

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Wish You Were Here: The Città Alta of Bergamo, Italy

When you see a round-trip, all-taxes-and-fees-included airfare direct to Milan for $250, you take it. And since we're no hypocrites, take it is exactly what we did. We first told you about the deal a month ago, and now here we are, sitting pretty in northern Italy.

Instead of spending all of our time in Milan, which does have all the charm of less industrialized cities like Florence or Rome, we paid 3.60 Euro for a train ticket an hour away to the town of Bergamo, a medieval city at the base of the Alps, which boasts a modern Città Bassa (low city) and the old and cobblestoney Città Alta (high city). A 1.10 Euro funicular railway ride later, and we were in the midst of the città alta.

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