It was far enough from Geneva to feel like a journey into another country and another climate, but close enough to make for a long lunch, an afternoon of shopping or an early dinner.
There was one restaurant that I still remember, Osteria da Nando. It stood on pedestrian Via Sant’Anselmo in Aosta’s historic center, not far from the Roman gateway at the eastern end of the old city.
Da Nando had opened in 1957 and was run by the Scarpa family. By the time we began eating there, it was already an established Aosta institution: a small, intimate family restaurant serving the rich Alpine cooking of the Valle d’Aosta, influenced by both Italy and neighboring France.
The chicken with whisky and cream was not a traditional Aosta dish. It was a specialty of the family: thin chicken cutlets cooked with whisky and cream, served with buttered potatoes and a baked tomato.
My wife asked whether she could have pasta instead of the potatoes that it was traditionally served with.
The chef refused.
Not reluctantly. Not apologetically. The chicken came with potatoes because that was how the dish was meant to be served.
Fifty years later, that refusal remains one of the clearest details I remember.
The potatoes absorbed the whisky cream sauce without turning the plate into a pasta course. Their browned edges complemented the chicken. The roasted tomato added sweetness and acidity. The dish was a composition, not a collection of interchangeable parts.
That insistence now seems less like stubbornness than discipline. The chef knew how the plate was supposed to work, and he wasn’t interested in compromising it.
I’ve reconstructed the dish as closely as memory allows: two small chicken cutlets, pounded thin, lightly browned and served over a restrained whisky cream sauce, with buttered parsley potatoes, roasted tomato halves and a thin slice of orange.
It is not a claim of perfect historical accuracy. Fifty years is a long time, and memory has a way of polishing some details while losing others. But the basic combination remains vivid: chicken, whisky, cream, potatoes and tomato.
And no pasta.