Arriving in a new city on a Sunday evening after a day of travelling and only snacking along the way, it can be difficult finding a restaurant open for a good meal for dinner. In mega organisation mode, I anticipated this in advance and emailed the B&B where I’m staying to ask them to recommend somewhere to eat. They were really helpful and gave me a couple of recommendations and I chose one just a hundred metres or so down the same road – Trattoria La Tellina.

It’s a very simple, traditional place inside. It was also empty when I arrived but before too long it filled up and there was a nice lively, but not too noisy, ambience.

There were a number of appealing Tuscan dishes on the menu so my only difficulty in choosing was which would I like best!

I ordered a ¼ carafe of red wine – a local Sangiovese, of course, as I’m in Chianti country. For my starter I chose Tuscan prosciutto with Siena cheese. I saw the prosciutto being cut by the waitress straight on to my plate.

The waitress told me that Tuscan prosciutto is a bit saltier than the sweet kind from the Parma region, which I knew, but we had a good conversation about it (in my best Italian!) and I also confirmed that the cheese was Pecorino. It was all delicious and a great start to my meal.

I like meat but don’t like to eat too much in one go and so I decided to have a non-meat main. Ilaria at the B&B had told me how wonderful their risotto cooked in Chianti with Pecorino cheese was, so I decided to go with that.

It wasn’t at all what I expected: a risotto on a bed of melted cheese. But it was wonderful; amazing. Despite being cooked in red wine the risotto had a creaminess to the texture and was delicious and a spoonful with the melted cheese was heavenly.

I chose Tiramisu for dessert and it was an excellent one.

I finished with an espresso. My total bill for food and drink – including a small bottle of water – was (€29).

It was a perfect meal to start my stay in Siena: typical local dishes, all simply but well prepared and totally delicious to eat. The service had been really friendly and so it was a nice relaxed place to enjoy my meal.