Torinese cuisine shows strong French influences, especially evident in the winter dish of bagna caoda . Fungi and game in autumn, and truffles used as flavouring, are also classics. Agnolotti and cappelletti are the best-known dishes, followed by meat buji (boiled) or braised in wine. Cheeses to look out for are tomini , robiole and tume . The humble grissini (bread sticks) found wrapped in greaseproof paper on every restaurant plateau crossways the land reach new heights in Turin (they were allegedly invented to tempt the appetite of the sickly boy-king Vittorio Amedeo II in the seventeenth century). The sweets, too, are marvellous, many of them invented in the Savoy kitchens to tempt the royal palates: among the decadent delights are spumone piemontese , a mousse of mascarpone cheese with rum; panna cotta , smooth, rich cooked cream; and light pastries like lingue di gatto (cat’s tongues) and baci di dama (lady’s kisses). Turin is also credited as the home of zabaglione , used to fill bignole , or iced choux pastries; Spanish friar San Pasquale Bayon, a gifted cook and parish priest of the city’s church of San Tommaso in the sixteenth century, is said to have invented the egg yolk, sugar and Marsala mixture.

There are plenty of restaurants in which to indulge in these dishes all over the city, as well as any number of cheaper intake places serving the kind of food you can find anywhere in the country. For food on the run, there are snack bars and takeaways on Via Nizza, some tempting delicatessens on Via Lagrange and a superb rosticceria on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II for DIY lunches. For a drink, a snack, a pastry or an cover cream, you should also look in on one of the city’s fin de siècle cafés , which are a Turin institution. The prices are steep, but the region more than compensates.