The menu at Trattoria Bel Mi’ Colle reads a bit like a lyrical shopping list, each dish sprawling across multiple lines, offering ingredient combinations sometimes curious, but always alluring.

Il Tortino di Pecorino a Latte Crudo Saba Formaggi dal Cuore Cremoso con la Pera al Vin Santo, for example. A creamy pecorino cheese pie with pears cooked in vin santo. Or Gli Gnocchi di Patata con lo Zafferano in Pistilli dell’Orto, Mandorle e Cipolla di Certaldo Caramallata. Gnocchi with saffron from the garden, almonds and onions.

Even the restaurant’s name leans poetic, roughly translating as My Beautiful Hill Restaurant. It fits. Chef/owner Gabriele Borgianni’s restaurant is nestled in the cozy valley below Colle di Val d’Elsa, a Tuscan town perched cinematically atop a hill reachable only by narrow winding roads designed for carts, not cars.

In fact, from the start these sorts of romantic nods were baked into Trattoria Bel Mi’ Colle, which occupies a building that dates to the 9th century and is home to the city’s first commercial oven from the same period.

“My family was peasant. We had good, genuine, proper food on the table when I was growing up,” said Borgianni, who opened the restaurant in 2012 largely as a way to spend more time with his work and life partner; she handles the dining room while he manages the kitchen. “I’ve tried to stay true to that in my cooking, respecting the ingredients.”

Hence, the menu. If the business is a testament to his love for his girlfriend, the menu itself is to the bursting fresh ingredients he sources from nearby farms. And easily the best dish he made was la striscia coi ceci, a humble chickpea and pasta soup. It’s a classic, but he elevated it.

Garlic, rosemary, pancetta and onion, all pureed, then added to chickpeas and tomatoes. When the beans are tender, most cooks would add pasta and call it good. Borgianni instead pureed again, creating a rich liquid jammed with herbal-meaty flavor. Only then is the pasta added.

The magic, though, is in something most of us would throw away. Sure, we all know to keep some of the pasta cooking water; its starches help add body to dishes like this. But Borgianni also used some of the chickpea cooking water, another source of starches that add creaminess to the finished dish. It sounds heavy, but the flavors were light and rich.

A dish truly worth climbing up and down any beautiful hill for.

J.M. Hirsch

J.M. Hirsch is a James Beard Award-winning food and travel writer and editorial director of Christopher Kimball's Milk Street. He is the former national food editor for The Associated Press and has written six books, including “Freezer Door Cocktails: 75 Cocktails That Are Ready When You Are.”