If you could wake up one day and live your wildest dream, what would it be and where would it take you? In the case of Ashley Bartner, owner, founder and innkeeper of award winning cooking school La Tavola Marche, Le Marche’s most established and successful guesthouse and cooking school in Pesaro and Urbino province, her wildest dream came true following a glass of wine, some excellent planning and a healthy dose of daredevilry. Combining determination, elbow grease and talent, since 2007, La Tavola Marche – the product of her wild dreaming – has welcomed guests from all over the world, curious and hungry to experience an authentic taste of rural Italy.
Ashley where did the idea come from to start up your cooking school, why Italy?
Well, it’s a ridiculously romantic story. We came to Italy on our honeymoon (we were living in Brooklyn at the time), our wedding was small as we wanted to spend all of our money on our honeymoon and take a long trip. We stayed in Italy for about a month and towards the end of the trip, I said to Jason [husband Jason Bartner, co-founder of La Tavola Marche], oh we could live here. Jason obviously looked at me like I was crazy, with my glass of wine in hand, thinking that I was drunk dreaming. But not long after we got home, I randomly thought, well why not? So I started to look into it.
That’s amazing and such a bold move
Oprah [Winfrey] says “live your wildest dreams!” and so I thought, hell yes – let’s do this! I looked up the property prices in Italy, it was 2006 and at the time we were planning to move back to the west coast of California, but looking at the difference in prices and what we could get for the money we were renting our flat in Brooklyn, suddenly our thought processes shifted and it became an actual option. Honestly, it was a crazy change in thought! So yeah, then we just thought, let’s do it, let’s not half ass it, let’s turn off the TV, write a business plan and see how this could work. Jason was an executive chef in New York at the time and I had always worked in hospitality, so we knew that it would be a good fit.
How did you come up with the concept behind La Tavola Marche?
We thought that maybe if we picked an unknown region we could become the key to unlocking that region to foreigners. To show them a glimpse of a life that you would need to know someone to experience it. I mean, for me [being in Italy] was about walking around small villages, where from the streets you could hear pans clattering and the smell of lunch being made but you couldn’t figure out where the local restaurant was or where the smells and noises were coming from. I used to wish I had a key to open these doors, if I did, these experiences would be so much more profound…then I thought, maybe we could hold that key and connect people to the area through the food. That’s really how the idea came around.
Do you work on other projects?
Yes. We also do a lot of consulting work and for the past few years we have been assisting others who are thinking of doing something similar to what we did.
What do you say to those thinking of moving to Italy?
Do it! Move here! Do it!
[Laughs]. But no, seriously, we often start by telling people our story because it’s like, I’m not going to make fun of you, we came to Italy once on our honeymoon and then we moved here a year and a half later. I get it. We don’t have Italian blood. A lot of people say, they feel a connection with this place and I say, I totally get it! Why Italy? We have said this since day one and still say it: it’s the quality of life, and that hasn’t changed for us. That’s why we came here and are still in Italy. As an executive chef, Jason was working in Midtown Manhattan and would work insane hours, but his heart wasn’t in it. Here he works twice as hard and it’s all on the line as this our own place and business, but it is all so much more satisfying at the end of the day.
How honest are you with your clients about the difficulties of moving to Italy. Has anyone ever been put off?
We say that everyone’s journey to move to Italy is on an Italian road. There are many deviations and road blocks, road closures, and sometimes the road doesn’t even lead to Italy. Sometimes people think that they want to start a business here but after doing our workshop they realise that they want to keep Italy as a place to enjoy, and find a holiday home instead. To me that is a success as well.
Where do your guests come from?
We have clients and guests from all over the world. At the farmhouse we often have Italian guests, Americans…lots of Italians from Milan and Rome. At the moment we have Dutch clients looking to set up a business so we are helping them with that. It’s interesting to not only hear these peoples’ stories and journeys, but also help them build on their ideas, using our on the ground knowledge of living here for so many years.
What about the language, did you speak any Italian before you moved to Italy?
We learned the language pian piano [slowly]. As soon as we decided to move, we turned off our television and started to learn Italian. That was a year and a half beforehand and we still had normal jobs and a normal life at the time so we arrived only really knowing a couple of phrases, essentially a basic knowledge, but Jason was pretty great with Spanish at the time which helped. This was all before online translators and IPhones! It was 2007 in the foothills of the Apennines with no help! But, thankfully the local people helped us muster through it.
We started taking lessons as soon as we moved here, in the local town. At the beginning there were so many moments when our basic Italian wasn’t quite there, you know, moments like when you have to call the plumber and you look up the words in the dictionary and write them out. Write down his response and reply ‘Si, si’ and then a second later you have to call back and say ‘NO, NO!’ It was a long process!
And what about the Italian bureaucracy, how did you deal with that?
The bureaucratic waters were a lot smoother because we found early on during one of our recon trips a phenomenal commericialista [accountant] – a shark to help us navigate these waters. He was young, interested in our story and keen to help us out. At first I was really weary, I didn’t trust him. I thought why does he want to help us? I thought, I’ve read too many books, and we were going to be involved in some deal, and he was going to make some dodgy commission off of us! But in a business meeting he proved himself to be incredibly trustworthy. At the time we were proceeding with another property, but he called for a coffee break and told us to walk away, and it turned out to be the best advice we were ever given. Thankfully not only did he have the wherewithal and Italian business couth to know when to take a pausa caffè, he had the honesty to tell us to walk away. So yeah, thankfully we had him on our side. He is still our commercialista to this day, we went to his wedding and we swore that if we were ever to have kids, we would call one of them Fabio, Fabietta, or Fabia after him [laughs].
In technical terms, how long exactly did it take you to move to Le Marche from the US?
It took us a year and a half from our honeymoon to live in the farmhouse where we still live to this day. You can just do it! I don’t mean that flippantly, we didn’t come from money, we had to start from very little. We scrimped and saved and had to figure everything out from scratch but you can make it work if you are hungry enough or if you have enough money of course! We also didn’t have anything tying us down, we didn’t have children or a mortgage so we were kind of at a perfect age to do it [our mid-twenties] we just figured that if it fails, it fails but what’s the worst that can happen? We lived in Italy!
In total we came out four times over the course of that year and a half to do research on the area, to understand exactly what we were getting ourselves into – as much as we could! We came in the winter when things weren’t as beautiful, and we looked at different areas throughout Le Marche. We settled on the northern region and then we just kind of hoped for good luck.
How quickly were you able to invite guests to stay at your farmhouse?
Our first guests came within three months. We needed to make Euros. We had spent them all coming here. It wasn’t a luxury lifestyle choice, it was a new business and venture and we had three months to get the house in order. Luckily there was nothing structural that needed doing, just elbow grease and paint. By year three things were starting to rock and roll. Over the years we have updated the kitchen, added the patio. Structurally. the house had been restored in 1997 so we didn’t need to do too much.
Can you share with us some of your top tips on where to visit in your area?
Of course!
Urbino: UNESCO world heritage site, home of Raffaele and the Duca Federico da Montefeltro.
Fano: We LOVE Fano. Fantastic fishing village and seaside town, perfect for a bike ride by the sea, with an old-school fisherman feel.
Furlo Gorge (Gola del Furlo): Stunning for a scenic drive or gorgeous hike
Frasassi Caves (Grotte di Frasassi): An absolute wonder, for any ages. It is totally awesome!
A place that I would also love to recommend is Mondavio. It’s between here and the coast and it’s a beautiful town with gorgeous views.
I could go on forever with recommendations..!
Tell us something special about your area?
Well I was going to say the people. We love the Marchigiani. We have been so welcomed by our neighbours locally and those in the surrounding villages. We live in the heart of the truffle valley, which is incredibly special. On a kitsch note, our sweet local town Piobbico is the home to The Ugly Club [Club dei Brutti]. Judgement takes place annually at the Polenta festival. This is an International festival – people come from all over to attend. Even the BBC did a story on it! They contacted us a couple of years ago as we were the only people talking about the area in English and they wanted to hear what we had to say.
Hang on, wait, there is an international association for ugly people in Le Marche?! Who decides on the winner?
The head of the ugly club holds court. It’s pretty serious! When we first moved here some of the organisers even showed up on our doorstep to inaugurate us into the club. They were so excited about Americans being part of The Ugly Club. Anyway, I got insufficient and Jason got extraordinary! The whole premise behind the club is that there is beauty in the ugly.
It has been said many times that Le Marche is one of Italy’s most sociable regions, do you agree?
Well, going by the Club, not only sociable but also with a sense of humour!
But yes, absolutely. I didn’t realise we would be part of a community so soon [when we moved here]. The real heart of our business is being together, it’s about conviviality, so we fitted in almost straight away.
You were 25 when you moved to Italy. It must have seemed daunting to be so far away from your family.
Yes, and the local people kept asking us where our mothers were! Neighbours would deliver us Easter bread. We met someone in town and then later he came by with some Easter bread that his mother had made. She made it because we were without our families. We were kind of adopted by the local people.
So you were immediately welcomed as part of the community?
We were. I guess we were lucky and there at the right time because a lot of the local young people had moved to the bigger towns and cities so the older generation really wanted to teach us and proudly pass on their traditions. In that sense we were incredibly lucky and they were very curious to know what we were doing here. I don’t think anyone thought we’d be successful, they maybe thought we were crazy. We didn’t have any history, it was all brand new so it was refreshing for them. What you hear over and over is that Italians go to America, not Americans to Italy!
Can you tell us what your favourite traditional Marche dish is?
Oh there are so many…but I would say pork….just anything with pork!
The Marchigiani are excellent pig breeders, farmers and butchers so for me it can be anything pork related. Of course, this is also home to brodetto, fish stew and vinisgrassi, the fantastic and delicate multi-layered lasagne-style pasta, then there’s the polenta from Piobbico and the truffles from all the truffle festivals…I could go on forever. But on a day to day basis it’s all about the pig, the pig reigns supreme here. The sausages, the charcuterie, it’s a traditional and important animal.
What’s on your bucket list of places to go in the region?
The south! We have never been to the lentil fields of Castelluccio.
When is your favourite time of year?
Truly it’s fall. That is my personal opinion. You learn to really live with the seasons out here and you just appreciate spring so much. There is something about the spring…the rebirth of everything, the flowers, and the vegetables coming back to life again, there is something cheesy and incredible about that. But in my heart of hearts, my season is autumn. I love seeing the wood starting to get piled up on the side of the road, the smell of the fire places. I love going to Umbria to go Cashmere shopping. I also love that it’s the season closure, from an innkeeper’s point of view, because normally we have a really busy August and September…the harvest festivals… I love the autumn. It represents the change of season for me.
Are there things that you wished you’d known before embarking on your move to Le Marche?
Obviously we just wished we’d known more Italian. We learnt so much from our neighbours when we moved here. I think we were also at the right age, we were like sponges. We were kind of open to accepting it all.
Over the years you’ve done a lot to promote the region – back in 2018 Regione Marche awarded you and Jason for your services to tourism. Is there a tiny part of you that wishes that you’d kept it all a secret?!
It’s a hard balance to keep…I love promoting the region but you want to kind of keep it secret at the same time!
Your nearest local town is a few kilometres away. Do you know of many other expats in the area?
No, there aren’t many expats. We know of some Dutch families but aside from them, we are the only ones!
Any regrets?
No! Never! Absolutely none!
To find out more about La Tavola Marche
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