Italy, Chow for Now
Wary of imported culinary movements and sweeping statements, a young cadre of Italian chefs is tempering the bravado of the Spanish avant-garde with one foot forward and one foot back.
Alan Tardi reports.
"A new Italian cuisine is born!" That's quite a bold declaration, especially when it refers to an entrenched and beloved culinary tradition with roots in ancient Rome. What's bolder still, it was made not by an Italian but by a Spaniard, Ferran Adrià.
A world-famous chef of humble Catalan origins, Adrià and his high-tech, transformative cooking vaulted post-Franco Spanish cuisine into the haut monde and promulgated the avant-garde as a national culinary ethos. What does this have to do with Italian cuisine? There's no simple answer, but one thing is clear: a creative impulse is afoot along the length of the peninsula, a palpable surge of energy generated by a growing corps of plugged-in young chefs breaking out of (or at least stretching) the molds of traditional regional cooking.
Many of the fast-forward chefs are associated with an organization called Identità Golose, which has been shaping the direction of this culinary tack since it was formed in 2005. (Adrià made his proclamation earlier this year at the group's second conference.) "In Italy, we had a lot of great young cooks who were eager to express themselves but had no forum to do so," says Paolo Marchi, a Milan-based journalist and a founder of the organization. "If they wanted to see new things or exchange new ideas, they had to go abroad. Identità Golose was formed to give these chefs a forum to share and develop their craft, as well as a sounding board to the public."
In the past, "new" in Italy has usually indicated a personal interpretation of classical regional dishes or an isolated rebellion against them. The current trend, however, is something different.
"In fashion and design," Marchi says, "we Italians have always excelled, always been on the cutting edge, and always gotten recognition for it, feeding further growth. But when it comes to food, it's every man for himself—by himself. That's beginning to change now because these cooks realize that in order to get anywhere they need to band together."
Indeed, there appears to be a sense of team spirit where previously there has often been competitiveness, secrecy, and isolation. These chefs share a goal; they talk with one another, exchange ideas, and eat in one another's restaurants. At the same time, however, they retain their individual identities and culinary visions. That is critical.
"The Spaniards are all the same," one veteran food writer said recently on condition of anonymity. "Adrià waves the culinary banner, and everyone lines up behind him like sheep. They're all doing exactly the same thing, and only a few of them do it nearly as well as Ferran."
While Adrià has unquestionably had an influence on what's taking place in Italy—virtually every chef I spoke with was familiar with his work, many have made the pilgrimage to El Bulli, in Roses on the Costa Brava, and some have worked in his kitchen—most resist the temptation to copy his style. This last, in and of itself, is new. When nouvelle cuisine arrived in Italy from France in the 1980s, it was openly imitated with mostly disastrous results. Few here, as elsewhere, managed to pull it off with anywhere near the grace and self-confidence of Michel Guérard or Paul Bocuse. It remained little more than an unconvincing knockoff of something foreign and eventually fizzled out.
Now, though, many Italian chefs look upon Adrià's work as an example of what can be done, without actually trying to replicate his weird science. The Spanish model may have given many ambitious Italian chefs a culinary "driver's license," but the type of vehicle they drive and where they want to go in it is different.
"It makes sense that Spain would spawn a cuisine based on the transformation of ingredients: they have nothing there!" says Faith Willinger, an ex-pat American maven of Italian food, cookbook author, and consultant who lives in Florence. "Spain has only a handful of superior ingredients and a very limited repertoire. Here in Italy we have everything—rich, longstanding culinary traditions and the best ingredients in the world. When you've got the best, why turn it into something else?"
Why, indeed? Often, participants in a new movement feel the need to make a clean break with the old in order to distinguish themselves and get their point across. In Italy, that doesn't appear to be what's happening. There seems to be a genuine dialogue between the old and the new, and sometimes just one person is doing the talking.
At Combal.zero, for example, located in Rivoli just outside Torino, the centerpiece of its Menu Creativa is called piolakit. (A piola is a type of very casual restaurant, actually more like a social club that serves food; they used to be common throughout Piedmonte but are now nearly extinct.) The piolakit consists of a cardboard box holding six tiny glass jars, each containing a typical dish, such as cotechino with mashed potatoes, tortellini in brodo, and bollito misto. Also in the box are a flask of Barbera d'Asti (a tumbler is presented to drink it from) and a tiny deck of cards. "Do you know what the most important ingredient of the piolakit is?" asks Barbara Scabin, sister of the chef, Davide, as well as kitchen manager and practical anchor for her brother's rampant creativity. "The cards," she says, answering her own question. "The piola was a place not just to eat and drink but also to have fun and socialize. It's precisely this sense of human interaction, symbolized by the cards, that is missing from so much of life today, including eating out."
The piolakit, offered as a tribute to a vanishing local tradition, is made even more poignant by its placement on the same menu with such other dishes as "cyber eggs" (egg yolk, scallions, and caviar tightly constrained by plastic wrap, enveloped again in a larger bubble of wrap, and served with an X-Acto knife, which the diner uses to puncture the plastic to be able to suck out the contents) and "virtual oyster" (watermelon topped with slivered toasted almonds and bottarga). But it wouldn't make nearly so effective a statement if each of the components were not so faithfully conceived and well executed. This dish, like many others at Combal.zero, is about flavor, not just cute presentation. Any old-timer who happened to wander into the sleek, elegantly spare room would be more than satisfied with these miniature renditions of regional classics, though he might want a bit more to eat. The fidelity to tradition is no accident. Combal started out more than 10 years ago as a typical trattoria in the hills nearby; the creative stuff began to evolve "in the dead moments of a slow evening," but the owners haven't forgotten where they came from or where they are (geographically speaking). In addition to the Menu Creativa are a Menu del Territorio and a Menu Classica; and the three—classic, regional, and creative—all seem to inform one another, providing a regional and historical context for the creative dishes and a novel twist on the traditional.
Creative Juices In a list by no means exhaustive, here are 10 chefs seeing Italian food in a different light: Massimiliano Alajmo, Ristorante Le Calandre, 1 Via Liguria, Sarmeola di Rubano, Padova; (011) 39.049.63.03.03; www.calandre.com Massimo Bottura, Osteria Francescana, 22 Via Stella, Modena; (011) 39.059.21.01.18 Moreno Cedroni, Madonnina del Pescatore, 11 Lungomare Italia, Marzocca di Senigallia, Ancona; (011) 39.071.69.82.67; www.madonninadelpescatore.it Carlo Cracco, Cracco-Peck, 4 Via Victor Hugo, Milan; (011) 39.02.87.67.74 Enrico Crippa, Ristorante Piazza Duomo, 4 Piazza Risorgimento, Alba; (011) 39.0173.28.25.82 Gennaro Espositio, Torre del Saracino, 9 Via Torretta, Località Marina d'Equa, Vico Equense, Naples; (011) 39.081.80.28.555; www.torredelsaracino.com Paolo Lopriore, Ristorante Il Canto, Hotel Certosa di Maggiano, 82 Strada di Certosa, Siena; (011) 39.0577.28.81.80; www.certosadimaggiano.it Davide Scabon, Combal.zero, Piazza Mafalda di Savoia, Rivoli, Torino; (011) 39.011.95.65.225; www.combal.org Ciccio Sultano, Ristorante Duomo, 31 Via Capitano Bocchieri, Località Ragusa Ibla, Ragusa; (011) 39.0932.65.12.65; www.ristoranteduomo.it Mauro Uliassi, Ristorante Uliassi, 6 Banchina di Levante, Senigallia, Ancona; (011) 39.071.65.463; www.uliassi.it |
Another anchor on the new impulse that helps to keep it distinctly Italian is the ingredients themselves. Sicilian capers, Parma ham, Ligurian olive oil, rice from the Pó Valley—Italy has a nearly endless number of marvelous products closely linked to their place of origin. Many are protected by such regulatory structures as the D.O.P. (Denominazione d'Origine Protetta, or Protected Name of Origin) and the Slow Food Presidi. Because new-wave Italian chefs (like chefs everywhere) look for the best ingredients they can find, and because in Italy they often find them right in their own backyards, their cooking is naturally tied to regional traditions and their creativity becomes, to some extent, a matter of devising ways of using familiar products.
In that vein, at the tiny, formal yet intimate Osteria Francescana in Modena, near Parma, Massimo Bottura (who, in addition to stints in the United States and France, spent a summer in the kitchen of El Bulli and is married to an American) offers such takes on Emilia-Romagnan ingredients as five stages of Parmigiano-Reggiano in diverse consistencies and temperatures and hake with smashed potatoes, crumbled mortadella, and prosciutto di Parma broth. Naturally, aged balsamic vinegar turns up on a number of the plates. The restaurant, which opened 10 years ago on the site of an ancient osteria near a Franciscan monastery (hence the name), has preserved the original antique wood ceiling and used spare modern furnishings. Bottura visits each table to explain the menu and custom-design a meal for his guests. "This personal interaction is essential, I believe, and I can do it only because I have a great staff in the kitchen, many of whom have been with me for years," he says. "It wasn't easy at first. People thought I was crazy, and we nearly closed on a number of occasions. But things are different now. Our customers are much more receptive and open to trying new things. And it's great to be part of a community of other chefs."
Bottura is conceptually driven. As is true of anything new and different, here as elsewhere, some of the dishes work and some don't. Even Marchi admits that "creativity is not always right or good, but if you don't at least try something new, cuisine can never grow or develop."
Marchi's "something new" has even penetrated the walls of the grande luxe Relais & Châteaux Hotel Certosa di Maggiano, situated in a restored 14th century Carthusian monastery just outside the gates of Siena. There, in its Ristorante Il Canto, chef de cuisine Paolo Lopriore reconfigures the classic Caprese salad as an amuse-bouche: a parfait glass of liquid mozzarella topped with a pool of extra-virgin olive oil to be sipped through a "bendy" straw, a skewer of tomato sorbet garnished with basil chiffonade balanced across the top of the glass. Again, tradition meets the year 2006. Lopriore's take on vitello tonnato: three steamed veal medallions crowned with flakes of Japanese bonito (most often used for making dashi broth in its native land). A licorice theme for dessert: a predessert of lemon parfait with salt and licorice, a closer of smoked sugar parfait with fennel and licorice. "I'm not thinking of Spain but of what is better to do today and what is much more satisfying to cook," says Lopriore.
Will these new trends have a lasting impact on Italian cuisine? That's what I asked the father of modern Italian cooking, Gualtiero Marchesi, who in the 1980s was the first Italian chef to receive three Michelin stars, taking Italian cuisine to a new level of international prominence. "Well, that remains to be seen," he replied. "Decades ago I predicted that one day the laboratory would replace the kitchen and cooks would become chemists. It seems I was right.
"But then," he continues, "chefs have always been chemists of a sort. Cooking is by definition a transformation; the important thing is how you do it. The chef must exalt the materia prima—understand it, listen to it, enhance it, without ruining it. Technique is necessary, certainly, but it must not become a trap. It's easy to invent something new, much more difficult to actually improve on what's already there."
So, what does he make of this "new cuisine"? "Oh, I enjoy it; I like to keep track of what's going on. I'm open to everything. Who knows? Italy has always borrowed from outside influences and, over time, incorporated some of them into its cuisine. Perhaps one day some of these new dishes will become the classics of tomorrow."
The untethered, adventurous chefs have traveled, literally as well as figuratively, outside the previously delineated boundaries of Italian cuisine and are experimenting, exploring, maybe even charting new territory. It is not always easy. "In some ways," says Marchi, "it's like walking a tightrope without a safety net." But that's also part of what makes it exciting.
As Identità Golose and its group of culinary tightrope walkers are busily planning their third annual conference, scheduled for January 28 to 31, 2007, a name for the fledgling movement has not yet been chosen. "Nuova Cucina" is already old, "Cucina Creativa" is cliché, and "Cucina d'Autore" is a bit egotistical. "We need to have a name that expresses something that all these different chefs have in common and distinguishes them from everyone else," says Marchi. Perhaps he has already said it: cucina senza rete, "cooking without a safety net."
