In level restaurants, the gastronomic “found” to amaze the customers no longer works. The chefs win which around excellence increase a company capable of incurring high management costs. In parallel, the trattorias are successful. But of quality …
“On devient cuisinier, corn on naît rôtisseur”. This maximum of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin should be sculpted on each restaurant (you become a chefs, but you are born Rosticcieri) which is a sort of summary of an anthropological work such as that of Claude Lévi-Strauss, which in her essay the raw and the terracotta he explained a lot of what they ignore chefs (never understand why not calling them chefs) and gastronomic critics. You can start from an assumption: there is no need to cook to feed. The food multinationals that push on the pre-packaged foods, ultra-processed products in the laboratory, know this very well. It is the dream of the pill that nourishes, eliminates the annoyance of having to share a part (unfortunately more and more small) of the colossal earnings that are made to feed the world with those who sweat the earth. The game the so -called “artifice chefs”, those who make a show more than cooking, have not understood it. But the numbers are there to bother them. 18 “starred” restaurants closed in one year and there are those like Felix Lo Basso – they left Milan, banging away the sign of the cry of “Don’t understand me” – reproaches customers.
Reverse route that of the three boys from Lucca Benedetto Rullo, Lorenzo Stefanini, Stefano Terigi, who said “no thanks” to the star because their lily was becoming difficult for customers. As usual in Italy, instead of understanding, we have been divided into factions: the defenders of appearance and supporters of the substance. Knowing well that the appearance carries behind the marketing (and the “brands” of many alleged food influencers and self -styled gastronomic critics) and an infinite series of tinsels that have nothing to do with the quality of the food. To interpret this part is the revived Ferran Adrià. His Elbulli who, in Roses in Catalonia, had become the Mecca of incomprehensible cuisine, has closed for years and he did not miss it.
Adrià has returned to Milan to enrich our chefs saying: you are made to amaze, the restaurant is a stage to make an experience live to those who enter. Safe? The data of the Italian Federation of Public Exercises – for the truth a little dated – say that two years ago in Italy if on the one hand the “Fuoricasa” has invoiced 89.6 billion euros on the other have closed over 28 thousand tables. The rich business model premiums e cotillon It doesn’t work anymore. The signs with the stench under the nose are just 0.2 percent of the total, but on accounts of 400 starred can be on the market of excellence no more than 10 percent, there is a place for another hundred in the medium-high range; Then you have to look at the trattorias. Of the two: either the starry restaurant feeds a real company that becomes a chain, brand and keeps together events, catering, products, or with a few covers too personal, hyperbolic accounts are died. And you want to remove the tablecloths to save on the laundry and imitate the bistrot, the customer obeys today more than ever to the quality-price equation, satisfaction-bisogno and the spectacles of Ferran Adrià does not know what to do.
However, it is true that you can make very high catering with good profits. This was testified by the Cerea brothers in Brusaporto, Bergamo. Three Michelin stars for a lifetimevery solid cuisine that combines elegance and tradition and a group where the whole family is committed to invoice 103 million euros. The third generation has entered – Beatrice, Maria Vittoria and Vittorio – Chicco Cerea insists in high catering as attention to people’s needs. The perspective is to find strong financial partners to expand abroad. A road that took the Alajmo family, which is that of Antonino Cannavacciuolo (but forced to close his bistrot). It is the cook who becomes an entrepreneur like Moreno Cedroni who, having Mariella organs at his side (his wife the best maître d’Italia) from the Madonnina of the fisherman of Senigallia-two stars-declined Aniko the Fish-Bar, the enchanting clandestine in Portonovo, on the Conero, and the tunnel factory of preserves of fished by the world record.
But without catering, with the splashes beat in events (more and more rare, moreover) with rigid menus and conviviality reduced to zero because the chef’s personality must dominatecharacteristics of the starred starreds, a little way is made. With the exception of those who like Massimo Bottura are now a world star with his Osteria Franciscana di Modena. There are places that act as a bridge between the very high cuisine, the elegance and the attachment to tradition. The maximum is from the fisherman, in Canneto sull’Oglio, Mantua, where Antonio and Nadia Santini with their children make the good and welcome “life experience”. The rest is the crisis of the so -called “fine dining”. In reality it is the refusal that the customer manifests for those who only propose form without substance. Which instead is in the trattorias. It is no coincidence that Coldiretti through a collaboration activated by Dominga Cotarella President of Terranostra sends the country chefs to technique lesson. It is no coincidence that the confartigianato is thinking of the “art-chef” that is, of those bakers, butchers, producers of fresh pasta, to those houses that can become protagonists of the authentic table. They go to the great experiences like that of Luca Gambacorta a little butcher, a little Ortolano, manager of a single place: Villa VAT where the Clitunno in the sixteenth century was a driving force for an ancient mill. Between Trevi and Foligno, his hearth always turned on, he chores steaks, cut, sausages, the selection of hams is enchanting, the focaccia on exclusive ash. Wine paper reduced to the bone (excellent Sagrantini di Caprai and Trabalza) some oils such as that of the House Gola to enhance “Umbrimento”.
The same figure as the brothers Cristina and Mauro Rastelli, That on the sum of Spoleto’s s sum they offer strangozzi, truffles, large mushrooms. It is to return to being “Rotisseur” the spirit that animates to Panzano, in Chianti, Dario Cecchini the most celebrated Beccaio (or butcher); It is the ancient soul of an excellent hospitality that of the Gori brothers (perhaps the best wine list in Italy) from Burde in Florence where the joy and the glories of the real trattoria are experienced; As well as with the Tinari family in Chieti, or to the ancient tavern of Mirasole in San Giovanni in Persiceto, Bologna. The new street of the high catering then becomes that of the Osteria del Viandante, in Rubiera, Reggio Emilia. Jacopo Malpeli makes excellent local cuisine with local and high quality ingredients; The dishes are ancient Ginori shower, the fantastic wines, the show is only the menu. n © reserved reproduction
