In France, Alain Passard converted the Arpège to the vegetable, three Michelin stars in Paris. You don’t need more meat and fish, not even eggs, cheeses and butter: it takes courage to make the butter disappear, the Oltralpe finds it everywhere. Honey is saved: the work of the bees does not suffer, for now, the guillotine of the great chef.
In Italy we are still far from recognizing a place of honor in catering to vegetarian and vegan cuisine, which is the most rigorous subset (no animal derivation products). But slowly, by tenacious cooks and patron, in the footsteps of guru such as Pietro Leemann and Niko Romito, the Plant Based premises (so it is said today) came out of the shade. No longer penitential places, admitted have ever been, from which to escape to slip into a generous restaurant of succulent meats, sizzling roasts, golden fish.
No, the Plant Baseds are gustatory paradises, with tempting dishes, even beautiful to look at. Herbs, plants, grains, flours, legumes, fruit, flowers, give stimuli on the palate, leave satisfied. Eating them is a party, to be celebrated in company, with excellent wines, cocktails, tea and soft drinks, according to your desire.
During the Canicola, challenging the copious summer thunderstorms, here’s what we discovered. We start from Isernia, in Molise, a city, it is out of the usual tourist tourist routes. In a corner, in the house that was the Maniscalco workshop when traveling on horseback and diligence, a jewel shines: Ausa.
Anisia Cafiero and Pasquale De Biase, both chefs, both trained at the school of Romito in the nearby Abruzzo, associates in the work and merged in perfect couple in life, With the help of her father (Enzo, an accountant who puts into practice the passion of a life between the tables) have bet on a class and totally vegetarian restaurant.
They had turned to a consultancy company, they would have given him crazy: A Plant Based, in Isernia, away from the rutilant metropolis neighborhoods. Instead Ausa, open just over a year ago, has carved out a space, gives gastronomic luster to Isernia (city to be discovered, with a very rich Paleolithic museum) and best represents the Italian new vegetable wave. Try the combination of tomatoes and strawberries, the carrot and sage fettuccine, the tortelli with the local summer black truffle, the corn pizza, the cheeses. Taste the oil of Molise, the butter flavored with the rhubarb.
Anisia and Pasquale do not fail to mention the master Niko Romito, while the ice cream for the fig and cherry leaves arrives. The Romito who together with his sister Cristiana transformed Castel di Sangro, into the Abruzzo woods, into a gastronomic and hospitality destination, with the Royal restaurant, three Michelin stars (and nine rooms obtained in the former monastery of the sixteenth century). It makes a kitchen voted to the vegetable, convinced that herbs and plants are the real treasure of the peninsula, not properly exploited by the chefs. In his laboratory he develops bread, leavened, biscuits. We have focused on the reality on aubergines and caramel of fishing, spaghetti and bieta, absolute of onions with Parmesan cheese and toasted saffron. And we entered Panica harmony with the woods and vineyards.
With the red star and Michelin green star, the chef Davide Guidara, who has drawn up the “Manifesto of the new vegetable cuisine”, reigns to I Tenerumi, a place inside the Therasia Resort, on the island of Vulcano. Menu with products of the garden one step away, enhanced by macerations and fermentations, served in small portions, to be enjoyed immersed in the blue of the Aeolian Islands. The name of the restaurant does not deceive: Tenerumi are the sprouts and young leaves of the Sicilian courgette (called “Cucuzza Longa”), used on outline, soups, omelettes; Epitome of plant versatility, of which Guidara is maximum interpreter.
Before exploring Rome and Milan, we stop from Federico Marino, in San Miniato (PI), in Tuscany. In the heart of the city where he taught Giosuè Carducci, Chef Marino sends the Magese, a vegetarian restaurant with passion. Which presents: “a kitchen not deprivation, rich in taste and ethical sense”.
Marino was in Milan Sous Chef by Pietro Leemann, historian guru (then we talk about it) of vegetarian cuisine, And he worked in Japan, a gastronomic reality whose influences feel, all right, in the dishes of the underworld. We appreciated the Italian Yakimono, roasted watermelon with Shiso, Shiitake and Kombu Dashi reinvented to Tuscany, and the delicious doblons of potatoes with mounted sauce of peppers and fresh head of the legs. So much creativity, a touch of genius: it is the figure of the new vegetable wave that runs through the peninsula.
And now Rome, at the Terrae Mater, organic, biodynamic, vegetarian and veg-gourmet restaurant. Inside in the Bio Hotel Raphael, where even breakfast has no animal proteins, it is a security, moreover with magnificent view of the eternal city. Michelin green star, is led by Sicilian chef Ettore Moliteo, advocate of “intelligent cuisine”: plant laws, therefore ethical and sustainable.
Milan, which we left last, was the cradle of vegetable cuisine, with the aforementioned Pietro Leemann, founder of the Joia, the first European vegetarian restaurant awarded by the stars. Leemann has left his right arms Sauro Ricci and Raffaele Minghini the burden and honor of carrying out a culinary philosophy with a mystical touch. After the farewell at the Joia restaurant in Milan, Pietro Leemann decided to gradually withdraw from the gastronomic scene to devote himself to a spiritual path in Switzerland. Leemann’s dream is to found (near Locarno) a community at 900 meters above sea level, where to live as a monk of the Indian tradition Krishnaita.
Also in Milan, two other students by Leemann, Sara Nicolosi and Cinzia de Lauri, are successful with Altatto, a lower case where the vegetarian commandments are religiously respected. For everyone, no pain, no blood on the plate. We were about to write no life to eat, but we remembered that the plants are alive, they have sensitivity, even intelligence, as indicated by Stefano Mancuso’s studies, and even earlier the reflections of Giacomo Leopardi or of a forgotten physical and German philosopher of the nineteenth century, Gustav Theodor Fechner. The latter supported, in the wise bed (it would be the goddess Viking of peace), published by Adelphi, that the plants have a soul. Remember it, while we eat a radish or a courgette: the universal mystery of life is hiding there too.
