Tag: Michelin

Marco Sacco, how to become a two Michelin star again (thanks to the lockdown) – Italian Cuisine

A bistro where weddings were held, a boat for picnics, a different menu for gourmet. The Piccolo Lago in Mergozzo is a good example of how good chefs and patrons are reacting to post-Covid-19 problems

The Little Lake of Mergozzo (VB) is not the only (bi) starred restaurant that presented itself at the reopening in a different guise. From the Alps to Sicily, it is a flourishing of temporary for the summer or of places where the people have moved city cooks. However, the transformation of Marco Sacco's restaurant impressed us particularly, starting from the history of the chef-patron, who grew up between the family restaurant and the important experiences in France. Great traveler (and excellent windsurfer in his youth), but fiercely attached to his territory, and perhaps for this reason underestimated by critics. The paradox wants that the moment Sacco started to go out home – with the management of Floor 35 in the Intesa Sanpaolo skyscraper in Turin and the opening of Castellana Restaurant in Hong Kong – the hit of Covid-19 has arrived. That applies to all his colleagues, but in a culinary frontier post such as Mergozzo (closer to Switzerland than to Milan or Turin) the recovery is more difficult. It takes passion, courage and the desire to reinvent yourself. Going back to the ancient, to see the future.

A small beach on the lake

«Without rhetoric, rest led me to think that this splendid work must always be done and in any case knowing how to have fun, through a tranquility in taking on the commitments and efforts of daily work, says Sacco. And here is the transformation of the garden below the suspended structure of the steak: practically a small beach, open from 10 in the morning where you can relax in the garden, have lunch in the middle of nature, sunbathe, enjoy a gourmet snack and a very fresh ice cream or choose the moment of the aperitif or an after-dinner, since – except on Sundays – it is also open a lounge bar from 19.30 to 22.00. All in front of the waters of the cleanest pre-Alpine lake in Europe, where you can sail only by sailing, paddling or using an electric propulsion hull. Speaking of the lake, an original boat picnic was also created, which allows you to explore Marco Sacco's water and kitchen in three hours. Because together with a box with everything you need for lunch or dinner (including water and wine), there is a map of the lake with the itinerary to follow and what to eat, step by step. More distancing than that!

Five boxes in the bistro

And then there is the kitchen. Il Piccolo Lago gourmet is alive (and fight with us), but only for dinner, from Wednesday to Sunday: two tasting, innovative and historic, at 150 euro plus a 70 euro pairing. A security between present and past, where technology is at the service of the raw material that is often sought directly by the chef. The bistro has fun. "We in the kitchen first: the boys realized it when I forbade the vacuum and the surrounding area for the menu," says the chef. "I focused on Italian spirit and simplicity, thinking about the environment and what customers can look for in such a space, especially at the weekend." Attention to the concept of simplicity: it is apparent precisely because the but no it is of an expert cook, steak, open-minded. This is how dishes like the Caprese, lo Spaghettone with tomato, Vitello tonnato, the Mixed fried lake, the Grissinopoli (a cutlet breaded in breadsticks) are enjoyed. You can choose from five boxes where the individual courses cost 6, 10, 14, 22 and 26 euros. «The watchword is not to upset, deny, rethink your own idea of cooking and your own style, but to open up to new customers or offer other faithful ones other moments to sit at the table: this is the time to do it, with passion and seriousness says Sacco.

The flask shop has become 2 Michelin stars. Where fried food is a must – Italian Cuisine

Antica Osteria da Cera in Campagna Lupia serves only fish. For more than 50 years. A legendary mixed fried that has never left the menu. Since when for the workers of Mestre and Marghera …

Silence. You need the silence of the Venetian countryside to listen to the dishes of Lionello Cera, two Michelin stars in Campagna Lupia, on the Romea state road, the one that leads from Venice to Chioggia. "Simplicity is the most difficult concept to interpret," says a phrase at the opening of the menu, the only one for a two-Michelin-star restaurant across Europe to provide only fish. Meat does not enter, there is a vegetarian path, but here the philosophy "from bones to pulp" applies, which sounds a bit like the concept of nose-to-tail that has radically changed the way we eat and cook. Nothing is thrown away and not only of the pig, but without unnecessary complications. Raw or just seared fish. Cold, warm and hot fish. Fish enhanced by extractions, juices, sauces, comics and fish soups. Fish on fish, investigating the deepest soul of the lagoon catch.

From the flask to the stars

The history of Antica Osteria da Cera begins in 1966 when the Cera family opens a flask shop in the old grandparents' house. "Seasonal, with a demijohn at the center of the table and a few snacks for lunch and a little frying in the afternoon. The first years by renewing the license for three months in three months … we are now 53 years old , laughs Lionello. «My mother Silvana cooked, then ten years later we made the first room that only opened on Sunday evening: tablecloths and paper napkins and 350 people who took turns to eat the fry. There was only that, then over the years we have put the mussels, then the boiled shrimp. After 2 years of hotel accommodation, I retired and I came to help too, as my brothers did. " Together they transformed this place from a tavern into a gourmet restaurant, where however time has kept going back to its origins. "I am the son of fishermen, I don't do the kitchen of exasperation, I do dishes and techniques that I know. They are a restaurant more in matter than in technique . Work on bones? «A statement. If I cook fish with fishbone I have a taste, if I remove the fishbone I have another one, but in the fish restaurant it must be served barbed. Then working on broths and concentrations obtained from bones, we return the original, amplified taste . In the menu you can read preparations such as turbot milk or iodized water, or a comic book made of water and marinated clams passed in ice to obtain a water that smells like sea to be used as a base for various dishes.

The lagoon menu

The lagoon has a unique flavor, neither of sea nor of land, an ecosystem that was very rich 30 years ago. «By now, little or no fish are caught, just small bream, red mullet, scorpion fish, go, shrimp, shrimp, shrimp. It was the time when the mists cut them with a knife; today there are only mists, by comparison. The climate is changing and in ten years everything will change ". In honor of its lagoon and gods and fish from the Upper Adriatic, a 12-course tasting menu was born that changes in every season and that fishes in the sea of memory, returning them to the present. In spring Subioti appear with mackerel and zottoi juice in tecia, a type of handmade pasta prepared in Venetian palaces, the mullet-based Scarpetta with their thorns, left to marinate in seawater for 24 hours. It is played with Tramezzino with anchovies or grilled sardines. More classic are the Bigoi coe sardee, the Broetto of cod and puína and the inevitable fried, which has never left the menu. Crunchy, perfect, tasty, pure and light; ordered by all loyal customers in the area in memory of times gone by.

The new bistro, like a country bar

It is also for them that the Cera have opened a new bistro a few kilometers away. «A bar with local cuisine, open from breakfast to evening. Let's go back to what we were 50 years ago: a country bar. For lunch we offer a vegetable buffet and a small espresso card, easy things. And in the evening the aperitif, starting at 4pm. As my mom did who prepared it for the workers of Mestre and Marghera. All with a modern cut, but without missing Sardinian saor, creamed cod, black cuttlefish, Venetian liver .

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Three Italian Michelin Stars: those who open, those who wait – Italian Cuisine

The Cerea have just reopened Da Vittorio. Many will begin services in June. Someone is waiting for July. Here is the complete picture of the best restaurants on the peninsula, ready to resume their role as ambassadors of our haute cuisine.

Nobody ignores that eleven Michelin stars are a drop in the universe of Italian catering, which counts (counted, we fear) on over 30 thousand places in each category. And that put together, at full occupation, they gather little more than 400 seats per service: by the way, now, two thirds will be fine. But they are fundamental, the spearhead of a constant growth of the 'movement': ten years ago there were only six. As he always says Alain Ducasse: "Without haute cuisine there would be no kitchen for everyone, exactly as it happens in fashion." And in fact, we must not forget that our first line covers the world, helps the best supply chain of producers (of food and wine) and allows young talents to learn and continue on their way later. Without forgetting that they are a popular destination for rich foreign tourism, probably absent in the coming months. But he will return as soon as possible, we are sure.

The route of quality

For this reason, we decided to X-ray the situation of their openings after the first week in which the heart of Italy's food began to beat again, amid a thousand problems. Beyond that each patron has (rightly) made his own choices, we like to emphasize the security that the author's cuisine – the one to which customers have become accustomed – is not questioned. Explain Enrico Bartolini: «We have made such an effort to raise the level of our kitchen that we have to pick it up quickly. Italy is the country of small excellences, nobody in this world beats us. Woe to distort the concept . The most recent of the three-starred with his club at Mudec in Milan says it and with different words he reaffirms it Antonio Santini, patron of the oldest of the group, namely Dal Pescatore in Canneto sull'Oglio. «In recent months I have read several times that someone is planning a definitive return to traditional, simple cuisine. I do not exclude it, but I go further: I think that the great chefs, in any place they work, will always manage to excite us, the donkeys to shit. " Here it is.