22-11-2014
Nicola Dinato is the patron-chef at Feva, in Castelfranco Veneto. He travelled for six years working in the most important European kitchens
“The quality of the cooking he had experimented made him proud to be a chef. He wanted to stand out from workmen by the stoves, he wanted to become an artisan and an artist in the kitchen. For mere mortals, this made no difference, but to him it mattered. He had fought to reach that standard”. This is the intention with which chef Paolo starts his “marvellous six year long journey”, a journey of training and education that led him to open his own restaurant in Vita da cuoco (Editoriale programma, 12 euros), the strongly autobiographical short novel in which Nicola Dinato tells his story and that of the world in which he, the son of a railway worker and a homeworker, wanted to enter at all costs. A world of which, however, he does not want to hide the limits, faults, and even pathologies: “In fine dining, the favourite sport is eliminating the enemy, by using lots of psychological terrorism”.
It is easy to find in Paolo’s story the faithful representation of the experience of the then 33-year-old Nicola. It is obvious for one to find in the restaurants, in the chefs crossing the life of the former, the same figures that were sometimes just mere stops in his training journey, sometimes real masters for Dinato who, as of almost three years ago, is the patron-chef of restaurant Feva in Castelfranco Veneto – on which some deserved rewards are starting to shine – after lots of experience in Italy and abroad, with great haute cuisine chefs, from Michel Roux jr in London to Alain Ducasse in Monte Carlo, from Ferran Adrià to Roses, until his most recent internship at Grant Achatz in Chicago.
Dinato wrote an autobiographical novel, Vita da cuoco
We thus reach Dinato when he returns to Veneto. In the book, Paolo is called a «Venetian mule», and on the telephone Nicola betrays his origins. Behind his accent, however, clear ideas and a non-common determination are concealed: «Our duty is first of all to give value to our territory, in fact, to our thousand micro-territories. I think highly of Heston Blumenthal, of the philosophy behind his Dinner and his re-discovery of ancient typical recipes he would then re-present, updated». He does the same: the menu at Feva is full of local delicacies that are then matched with the classic French technique (which he learnt in London), a Mediterranean touch (Monte Carlo) and admirable technical skills (Roses), plus oriental influences.
Nicola Dinato with Elodie Dubuisson, Sophie in the book, whom he met in London, when at Le Gavroche: she’s her partner in life and in business
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journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief
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