Meeting with Ugo Alciati

 

Ugo Alciati, starred chef at Fontanafredda’s Guido ristorante in Serralunga d’Alba (and Ambassador Expo 2015), will be the protagonist this week within the “Italian & International Best Chefs” format at Identità Expo, as well as in the conference open to the public, at 4 pm on Wednesday 6th of May, also inside Identità Expo.

 

Alciati, born in 1967, is a very important figure in the gastronomic world. His surname recalls the history itself of Italian cuisine. In 1960 his parents, Guido Alciati and Lidia Vanzino, created the famous Guido ristorante in Costigliole: it was the most innovative restaurant in that period, capable of enhancing traditions and, at the same time, proposing a “market cuisine”, connected with seasonality. Ugo, nicknamed “the Alciati in the middle”, because he has both a younger and an older brother, started to learn to cook in the restaurant, with pastry making (“I made my first meringue at 9”, he says) and then working on savory dishes, following his parents’ teaching but also developing his own style, according to his shy but determined personality.

After Castigliole, since 2003, Ugo has always worked in his own restaurant in Pollenzo, even though in 2013 the restaurant moved to Villa Reale, in the middle of Fontanafredda’s organic reserve in Serralunga d’Alba. Here Ugo Alciati keeps combining tradition and seasonality, continuing the family tradition – his mother was considered the “Queen of agnolotti del plin” – but always surprising his guests. And during the “Italian & International Best Chefs”’s first week he will surely be able to confirm the same to all of you.