Scabin: «I prefer freedom»

«Let’s put it this way: I’m the only fifty-year old the Michelin Guide awarded with a star. And so tonight I’ll make a toast with champagne». When we called him on the phone, Davide Scabin, chef from restaurant Combal.zero in Rivoli (Torino), downgraded yesterday by the Red Guide from two to one star, opted for sarcasm. Yet there’s disappointment behind this: «I really can’t understand what may have happened: the restaurant has never worked as well as recently. Besides, we’ve always been fully booked. So much so I would have imagined a move upwards, if any, not downwards».

Michelin’s editor in chief Sergio Lovrinovich yesterday explained to us it’s ‘only’ a question of cooking.
How can we have suddenly become mediocre in terms of cooking? L’Espresso gave us 19/20, Marco Bolasco, even your guide, used enthusiastic words for our recent work, no guest I’ve had has made any negative comment. I really cannot understand. Even the guys in my team cannot come to terms with this.

How did they react?
Dreadfully, of course, because they didn’t expect it.

Lovrinovich says he’s available for explanations.
All right, but even if he were to tell me that the dishes were not good on one or more occasions, how could I reply? It’s all so accidental I wouldn’t know what to say.

It couldn’t even be a case of excessive experimentation as your cooking is today perhaps more reassuring than it once was.
So perhaps they’d like me to keep on going at full speed all the time? To create a cyberegg every time I change menu? I really don’t know, I don’t know what to say. Besides, I’ve never had any direct contact with this people.

There’s a gourmet uprising taking place on social media.
Indeed, and this makes me very happy: many people are updating their profile picture on Facebook with the cyberegg. Bob Noto created the “Je Suis Scabin” motto, which was shared and retweeted thousands of times. I don’t want to associate my situation with events that are much more tragic, but this is very close to terrorism: they shoot you in the legs and won’t tell you why. The messages I received are of comfort.

Are they many?
Hundreds, so much so I cannot take off my fingers from my mobile phone. There’s nothing more touching. I didn’t know people loved me so much. I can’t find the words to thank you all. I’m really smitten. These commendations are the fuel that will push me to cook as free as ever from now on. The “strength of freedom”, the theme of the next Identità Golose congress comes at the right time. It’s about time that as chefs we emancipate from an incomprehensible old logic. Freedom is better.

See also
Exclusive interview with Lovrinovich, the Michelin Guide’s editor in chief (in Italian)
Michelin 2016 awards a dead man