Flemish dynamite

Third day at Identità Milano, with Flanders as the guest of honour in the Auditorium. “I hope Wallonia will understand – says Paolo Marchi introducing the day – but the Flemish part of Belgium is the most interesting one, from a culinary point of view: it doesn’t retrace France at all costs, it has a personality and roots of its own”. Giovanna Sainaghi, director of the Ufficio Turismo Fiandre, the Flemish Tourism Office, explains why: “In our region there is a lot of beauty but more than on destinations, we focus on the people. Bruges is the most renowned one, but every city, from Antwerp to Gent, is capable of showing a different facet of Flanders”.

The first Flemish talent to get on the stage is Pieter Lonneville of Tête Pressée, the “pressed head”. This is a programmatic name and the emblem of the philosophy of an open kitchen and open table restaurant full of craftsmanship, authentic flavours, pride for one’s work, respect for the environment and localism. This is a venture within range of Flanders, where distances are reduced and it is easy to develop trusted relations with small local producers. What is respect to Lonneville? It is most of all respect for the animal: nothing is thrown away, not only of the pig, as the saying goes here in Italy, but also of the beef: everything is kept and cooked separately and then ends up in the dish.

The second step in this journey around Flanders is with Kobe Desramaults. In de Wulf used to be a simple family establishments but today it is one of the trendiest restaurants in the country, despite being located in a small village. Bread and butter are always homemade, great manual skills are used and ancient gestures that bring simplicity and authentic flavours on the table. On the stage of IG, Kobe focuses on two ingredients, namely celeriac and winter leeks, with which he uses different cooking techniques resulting in various textures, to express all the potentialities of each product. Apparently at ease in a room with vegetal, though intense, nuances, the head of a boar enters the stage, literally broken and sawn “live”, and then used as a serving plate for a dish of brain seared in butter. Not suitable for those who have a weak stomach.

Gert De Mangeleer, third Flemish chef, has had a withering career: his restaurant, the Hertog Jan, obtained three Michelin stars within seven years. In 2014 a farm will become the new headquarters of the chef, as today 96% of the ingredients he uses are already from his own production. Simplicity is the leitmotiv of his kitchen, but with care: simplicity is never simple, after all. He hides wisdom and craftsmanship. The result is a salad that is never the same, from one day to another, but is the daily result of his morning walk in the vegetable garden.

When the stage is sufficiently warm, here comes the Flemish band’s front man, the punk rocker man of chocolate, the one who has spread the virus of creativity in Bruges’ chocolate world. With hemp oil, hallucinating mushrooms and a caramel of local shrimps (caught following tradition, that is to say on horseback), here’s how Dominque Persoone revolutionizes pralines’ shape and content. He does so, without losing sight of the theme - respect. First of all, the respect is for his team - “it’s the first lesson I learnt from the big chefs where I have worked, from Adrià to Blumenthal” – and then for the cocoa plant which makes an incredible effort to present us with a precious raw material: only 700 grams are obtained from 700 cocoa beans. More research, however, is necessary: this is why Dominque has bought a small plantation in Yucatan where he cultivates and defends the cocoa varieties he unearths in his incursions around the world.