A light pointed on Abruzzo

“His words are measured; he lingers a little on the extraordinary journey he has taken; his favourite time is the future. (…) Casadonna is not only a workshop and an atelier for cuisine, but also a prototype and a hotbed for Abruzzo”. This is what Luciano Bertello, president of the Enoteca Regionale del Roero, its lucid and logic mind and tireless organisational arm («We don’t even have someone like him, here in the Langhe!»,Angelo Gaja) writes in “Roero: orti e frutteti. Un paesaggio di casa”. That is to say the award, now in its eighth edition, crowning chefs capable of valorising their territory and which this year took the road to Castel di Sangro, celebrating Niko Romito. He succeeds to a so-called René Redzepi.

In Canale, the headquarters of the Enoteca, many people paid tribute to the chef: on the stage there were the chef himself, Bertello, Enzo Vizzari and literary critic Giovanni Tesio, the author, together with the president of the Enoteca of the content of a booklet – photos are by Bruno Murialdo – which this year celebrates this fascinating graduate in Economy who then converted to the kitchen. Someone who, when he and his sisters Cristaina (his alter ego in the kitchen: «While I’m around receiving awards, she’s over there at work»), Sabrina e Debora inherited the family restaurant after their father’s premature death, returned to Rivisondoli convinced he’d sell everything…

This is only one of the anecdotes that Niko enjoys to tell. Like the time when he went to work in Montemerano, at Valeria Piccini’s Da Caino and upon returning, he changed the looks of the restaurant, losing clients («They would order chargrilled lamb. We no longer prepared it. My first tasting menu is from 2005: 35 euros and nobody wanted it»). There are some difficulties («I had to ask my mother for the money to pay suppliers») but also tenaciousness («I was committed and enthusiastic»). The first successes and temptations arrived («They asked me to direct the kitchen of the Bulgari in Tokyo, with a team and an astronomical salary. I declined. They thought I was mad». At the Bulgari they found a good alternative, as we told here). There’s the moving from Rivisondoli to Castel di Sangro, for an ambitious, visionary project, considered even presumptuous. But he was right.

Vizzari says that Niko «has never served on the table a postcard-like cuisine from Abruzzo». He confirms: «I do not serve regional cuisine but contemporary Italian cuisine, from the point of view of my territory, my culture, my products». That is to say artichokes, onions, tongue, just to mention some of his now classic fetishes that he exalts with a personal style «working on two fronts: those who have little experience, recognise the primordial flavour, those who have experience, can notice the technique» which is profound yet easy to replicate: «A dish of mine requires months of study but then has a simple grammar».

Tesio defines Romito as «a “local emigrant”: he remains in his territory but at the apex of a journey that allows him to go beyond». And lists “Niko’s words”: lightness, essentiality, simplicity, transparency, originality. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Massimo Dellaferrera, Massimo Corso, Ugo Alciati, Maurilio Garola and host Palluda prepare a dish in his honour: five chefs, as many as the starred chefs in Abruzzo in 2015; when Romito received his first star, in 2007, he was the only one, Alessandra Meldolesi wittily noted, when she wrote about the recent Meet in Cucina. «Do you feel a bit of a father, for this movement? A point of reference?», we ask. He shies away: «No, all these establishments existed before me… Let’s say I turned on the light: critics started to visit me in Abruzzo and then noticed the other excellences as well». A sort of electroNIKO spotlight.