Bottura serves Italy in his dishes

Massimo Bottura’s day, from Sunday to Monday, in Istanbul for the preview of his Ristorante Italia was made of phone calls from Renzi and Carlin Petrini, text messages from Oscar Farinetti to around twenty opinion leaders, the call from the PD mayoral candidate in Modena, and the satisfaction of Vasco Errani, the rustproof president of Regione Emilia, Davide Groppi calling from Piacenza to check if all the lights are ok. And again a Thai businessman who wanted the chef from Modena to open a second Ristorante Italia in Bangkok plus the burglars who, in Modena, at night, broke into his house, in search for who knows what treasure.

In other words, there was no peace at all, while his wife Lara was on a mission in the huge metropolis, with the Bosporus dividing Europe from Asia, looking for the right flowers for what was going to be a nice and informal evening, on the chic terrace at Eataly Istanbul, with the 30-year-old brilliant owner of the building costing hundreds of millions of euros, named after her family, namely Zorlu.

And in a shopping centre (reductive definition) that has no match in terms of range of shops and richness of the products in display, moving around the guests there was Zulfikar Bekar, a Turkish entrepreneur who looks like the separated at birth twin brother of Umberto Bombana, tri-starred chef in Hong Kong. Oscar Farinetti at some point introduced him with a big laugh: “We’ve known each other for 20 years. In ’94 he called me asking

me to buy Turkish washing machines for Unieuro. I told him he was a little ambitious because Italians would never buy them. Nonetheless, he’s tenacious and was back when he learnt that I had sold everything to start with Eataly. He told me he wanted to open one in Istanbul. It was 2006 and I hadn’t opened the one in Torino yet”.

One could say, now that this dream has come true, that the right sign to place at the entrance is the same that Naples’s fanatics wrote on a huge banner on the Sunday of their first championship: “Sorry we’re late”.

Meanwhile, Bottura was walking around, extremely tense. His name is on this project he’s not the kind of person over-seller who would sign anything. He puts his soul into things. So here he was, endlessly recalling that “there’s only one Francescana. Here we open Ristorante Italia, the fruit of a work that has absorbed us for six months, the final result of a journey from Artusi to Francescana. There’s Italy and there’s what us Italians know how to do best as artisans”.

The eyes are set on the future: “Food, fashion, wine, design, leather, lighting… we’re the best at these things and this is what we need to do and to export in order to get back on track in terms of economy. We need to be totally Italian”.

Those who will come here, will find three guys in their twenties who grew up at Francescana: Bernardo Paladini, Michele Castelli and Virginia Montani. Daniele Montani will coordinate the dining room and Turkish Kemer Ibrahim will be in charge of the wine. The name, Ristorante Italia, wasn’t given by chance. For each recipe the Italian region to which it refers is indicated. Cod is presented according to the tradition of Basilicata, grilled octopus is inspired by Latium, fusilli are Ligurian because of pesto. Abruzzo appears thanks to the lamb chop (I ate three last night, just like the risotto with saffron and ossobuco). The same goes for the cheese selection: mature Bra and Castelmagno from Piedmont, 36-month matured Parmesan from Emilia. The balsamic vinegar is homemade by Bottura and I stress this because the menu states three words in English, at the very end: FEEL AT HOME. This is Italy’s great hospitality.