This could be the sum of my first impressions of the cuisine of “Cassinetta”: the projection of a really vanguard idea, based on the concreteness of offering the tastes of time, filled with culture and wisdom, with notes and shades of rare elegance. But they are also my definite impressions, the ones I got after going back, a few months ago, because perhaps all this has always existed in my nature, maybe even when I entered the kitchen of the Antica Osteria del Ponte for the first time in 1994, at the age of 20.
"Cassinetta" as it appears today (picture by Maurizio Brera)
I then understood that the act of cooking could change, it could express itself in infinite ways. The art of
Ezio Santin, his every expression, passed through a precise gestural art and a generosity in narrating food and cuisine that could not leave you indifferent. He stood out thanks to a great nobleness which, I believe, every careful chef could capture and notice. As in my case, I think that many have later tried to translate and reach the intensity that
Santin expressed.
I’ve returned to this kitchen with the feeling of someone who’s going back home. And this, maybe, was the case because starting from here and after completing a series of personal experiences [the journey of
Fabio Barbaglini is summarised here] perhaps the time had come to go back and elaborate a more thorough thought, start a new beginning, try to narrate food in the exact same way as the chef once did.
In my new “cassinettian” journey, I make an effort to restart from the origins but in a contemporary way, I try to look inside of me in the vanguard, not so much from a technical point of view, but trying to use food to speak to the world, to manipulate flavours to tell the story of a place, to direct aromas in portraying a journey.
Barbaglini as a chef in the time he was chef at Caffè Groppi in Trecate (Novara)
In this can be summarised my thought: my instinct, my mistakes, my experiences as a young man and the first steps at
Caffè Groppi [the restaurant opened in Trecate, Novara, from 1999 to 2007, 1 Michelin star in 2004] where I learnt to trace a personal line that has conducted me here, once again, at the crossing of roads that come from afar and are projected into the future.
The intensity of a service, the ideas that need to find space in the continuous change, the study of other gastronomic projects: I now feel all these things are stuck to my skin. And perhaps the fault lies in all that I have learnt while being here, next to
Santin.
I really hope to be able to tell about this in the future, perhaps in a few words, just as I had been told a few years ago.
