The Compromise and other stories

And on Sunday, the Rome Food&Wine Festival played its aces. At lunchtime Massimo Bottura, for supper Niko Romito. With them, chefs that are all but supporting: at one, Lele Usai of Il Tino in Ostia, with a brand new Michelin star, and Enrico Panero, chef at restaurant Da Vinci at Eataly Firenze, a young man with a guaranteed future. In the evening, Agostino Iacobucci, Neapolitan working at I Portici in Bologna and his “fellow citizen” Massimiliano Mascia, the guy who is writing the future of the historic San Domenico in Imola.

In the morning, the proscenium is all for Bottura, on the third floor of Eataly Ostiense who dishes out his Historic Compromise, a pretext, as usual, to express some enlightening concepts: «First of all I thank my guys, who have prepared 30 kg of tortellini, impressive. The name of the dish derives from the fact that, if you speak about tortellini with cream in Emilia, they will crucify you immediately. But I like to go against the current, especially because I can use the fantastic surfacing cream that dairy farmers produce once or twice a year. Technology helped us make the purists of tortellini-in-stock and the talibans of tortellini agree, with a perfect balance between bitter, acid, sapid and sweet flavours. This is close to the perfect dish, the chimera to which the Japanese tend». In a sole, very effective sentence: «This dish demonstrates that tradition cannot be left to become mouldy in a shrine».

Usai also applied this principle and he was very talented in re-writing a fish soup with his Pliny soup (the Young, who thousands of years ago stayed on the coast around Ostia) and that is to say raw amberjack, red prawns, razor clams, mussels and clams falling in a battle with an aromatised oil with a cream of alpine pine and pine nuts. A walk full of aromas and iodine in the pine-forest that precedes the sea. Enrico Panero, the third ace at lunchtime, presented his Trenette with pesto and potatoes. But only with regards to their name: the fresh pasta was previously fried in seed oil and then immersed in a potato fondue with taggiasca olive oil, powdered pine nuts and a pesto of basil from Bra. Not a first course but a single course. Full of taste and skill.

Niko Romito plays at home since 9 days ago: 100 metres further, the doors lead to Spazio, opened little over one week ago and already much yearned for by Roman and non Roman clients. «It’s already fully booked», Marchi says. Beside the chef running at supersonic speed (the 3 stars have long been archived already), sit two future columns of this very agile “laboratory of ideas”: his sister Sabrina Romito and the very loyal Gaia Giordano. They will have the task to supervise on «the intrinsic quality of these contemporary dishes», the chef from Abruzzo explains. And that is to say dishes that have taste and a «gentle research», capable of rewriting the grammar of tradition, «without the heavy basics that appear in each recipe book but with procedures and techniques that aim at removing fats and making dishes lighter. Because health comes first». The Pickled rabbit in scapece at the Festival is an excellent example of this: vacuum cooked and aromatised with thyme and marjoram, it was incredibly successful in Rivisondoli, at «Spazio Zero». Last night, there was a very appreciated encore in the capital.

Massimiliano Mascia is instead the nephew of Valentino Marcattilii, a great protagonist in Italian cuisine. Despite being only 31, this chef has already travelled at length, in Italy and abroad, to learn, to understand. And to return to his “mother restaurant”, the historic San Domenico in Imola. Now he champs at re-actualising the history of this establishment but in the meantime he’s at work to reproduce the dish that has been the emblem of the restaurant (and of the Italian cuisine of the past 30 years), namely Egg in raviolo with mountain butter, Grana Padano Riserva and white truffle. A timeless gem.

The final curtain is all for pyrotechnic Agostino Iacobucci from Castellammare di Stabia, now also at work in Emilia, at I Portici in Bologna. He served his incredible Baba with triple leavening: «In the first step, we add flour, egg, sugar, mother yeast and a little brewer’s yeast to give it a push. Then we add more flour, sugar and put it back to leaven for one and a half hours. Finally we add non-whipped butter and we leaven it for 6 and a half more hours». The incredulous Ooohs multiply after the final statement: «In fact, babà have Polish origins».

See also
Roma Food and Wine Festival, day 1