Identità Naturali - Pietro Leemann

For years now, Identità Naturali has been the space dedicated by Identità Golose to so-called natural cuisine: vegetarian, vegan, raw diet. That is to say to the trends that are changing our way of eating, both for health and ethical reasons, inducing us to make more aware and sustainable choices. 

Until a few years ago – and today too, in the eyes of many, though they are completely wrong – these themes were inevitably matched with a slightly penitential diet, rich in benefits yet poor in taste. In other words, they recalled diets and sacrifices, instead of light delicacies and digestible pleasures.

Pietro Leemann was the first to demonstrate that this argument is wrong. He was born in Switzerland in 1961 and deeply loved nature since he was a child. Later, when he gratuated from catering school, he had to match his love for nature with his approach to cooking; he learnt the basics in some of the best Italian and French schools - Angelo Conti Rossini, Gualtiero Marchesi, Fredy Girardet, but it was at Joia in Milan that he defined and reached his goal: “natural fine dining ”, as he called it from the start.

Joia, opened by Leemann in 1989, after his previous experience in China and Japan (in Osaka he was a teacher at the prestigious Tsuiji Culinary Institute), is the first restaurant of the kind to receive one Michelin star, in 1996.