Marco Reitano
Dumplings with squill-fishes, artichokes and sweet potatoby Moreno Cedroni
Dall'Italia Vito Mollica: «Non mi interessa solo il piatto, ma come la ristorazione può cambiare una città»
Simone Caporale, one of the most established and talented bartenders in the world, debuts as contributor to our website. For four times in a row, together with Alex Kratena, he conquered the first place in the World's 50 Best Bar Awards with the Artesian Bar inside the Langham Hotel in London. And it’s only one of the many prizes they have received. This even though only a few months ago, in November 2015, they announced they wanted to leave the Artesian, taking on new challenges and accomplishing new projects
In this first piece on Identità Golose I’d like to analyse the changing process I applied not only to our bar, but also to ourselves, that is to say to our team. How and what we changed in ourselves, in the structure of our team, until we reached the final conclusion that made us establish new rules, which also apply to Alex Kratena and I because as a team, we’re on the same level of our colleagues. The Artesian Bar was born 8 years ago as the bar of a 5-star hole: it was developed thanks to a external consultancy that designed a menu with 110 drinks and a list of spirits focused on rum. It wasn’t common for a hotel of that kind to have a bar serving precious rums, quite the contrary: usually, hotel bars in London are still focused on malt whiskey, cognac and champagne. In this case, they gave a rather “funky” stamp, very distant from the classic style. Hence came the idea of doing something different. In 2009 Alex started experimenting on an inverted method to dilute and cool a Dry Martini with cold sources other than the ice, through the flat surface of the Anti-Griddle. The later conclusion was to design a Martini goblet that would preserve a temperature between -4 and -10°C for a longer time.
Simone Caporale, right, and Alex Kratena
Simone Caporale and Alex Kratena crowned in 2015 for the fourth time in a row by World's 50 Best Bar Awards
An italian bartender who conquered London. Three-time winner of the World's Best International Cocktail in The Tales of the Cocktail, four years in a row - with Alex Kratena - at the top of the World's 50 Best Bar Awards, with the Artesian Bar at Langham Hotel
The world of cocktails and bartenders as told by Identità Golose.