Scabin's return to creative heights

Something many have been asking themselves, not only in Turin and the surrounding area in Piedmont: where has Davide Scabin gone? Not that we didn't know, after the closure of Combal.zero next to Castello di Rivoli and, after that, last September, of QB, alias Quanto Basta, a unit of measurement that the chef detests for its vagueness, at Mercato Centrale in Porta Palazzo. Except he was wasted there.

The chef, born in 1965, reminds one of Emilio Salgari. Just as the writer recounted the adventures of Sandokan in Malaysia and the corsairs of the West Indies without ever leaving Verona and Turin, Davide has always unleashed creativity in practice as a self-taught chef, on a par with a Ferran Adrià to be precise, in places not far from Turin. A couple of months ago, with the first service on the evening of the 15th November, Scabin took up residence at the Grand Hotel Sitea, in Via Carlo Alberto 35, telephone +39.011.5170171, where they have never abdicated from fine dining, having received a star with Fabrizio Tesse – since October at Pista on the rooftop of the Lingotto.

With Carignano only open in the evening, for some time there will be only a tasting menu with thirteen moments, following the same up & down movement introduced by Davide when he was still at Combal.zero. Basically, you start at full throttle, when the taste buds are fresh and the desire for an important experience intact, and then decelerate only to speed up in the finale. ‘If I were to put the Tongue braised in Barolo and mashed potatoes after the first course and the fish, would everyone eat it, or would some tell me they are already full?". A legitimate doubt and a foregone conclusion: some would have given up and the restaurant has just five tables and about twenty seats. As grandmothers used to say: if you don't eat everything, you don't get up from the table.

At Sitea, on the other hand, you have to eat everything, but you also have to move around because first you are seated at the bar for an aperitif, then at the table, then on the sofas at the entrance for petit fours, coffee, a possible meditation, amari and other alcoholic delights. All for 220 euros. This is because the first to realise that a single tasting menu may appear limiting are the owners and the chef themselves. But they’re asking for time because you cannot improvise and besides they know well that the concept of luxury as a synonym of exclusivity is now in crisis. And so here they reward conviviality.

Let’s be patient. In the meantime, let's delight ourselves with the aforementioned tongue; the pigeon served raw and lukewarm, glazed and stewed; a superb venison plin in cuttlefish consommé aka Un Piemontese a Tokyo; Risotto with cucumber, oyster and Guinness ristretto, exemplary and repelling only in its name; violet cauliflower and anchovy sauce called Un catanese in Piemonte and Beetroot, buttermilk and lemon balm soufflé and other delicacies.

The Turinese chef opened his first restaurant, Combal, in 1994 in the hills of Almese. I dined there for the very first time invited by the brilliant Bob Noto, a figure I miss and miss terribly because he was all-round irreverent, not like those who only reserve irony and criticism for those who think differently. The article I dedicated to him, in Il Giornale, in the Cibi Divini column, began like this: 'First, Davide Scabin is a genius. Everything else comes second'. Twenty-eight years later, the surprise effect is inevitably missing, but among the many who are now interested in cooking and catering, many were born in the 1990s and certainly never met the first Scabin. Good for them and good for the person concerned who has a golden opportunity to fly high again.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso