Ducasse loves Italy more than many Italians

Rendezvous in Rome in less than five months. On the second weekend of October, on the 7th and 8th, Alfredo Romeo will open the second gem of his 5-star luxury jewellery collection, after Naples. And he will not stop until he has dropped a poker by the end of 2025. After Naples and Rome, there will be Massa Lubrense, then apparently Capri, then a question mark. For sure, however, both in Via di Ripetta, near Piazza del Popolo, and just beyond Sorrento, the restaurant will be run by Alain Ducasse who, by signing the Ristorante Alain Ducasse, returns to the country he loves, if not more, at least as much as France: Italy.

In this sense, it was a pleasure to attend the Roman preview in mid-May in Naples because, in the city of the Colosseum, work is still in progress. The pleasure was double because, after so many words, came real morsels, a tasting menu conceived and created by the host executive chef, Salvatore Bianco, and the pupil that Ducasse chose for Rome, Stéphane Petit, a thirty-year-old from Lyon who has been preparing for his new job for three months and will continue to do so until early autumn because the hope is to open on the weekend of 7/8 October.

Rendezvous near Piazza del Popolo, in Palazzo Capponi, redesigned by the Zaha Hadid studio in the sign of beauty, elegance, history and art, a thread that unites all the past, present and future establishments of Alfredo Romeo. Note to self: Romeo Napoli came out of the pencil of Kenzo Tange and Massa Lubrense will come out of that of Kengo Kuma. They also hold unique pieces of modern and contemporary art. And the patron of this super-luxury hotel that winks at the world of the super-rich, could not fail to turn to a restaurant brand that is full of French grandeur and more than twenty stars, such as Monsieur Ducasse. People this rich don’t like wasting time, they want everything and at once, whims included. Ducasse! And you know who and what you are referring to.

So much for those who thought the relationship between Italy and the Frenchman had ended when he left the Moretti family's Andana in Castiglione della Pescaia (Grosseto) in 2016. He had run Trattoria Toscana, his vision of an osteria in Maremma, one star yes but certainly not a luxurious restaurant. Not that he wasn't interested, but why immerse himself in a hostile country that loves and hates French cuisine in equal measure?

"I'm not going to open a gourmet restaurant in Italy because you still can't agree among yourselves on the cooking times for pasta, so who knows what you would say about mine”.

The infamous al dente that the world struggles to understand. And now? “Now never say never”. Here he is again, and with a firm intention to measure himself against the universe of dry pasta, as Romeo anticipates, reading a passage from Una vita di giusto e di passioni (A Life of Fair and Passion), by Ducasse for Solferino Libri: “Two years ago, in Corleone, I found a very old pasta-making machine. No one thought it would ever work again. Thanks to the goldsmiths who disassembled and reassembled it with great patience, today it works. With this machine I would like to create a unique pasta: it is a promise, a dream for tomorrow, an Italian dream'. Made by a Frenchman.

Ducasse, however, is an anomalous cousin of ours. Like several of his compatriots, he loves us but he shows it, he does not keep it to himself so much that in terms of cuisine and product at the Naples meeting he showed that he values our heritage more than many Italian chefs.

And from October at Romeo in the capital he will offer a menu with a transalpine structure, but with Italian ingredients.

An important detail: after some twenty years in Monte Mario, between La Pergola and the Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria, Umberto Giraudo will take the reins of Romeo Roma in the sign of the Frenchman. Their paths will cross again. For the Italian, a return to the past but at a higher professional level. In fact, he had already worked for Ducasse in the 1990s for eight years. As those directly involved said: the best plus the best makes the best.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso