From London to Gardone: Camanini’s new menu, having just conquered the 8th place in the 50Best

According to the dictionary “synthesis” is any form of understanding in which, starting from multiple elements, we can reach a sole conclusion. Riccardo Camanini is a cook but he’s also a lover of art, culture, beauty and history. More than ever, he sums up all this knowledge in just one thing: a personal idea of cuisine, full of identity.

Too often we consider “synthesis” as something negative, that belittles the single elements: in this case, instead, we are facing not a transformation, not a privation. Beauty and ideas are transformed into never banal, but unmistakable and profound dishes.

At restaurant Lido 84 you are surrounded by beauty, passing through all the degrees of a hypothetical litmus paper.

The beauty is, first of all, in the roads you take to get there, what with romantic views, rich and flowerful vegetation, the scent of flowers and of freshwater. The theme of the journey is idealised in the pages of the menu, where a Volkswagen Beetle appears: it’s a real car, made in 1976, which the Camanini brothers bought years ago, and which they are renovating patiently. It is now a crucial part of the summer version of Lido 84 displayed in the lane sided by trees that leads to the restaurant.

The beauty is in the location: a restaurant overlooking Lake Garda, with a romantic dock for boats. In the dining room you are surrounded by design objects, books, artworks, light installations (Luna by Davide Groppi), and a white piano too. The Richard Ginori tableware is always remarkable, with its pastel colours and timeless decorations, which are in harmony with the colours on the walls and with the tables outside by Gio Ponti, white and blue, perhaps hinting subtly at the lake.

The beauty is in the people who live, liven up and make you discover Lido 84, starting from Riccardo and Giancarlo Camanini, owners and managers, who with their kindness and gentleness have covered everything with an invisible veil of peace. Among the unique signs, there’s the dance that alternates waiters and cooks, who come out of the kitchen to share their knowledge with the guests and explain in the best possible way how “everything is made”: from here come the gestures, more or less unique (like cutting the bladder of the Cacio e pepe), the smiles and the words. The mind of the guest travels, following the story first, and then the flavours that appear as a revealing epiphany.

The beauty is in the dishes that you admire with your eyes, enjoy with your palate, and make part of your soul and heart.

Riccardo Camanini is both shy and brilliant, humble and creative, food lover and curious. Every dish oozes research (but not Leopardi’s “crazy and desperate” study), experiments, perfectionism but most of all love for cooking.

So it is right to say that some of his creations are now contemporary icons: Cacio e pepe in pig’s bladder, Yellow rice at the sea, Sbernia in beeswax (a giant sheep from Bergamo, the subject of a talk he gave at Identità Milano, read here), Spaghettone with butter and brewer’s yeast, Rice with black garlic and red fruits, Rose cake with zabaglione. One could call these Camanini’s “classics”, but some of them are so innovative that this definition has its limits, unless you use an affectionate tone.

The summer menu includes an extract from “Dalla Carta” and the timeless “Oscillazioni”, with new dishes, transformed into a surprise with seven or nine courses. And now that Lido is number 8 in the World’s 50Best, we had of course to go back, to enjoy its essence, through the Oscillazioni menu.

The green notes dominate throughout the menu. Sea and land mix, with vegetables as the trait d’union, starting from Sicilian patelle (a seafood rarely used), hidden under a veil of trombetta courgettes seasoned with mango oil and marigold butter, followed by the very green Asparagus Capù, whose inspiration was a family memory for the Camanini brothers.

The bright white China is in contrast with the bright green of the parsley sauce in the Gentile Snail pasta with scallop from Chioggia, mace, seaweed and anchovy colatura. The total green series ends with a small round pepper filled with purple prawns, fried polenta, ginger, lime and a sauce of yellow date tomatoes. The cuisine of Riccardo Camanini is as ever without borders, starting from the lake, moving onto the Venetian lagoon, and then celebrating the famous ‘mbuttunato pepper from Naples, with a personal take, adding ingredients like prawns and polenta, a match both successful and unexpected.  

Moving on. There’s always a desire to surprise, as with Stewed nerves of veal, celeriac reduction (using the whole vegetable), and celery leaves. In this case the nerve is a thickener, a sort of bridge that channels and amplifies the different layers of the vegetables, blending the roundness of the reduction with the herbaceous notes of the leaves.

Camanini has always defined himself as a “food lover”: this is brightly shown by Aubergine alla parmigiana, cooked at 400°C to keep the pulp white, served with eel marinated in sweet wine, candied in duck fat and fried, paired with grilled vegetables, cold broth of parsley and pine vinegar, confirming how vegetables can add character, even when they’re a side dish.

And speaking of unusual side dishes, there’s the Rabbit kidney with guinea fowl liber sauce, chargrilled plums which is enriched with pasta cooked for 84 hours and then preserved in a mostarda (chutney) of dates and peat whiskey, which finishes the dish but is also an unexpected pillar. The kidneys are already excellent but the surprise comes from tasting them with this pasta chutney which adds a new flavour and texture, so sweetly persisting you’ll ask for more. It’s a bright idea which recalls Riccardo Camanini’s latest talk at Identità Milano, explaining the many uses of pasta, if interpreted out the box and with a new approach, adding a touch of courage too.

The sweet finale offers a nice novelty, to mitigate the hot summer. They present Chargrilled pineapple with capers, lemon from Garda, rum, almonds and coconut served with Yersinia gelato, made with an anise liqueur from Romagna. This new dessert, included in a menu of very buttery classics, shows that at Lido 84 they are playing more and more with natural sweets, the result of those vegetables that can offer a lot, at the end of the meal.

Who knows if the secret behind this “constant movement” of ideas, flavours, cooking procedures and textures is in that cabrio Beetle that the Camanini brothers enjoy driving. Perhaps some dishes are born like this, by driving around lake Garda on this marvellous car, an emblem of the meeting between far or close travels and the menu.

Translatedinto English by Slawka G. Scarso