francesco

Wish I could, but it's very unlikely that I will even be in Italy in May. Anyway, you'll catch the place in a better season than we did (december) and I have little doubt you'll enjoy it a lot. Francesco

Cy, I am truly sorry. I don't know why but I was sure you were a "she" because I was under the impression someone had addressed you that way. Obviously, I was mistaking you with someone else. Anyway, now the pressure's on me, in case you don't find it as good as I did! Anyway, when are you going exactly? Francesco

No major surprises except for Rossellinis which while the restaurant of a great hotel does not really figure particularly in any other guide, at least to my knowledge. But the ambiance... Arquade was one of the places I had recommended to Cyn for her tour of northern Italy and the place is beautiful. I hope this additional piece of info changes her mind about going there if still possible Francesco

thank you for your answer. With regard to lattume, it's my favorite thing to cite when I want to disgust my British friends and colleagues I have never tasted it as I am from Liguria and I've only been in Sicily once a long time ago. Esperya used to sell it when Tombolini was running the company, but now, and not surprisingly, they don't carry it anymore. Francesco

Alberto, I was trying to be provocative on purpose and I fully agree that what you suggest is probably the sensible way out for any chef in Italy. What I am doing here is being sorry about the fact that Italian cooking is pigeonholed, more like a rant than a call to change, because I realize than change, restaurants being businesses, cannot be forced against the current demand too much. Having said that, let's look at what happens to the "creative" chefs in our country. Davide Scabin has received pretty much unanimous praise from all the sources I have seen, including many in the forum. Nevertheless, if you want to try his creative menu, you have to make a reservation a day in advance because he is very worried that otherwise he would lose the average customer. Thus, some people who don't know about the advance reservation thing, go expecting culinary fireworks and find instead a very well prepared traditional cuisine. Nobody in Spain has to do that. So much for the Italian clientele. Similarly, consider how they look abroad at our creative restaurants. Most of them are literally off the map: nobody talks about Scabin, Cedroni, Bottura and the like. I am pretty sure e-gullet is the *one* place where this occurs. Gianfranco Vissani is considered by many to be one of the top 2-3 chefs in Italy and he is not even near being so avant-garde as some chefs abroad. Yet, until my recent visit, nobody on this forum had visited his restaurant. His restaurant is close to the A1 motorway, not very far from Rome, in the middle of the "new Tuscany" and close to two beautiful and popular Italian art towns like Todi and Orvieto. You begin to understand why his son tells you that they almost never see Americans in the restaurant when you read that Patricia Wells, one of the most influential gastronomic critics, has this to say about him: link to full article Even before I ever visited the restaurant I knew this was patronizing in the extreme. Most Italian critics think he is great, but Patricia is happy to show us what a phoney he is. I found the comment about the amount of food wasted with regard to the bread particularly egregious: at Marc Veyrat's restaurant I remember a bread cart that had to be rolled by two waiters and which would have easily contained 20-30 kilos of bread for about 20-30 diners that evening. And yes, the was a fois-gras bread (which is common in these restaurants). Did she or anyone else ever comment negatively about this? At the time of her writing, there were probably 3 three star restaurants in Italy and at least 20 two stars. She chooses to recommend one 2-star, one 1-star and one no-star restaurant out of all Italian restaurants, and none of these would figure in an Italian top-20 list. It's a bit like a critic going to France and recommending Pic, Benoit in Paris and Oustau de Baumaniere out of the whole country. Fine restaurants all of them, but if Patricia Wells had ever done anything like this, she would have lost all credentials. She's talking about Italy, though, and here not doing her homework seems to have paid off because she was taken seriously and Da Fiore, a place that nobody in Italy considers anything above "good", became and is one of the most popular restaurants with foreigners in the country. Francesco

I would still consider some of the chefs she mentions in the post as creative, but I guess it's a matter of definition. The important point she made mentioning those names, at least to my eyes, is that a chef can remain true to local ingredients and traditions without compromising creativity. Many of the best places in Italy are accused of being unable of doing so and being French. I don't share this view, but I understand the point behind that critique. The union of tradition and innovation is, to me, probably the only way for the development of a real and unique Italian haute-cuisine, which can subvert the common prejudice on Italian fancy restaurants. A way where the concept of restaurant and trattoria meet if you want, bringing out the best of both worlds. I think the Italian restaurant scene is showing quite a few sign that this is indeed happening, especially if you look at what some of the best young chefs are doing. There's plenty of creativity in their dishes, but also a great attention for the local traditional ingredients. ← Alberto, is this "fair"? I mean, and this is a question I have asked myself before, would someone who wished to pursue a different track, a Ferran Adria, be possible in Italy? There is a contradiction: on the one hand, we tell ourselves that a tradition-based high-end cuisine is the way to go because we think that this is the most that many of our fellow countrymen, visitors (including Faith Willinger), and perhaps ourselves would prefer. On the other hand, in Faith Willinger's Q&A session, Bux writes So, Faith Willinger wants Italian chefs to be creative but to follow along the traditional footpath, while Bux would appreciate more unconstrained creativity. Why aren't the French or the Spanish chefs not asked to resolve that contradiction? I have argue elsewhere that our strenght is also our weakness: France has never really been known best for its regional cuisine. It would be a gross caricature to suggest that cuisine bourgeois is the same across France, but it is certainly true that middle and low-end dining are not as diverse across the country as they are in Italy. Spain, on the other hand, has no reputational baggage at all: because of the Franco regime, after the second world war, Spanish cooking wasn't known at all and so the country to the foreigner has been until very recently like a clean slate with no set expectations. If there are no expectations, then you are judged on your own merits, not on how well you fit with expectations. It is a bit puzzling to me that the Spaniards themselves have been so ready to accept the new basque cuisine first and the Adria wave later. My guess here is that while Italians will never accept any claim of superiority of French cuisine and so have never, for example, embraced a chef trained in France like Gualtiero Marchesi, the Spanish public has been more ready to embrace French-trained chefs in the Basque country. This set-up a mentality of acceptance of high-end dining in the early 80s that has made Ferran Adria possible in the 90s. Francesco

I am sure we all agree that what is written above pretty much describes in large part the gastronomic attitude that the vast majority of visitors to our country have towards our dining establishments. The implicit (or not so implicit) implication seems to be: why go through stuffiness, high prices, long-term planning, when in many cases, you can get all the satisfaction you want from the trattoria just a few hunder yards away from your hotel? I have to say that at some level, I completely agree with that. I am proud of the fact that in Italy this is indeed still possible, even not too difficult to find and places such as the ones described above are what makes Italy special because not even France (and perhaps only Spain) can compete with that. Also, and this is very important, this is also what the vast majority of Italians think. But. I think there something of the Bill Bryson effect going on here. I say that because to my mind, Brison is popular as a travel writer because he is good at focusing on the picturesque and, sometimes, on stereotype. The whole issue reminds me of that movie where George Segal finds out that he has a black son who is also very tall. They both go to a playground where they are challanged to a pick-up game of basketball by an obese white guy and his eqaully obese son. Against his own son's protestations that he can't play, he agrees to bet some money on the outcome of the game. Needless to say the game ends in a crushing defeat: just because his son was black and tall, Segal just assumed he had to be good at basketball. I get the impression that something like this happens with our food industry: if there's anything that Italian restaurants in Italy can be relied upon is to provide a good meal with simple ingredients. Note that this view is shared by many Italians and visitors alike. Well, I wish it was that simple. I hear many people talk about the ingredients. Living in the UK I can confirm that the average fruit or vegetable in an Italian market is much better than its UK equivalent, but that doesn't mean that it is as good as it can or should be. One example: pesto. Do you know where I go if I want to taste pesto made with the best basil from Pra, in a mortar, with high quality olive oil, the best quality cheese, etc.? I go to Ca' Peo, a restaurant that used to have a Michelin star until last year and has things like pigeon on the menu (most of the menu is quite traditional). Many "traditional restaurants" in my region work large numbers and couldn't do pesto with a mortar even if they wanted to. As for the others, most Genoese can't tell the difference, so why bother? The owner of Ca' Peo used to joke with me that if it wasn't for the fact that the climate is different, we'd have to go to Japan to try our ingredients and cuisine because the respect for them he saw in the Japanese apprentices in his kitchen was far higher than that of the Italians. Who makes pansoti with a prebuggiun filling nowadays? Prebuggiun is a catch-all name for a collection of wild herbs that grow abundant in the eastern part of Liguria. Borage is one of them and the translation for the others escapes me. Well, there are two places I know of for sure that use prebuggiun as they should and one of them is Balzi Rossi near Ventimiglia, which by the way, is not even close to being where the dish comes from. Again, the taste of prebuggiun is now so unfamiliar to the average Ligurian than spinach, which is easier to find and cheaper, often replaces it. This doesn't mean that pansoti made with spinach cannot good, but they certainly don't reflect tradition or the best ingredient available. Believe me, even limiting myself to my small patch of (home)land, I could go on: I still remember going out with school friends to trattorias in the hills behind the Tigullio where the only criterion was "who's going to give us more to eat"? My point is this: high-level restaurants provide creative cuisine, more or less, but they are often also the last defense for the traditional recipe and the best ingredient. Many, many Italian restaurants settle for much less. This might be better than what most visitors are used to, but it isn't the best. There may be exception to this: La Brinca in Ne, for example, is a trattoria ferociously careful about preserving tradition and getting the best local ingredients. But places like la Brinca are not common, believe me. Francesco

[note to hosts: I posted this here and not in reply in the Q&A session because I am under the impression that Q&A sessions should not be the place for debates, but I am obviously happy to discuss this with Ms. Willinger and /or to have this moved to a more proper place if you think appropriate] I have been following Faith Willinger's Q&A session and I happened to stumble upon this particular comment of hers on Italian chefs and the conservative attitude to culinary matters in the country. I also notice Vmilor's question in the same session which seems to imply (correct me if I am wrong) that this view has been published by her in one of her books I am very confused. Either she's been to Vissani many years ago and he has changed quite a bit since (but I have a book, "Il Vissani" with dozens of recipes over the years and I don't think so) or I don't know what she is referring to. Having been at both Vissani and le Calandre within the space of one year, I would have to say that of the two it is Vissani who is definitively the one that uses the more Italian ingredients and the one who uses the more traditional techniques (even though I think both chefs clearly do Italian cuisine). Edoardo Raspelli (former curator of the Espresso guide) is one of Italy's most conservative food critics and has pretty much never had to say anything good to say about chefs such as Massimiliano Alajmo (he toned it down when he got 3 stars) or Davide Scabin, giving them ridiculously low marks while praising Vissani to the stars. Raspelli has many drawbacks, in my mind, but he can be replied upon to spot someone who doesn't stray the "Italian tradition" line in a second. Now, preferences are not at issue here and I will not presume to discuss Ms. Willinger's (anyway, I liked Vissani but I also liked Alajmo) but I feel like I've just been told by someone that s/he doesn't like Pierre Gagnaire for his experimentalist use of ingredients and techniques but enjoys the more down to earth approach of Ferran Adria! Francesco

Ms. Willinger, thank you for your time. It seems to me that over the years previously little known gastronomic products (e.g. balsamic vinegar a few years back, now lardo di colonnata and formaggio di fossa) take on cult status. Do you have any guess as to what will be the next superstar (or superstars)? Or, rather, any favorites in mind that should become superstars? Best regards, Francesco

[Alberto, Robert, I didn't know whether to merge the two halves or not: whatever you want to do is fine with me] (edited by albiston to add NOTE: merged) The second dish on the menu was a onion, parmesan and taggiasche olives risotto with “curls” of red mullet and white wine and sage sauce. The dish does not present the risotto as a flat surface for the other ingredients but rather separates the different components and it’s up to the diner to assemble them. I didn’t find this had a particular logic as what you end doing is spreading the risotto on the sauce and putting the curls on top anyway, so that didn’t make much sense to me. The risotto with the sauce in itself was all that you could expect at this level: perhaps not a particularly daring combination by Vissani’s standard, but again something that did work very well nonetheless. However, I didn’t find that red mullet added much or anything at all to the dish. I can only conjecture that the chef might have had qualms about serving such a risotto “as it was”, thus going against what I think is his more natural instinct that if simple will do it, then simple it will be. This was the only case during the dinner where this principle seems to have been abandoned, but the consequence was the least exciting of the dishes we had that evening. We next had a much stronger “primo”. These were ravioli of thrush with pecorino and rosemary sauce, and a puree of Williams pears. I don’t have much experience with thrush as food (or otherwise) but they are small wild birds, similar in taste and size to snipe. Apparently they are also related because they belong to that rare category of game birds for which the entrails can also be eaten. Anyway, this was another highlight. On one level, the connection between pears and the cheese sauce was the perfect embodiment of the Italian saying “al contadino non far sapere quant’ e’ buono il cacio con le pere” [literally: don’t let the farmer know how good sheeps’ milk cheese is with pears]. On the other, this truly classic combination which was the perfect foil for the ravioli, given the gaminess of the meat which was quite evident even in a filling. I have struggled in the past few years with grouse, a meat that many (including myself) find almost too much to bear for how gamy it is, but I have recently discovered how the old British way of having bread sauce with it: the fattiness of the sauce covers the unpleasant bitterness while letting the taste of the animal come through. Well, this dish gave me a similar feeling because the sweetness of the pears and the fattiness of the sauce accomplished much the same thing. Our “secondo” was a very simple rib of beef with “rissole” (croquettes) of yellow pumpkin and a sauce of lobster and rosemary. By now certain patterns were emerging quite clearly. Firstly, Vissani has a clear predilection for herbs: we had plenty of dishes with rosemary and we would also get a chance to have one with majoram later. Secondly, Vissani plates his dishes by choosing a main ingredient, adds some secondary item of a different nature (so meat vs. fish vs. vegetable) and invariably adds a sauce to bind the ingredients together, where in many cases the sauce provides the most interesting contrast. The first thing seems to me to be a quintessentially Italian thing to do; the second is, I believe, entirely original to him. By this I mean that the pattern is insistent and does not seem to know (almost) any exception, at least according to the recipes in his cookbooks. Thus, in a sense he is highly predictable, in another, this self-imposed restriction seems to be designed to emphasize his strengths: if you are great at sauces and contrasting flavors and you don’t care much about texture or presentation, this scheme is perfect for you. This dish was again at the highest level for me. The beef was flawless and in slices about 1/2cm thick: the lobster sauce was incredibly dense and so creamy you would have sworn that some cream had been added, except that there was no taste of cream anywhere. The rissole, just seemed the perfect answer to the more obvious roast potatoes you would expect in most other places. Again, very simple. Finally, for dessert we had a warm tartlet of sabayon and Muscat grapes with a peanut sauce and a perfume of majoram. When I realized what this was, I had a bit of a laugh. From the outside it looks like a small pastiera napoletana dusted with icing sugar. However, when you open it with your spoon, you realize that this is the Italian answer to Bras’ coulant ;-) The effect is very similar, and I could not help but think this was done on purpose. First of all, the shape of the tartlet is immediately recognizable to anyone with interest in Italian cuisine (or any Neapolitan). Secondly, instead of piping hot dark chocolate you get an equivalently luscious sabayon which is perhaps more obviously Italian. At the same time, flavor combinations are not forgotten and the grapes and the peanut sauce are just enough to provide a contrast to the sabayon which would otherwise be too sweet compared with the more obvious dark chocolate. The majoram was barely perceptible but did seem to fit quite well. The only problem with this dessert was that due to the length of the service, we were by now really full with bread and such a heavy dish was quite difficult to finish. The petits fours were quite good and I should add that when the desserts were served the background classical music gave way for a live piano bar performance which I thought fit quite well with the rest of the ambiance (not in a good way). To drink throughout the meal (I can’t drink much) we have a Gaja Chardonnay Rossj Bass 1994 which, at 80 Euros was very expensive. No half-bottles were available. To conclude on a practical level, I should probably say that service-wise we probably were particularly unlucky because of the full house. My information is that this really is a rare occurrence. On the ambiance, as I’ve mentioned before, I think the assuredness and creativity that Vissani shows as a chef are completely absent so that showing off seems to be the substitute for good taste. I should add that I am probably too sensible to these things and I suspect others will be less bothered by this. Nevertheless I really think Vissani the restaurateur cannot hold a candle to Vissani the chef. Cuisine wise, I got the impression of an enormous talent at work. I don’t thin this means that if you eat here you will invariably be happy: the use of herbs, for example, is so sustained that I can see how easily things could go wrong in execution if not in conception. Also, the a la carte menu seemed to me to be more adventurous than what we had. Having said all of this, there are so few chefs in the world that can still surprise even if they are willing to take risks and so many capable of very competent but “more of the same” cuisine. At this point in my, I personally prefer the former. Note that Vissani makes things difficult for himself by doing this in a meal with so few courses: if you propose few courses than you usually take the Ambroise route of few dishes tried and tested to perfection. If you propose many courses, then you can experiment and afford a few misses. Vissani wants to be creative but also wants to keep the traditional structure of an Italian meal in place. I’d definitively go back. A few more notes: I'd definitively recommend the Agriturismo Tenuta di Canonica, near Todi as a Hotel (don't know about the food because we were at Vissani). The rooms are fanstastic and this is really a small, rustic, but luxurious hotel. We also stayed and dined at La Bastiglia in Spello. The hotel has 4 stars but it isn;t worth much: the restaurant is good. The cuisine is creative and has ups and down but not bad at all. the wine list is pretty good and much less expensive than Vissani. Finally, I hope to be able to write about another great Italian restaurant I've tried, Lorenzo, in Forte dei Marmi, on the nothern Tuscany coast. Again, please bear with me. Francesco

No problem with the signature line, of course. I posted a first part because I realized that it was taking me forever to do the whole thing and I had promised to report back. Please bear with me. Francesco

I hope to be able to come back to the more general issue soon but for now, just let me take some issue with this particular statement. I understand that fois gras is associated in just about everyone's mind with France, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't part of the culinary tradition of some part of Italy. The link below is the best I could find in English to explain what I mean: fegato grasso in Italy Given that, I don't find the use of fois gras in Italian high-end restaurants more out of place than the frequent use of pasta or risotti in equivalent French restaurants, restaurants which no-one accuses of not being French enough. Francesco

On Saturday, October 23rd, me and Claudia, my wife, had the opportunity to try for the first time this restaurant. I was particularly curious for several reasons. The first reason is that Vissani is a household name in Italy but is virtually unknown abroad, so that we have this paradox of the most famous chef in Italy is someone that very few foreigners ever get the opportunity to try or even know about. In Italy, Vissani's celebrity is of a very special kind, not at all dissimilar to the status of someone like Gordon Ramsay in the UK, for example. But there are significant differences which say much about the different prestige chefs have in the two countries, and this in turn, I believe, explains much of what we experienced on our visits. In the UK, Ramsay is very famous for being temperamental and I am sure he wouldn't score very high in a popularity contest. However, and this is crucial, he is respected in his job: very very few would dare challange Ramsay as a chef. In Italy Vissani is known for his constant presence and self-promotion on the TV screen and for his frequent struggles with Italian grammar and syntax. But Italy is also a country where about 50 million people believe they know more about football than the current manager of the national team and a similar number believe they are knowledgeable about food. Not only that, a significant number of these "experts" never entertains any doubts about what is right and wrong in cooking. This is a country where anyone who tries to serve peaches with Parma ham instead of melon risks being labelled as a phony nouvelle-cuisine idiot, no matter their credentials. No surprise, then, if I witnessed some time ago a housewife calling Vissani a buffoon on national television simply because he dared introduce shellfish in a dish with meat. She's not alone: the vast majority of Italian would probably tell you that they have a very low opinion of Vissani (who has two michelin stars) as a chef, not (only) as a TV personality. This national attitude, to me, has very significant consequences on the way haute cuisine is done in my country, something on which I have already elaborated in other threads. However, to me this is nowhere near being so obvious as it is with Vissani. I am not a psychologist by any definition of the word, but I got the feeling much of what the restaurant is about comes as a response to a very strong inferiority complex. This is almost immediately obvious: the restaurant is located on an artificial lake on the road between Orvieto and Todi and used to be a trattoria run by Vissani’s parents. Anyone who is familiar with Italy would quickly realize that the place used to be one of those restaurants that specialized in weddings and similar functions. Vissani must have spent a fortune in trying to hide this. About 50 streetlights with round bulbs line up on the road that runs along the restaurant, so much that you would imagine some small airplane might try a landing mistaking it for an airport runway. The restaurant can only be accessed through a gate that would not be out of place at Buckingham palace, the entrance is lined up with food products that Vissani endorses, some modern wood sculptures that resemble trees adorn the dining room we were seated in, almost surrounded by bookcases. In the bookcase closest to my table, there was a complete 30-40 volumes edition of the Treccani encyclopedia (Italy’s equivalent to the Britannica). The (soft) background music was Beethoven’s string quartet op. 127. You get the picture. Service was also not at the level you’d want or expect. Vissani’s son, who ran the service, told us that the restaurant never quite reaches full capacity but that evening it did and were not capable of handling it fully. I can understand from a business perspective that if you can do 45 covers max but always get around 25-30, the one time you do get 45 you might not be prepared as well as you’d wish, but this is more difficult to excuse in a restaurant with two Michelin stars and 3-star ambitions. Mind you, the one thing that went seriously wrong was the length of the service, we had 6 dishes, started at around 8:30 and finished at half past midnight. Apart from that, it was clear that some waiters had little experience so that on many occasions they seemed uncertain and fearful of making mistakes. I suspect that getting quality help in this part of the country is not particularly easy. The wine list seems fairly comprehensive, at least for Italy but prices are high and the list itself is in alphabetical order, which doesn’t help with the selection. Reading back what I’ve written so far, I realize that this doesn’t exactly seem like a ringing endorsement, but I have left the food for last. Both me and Claudia chose the larger of two tasting menus, which at 155 euros is quite expensive by Italian standards. Throughout the meal, the kitchen would continuously send out bread fresh from the oven, with each course supported by a particular kind of bread. Thus we probably tasted 8-10 different kind of bread, all of them very good to excellent with particular mention for the bread with cannara onions and pecorino and the bread with tomatoes which were fabulous. We started with an extremely simple amuse bouche. This consisted of very thinly sliced raw ovoli mushrooms with a slight touch of just pressed olive oil from Vissani’s own production and some very old parmesan shavings. This reminded me of the amuse bouches you often get at Aimo e Nadia in Milan, which consist of some very basic ingredients such as olive oil and tomatoes but often the best you’ve ever tasted. The philosophy is the same and is, I think, the best introduction to what Vissani’s cuisine is all about. Yes, the combinations are daring, unusual, but flavor remains the overriding concern: if simple achieves the objective, then simple it will be, if complex is needed, then complex it will be. Anyway, this was simply perfect and I don’t care if someone tells me that anyone could prepare that dish. Yes, but let me assure you not anyone can procure ingredients like that. A special mention for the olive oil which was very spicy and had an incredible deep green color. The first dish of the menu proper was a flan of lettuce and anchiovies, ficatum with garlic and rosemary in black truffle and chestnut sauce. I am pretty sure this was the best dish of the evening. The lettuce in the flan was “spiked” by a hint of anchiovies that cut right through the fois gras (ficatum is produced in Mortara, near Milan, and is obtained by feeding the animals with dried figs). The quality of the liver was really high but what made it really special was how well it interacted with the unctuous sauce. For me, this easily made the evening worthwhile because everything fit together so well. The flavors, the fact that this dish was a short summary of what autumn can be, the melt in your mouth, almost soupy feel of it all. One word about presentations: Vissani’s presentations are really simple for a restaurant of this caliber. There is nothing in France, the US, the UK or anywhere else that I am familiar with that compares to this. Only in Italy do you find something similar at places like Guido or Aimo e Nadia. Again the flavor combinations can be as sophisticated as anybody’s but the flavor is also the only thing that matters: we are miles away from a Veyrat or a Aitkens. [end of part I, I hope to be able to finish this soon]

Well, all I need is to be able to get in eventually, it doesn't matter that much if it's this year or the next. However, it would be helpful to know exactly when you should start to ask for a reservation for a given season: the suggestion that you ask for a place if you happen to be in the area doesn't really work for me as I would probably arrange my meals in advance and would hate to cancel someone with little notice just because a table is suddenly free at El Bulli. Any ideas? Thank you, Francesco

I received a "no" this morning. I had given them a 15 days in April + 60 days in the summer window. I had made the reservation a couple of hours after Louisa's original post. I get the impression that they are slowly working the list backwards so that they get all the "no"s out of the way before finally getting to those they can accept. If I am right, then no news is good news. Francesco

Robert (and Alberto), barring last minute problems, I will be going Saturday next week and would be able to report a week later. I hope to be able to take pictures but I am worried about that because the media attention on him is so great that I would almost certainly be asked to stop as they'll think I am a journalist. Anyway, my curiosity is also very high because in the Italian forums, which Alberto also follows, the consensus amongst those who seem to be well informed is that he's never been better. What seems to be special about Vissani is his palate: the ability to put together ingredients in combinations that very few would dare try and pull it off. All this while remaining within the confines of Italian cuisine. I should add that there aren't many other places about which everyone seems to (positively) agree: Gambero Rosso in San Vincenzo and Perbellini in Veneto seem to be the other two at the moment. I have been to Perbellini recently and I can confirm it is worth the trip. I don't blame anyone who does the same either because it is certainly the case that this is Italy's strenght. However, (and this is a point I've made several times), I feel that this strenght, has to consequence that Italian high-level restaurants don't get much of a chance. France is identified with haute-cuisine so that no-one disputes that going to French 3-stars is a must for anyone interested in food. Spain, on the other hand, was virtually unknown to non-Spaniards until 10 years ago and does not carry the burden of being identified with any specific style of cuisine. In Italy, on the other hand, there is a definite perception that any restaurant which aspires to high levels either is a French clone if it goes the creative way (I still remember a casual remark from Patricia Wells about Vissani's cuisine which she identified as "French": I've never been to Vissani but I have two of his cookbooks and French is one thing his cuisine is not. But she felt "da Fiore" was the best restaurants in Italy.....) or it is the same stuff you get in trattorias only with better presentations and much higher cost. Either way it's not worth it. I have read enough of your posts to understand that the caricature I am making does not apply to you (I suppose this is more a matter of getting something off my chest) but I would encourage you to take more chances. Your trip and your surprise at Vittorio (which few people in Italy rate very high) would confirm that. As far as Pinchiorri is concerned, my first visit there still remains in my memory as one of the best experiences I have ever had. It is true that perhaps it is not the absolutely best restaurant food-wise in Italy, but it is quite close on that count and the service I always found impeccable. Now, if their wine prices were a bit lower.... For a Piedmontese suggestion, the new Villa Crespi (very close to Il Sorriso) seems to be very popular. Besides, have you tried Paolo e Barbara in Sanremo? Francesco

Robert, you are not as far from the Gambero Rosso's views as you think you are. Il Sorriso, as Alberto pointed out, seems to be a 3-star-level restaurant for Michelin only, no other guide ranks it as high, especially Gambero Rosso. I am surprised like Alberto about your views on Il Pescatore because I think they deliver exactly what they promise, while I encourage you and many other partecipants on this forum to give Pinchiorri a try. Yes, it is expensive, but the overall experience I do find worthy of both 3 forks and 3 Michelin stars. Finally, no argument regarding l' Ambasciata: last time I was there was so bad, I probably like it even less than you do. However, many of others you cite are near the 3 forks level (for example, I know you liked Arnolfo, which I also like and this is very close to the top). As usual, guides can only take you that far and invariably you have to rely on several sources to get an accurate picture. Going back to the Ambasciata example, it is clear that the restaurant can perform at certain levels and this would explain the high scores it gets in many guides. For me, *on that particular day* was a huge disappointment, especially because the problem seemed more one of attitude than one of capabilities. BTW, I hope to be able to go to Vissani very soon and will report back. He is considered a culinary genius in Italy and almost nobody knows much about him outside of the country. It's high time someone on this forum gave him a try Francesco

I guess the thing that surprised me the most is how big these alleged sums of money are. The worrying thing is that if the allegations are proven to be true, whether they were forced to pay or not, there will probably be very serious consequences for the chefs. I should add, for those who don't speak or understand Italian that the one chef interviewed, Martin Berasategui, strongly denies the allegations. Francesco

Louisa (or anyone else that can help), I am about to write an e-mail but I would have a couple of quick questions: would the restaurant be open around the easter period already, or is it too early? If they are open, are these particularly difficult reservations to get? Thank you for your help. Francesco

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read on the web site of the "Corriere della Sera", Italy's largest circulation newspaper, that a recently arrested ETA member alleges that four famous basque chefs, Pedro Subjana, Martin Berasategui, Juan Mari Arkzak and Karlos Anguinano have been paying the equivalent to 72,000 euros each to ETA as a "revolutionary tax". The article suggest that this was an extortion, not a voluntary contribution. Apparently, this would have been part of a larger scheme by ETA to finance itself by requesting money from businesses in the Basque country. I have to say I couldn't find any other info about this on the net, so I just leave you with the link. Does anyone know more? link to article Francesco - - - [moderator's note: Below, Francesco posted: I should add, for those who don't speak or understand Italian that the one chef interviewed, Martin Berasategui, strongly denies the allegations. We believe Martin's words are as significant as those of an unidentified ETA member currently under arrest and should have been added to this post. Thus we've edited this post to stress that although this report has been published in Italy, it is one of allegations only, at this point, and allegations from an alleged terrorist.]

At the moment there are four 3-star restaurants in Italy and in three of them there is a woman as head chef: Nadia Santini (Il Pescatore - Canneto), Annie Feolde (Pinchiorri - Florence) and Luisa Valazza (Il Sorriso - Soriso). There are also several 2-star restaurants with women as head chef (Caino, La Tenda Rossa) Francesco Edited for typos

Well, no argument here. Rightly or wrongly, I was trying to argue the same against what I felt was the opposite statement. I accept that this was all a big misunderstanding although perhaps the accusations of trolling after I spent several hundred words describing my impressions on Italian haute cuisine did seem unnecessary. Incidentally, that is why I replied specifically to vserna: because it was he specific comment that I was addressing. What I didn't like wasn't so much the phrase, but the idea that Ferran Adria was somehow even relevant to that debate. Again, let me reiterate that I never was under the impression that there are no pork products in Spain other than Iberico, nor that there were no cheeses nor wines. I mean, if I write on egullet (and this wasn't my first post), at least I should have that much knowledge... I was just trying to make the different point that even if we concentrated on pork products, which are clearly one of Spain's strenghts, the variety and quality of pork products available in Italy would not warrant a statement of Spanish superiority. Culatello and Lardo di Colonnata were just two examples of Italian pork products that are 1) unique either because of the specific part of the animal used and/or because of the production process involved 2) of undisputable high quality. I accept that I didn't explain myself very well, but if you think about it that's pretty much the only interpretation possible, unless you wish to believe that I was claiming that Spain produces no cheese or wine of any distinction (no wonder this interpretation would be shocking). Best, Francesco

I replied to vserna on this point already. My point was not that of listing item by item Italian products comparing them with Spanish ones, but I was simply suggesting that to choose the very top of haute cuisine as a basis for comparison between the two countries and forgetting everything else, which matters much more, is unfair. I hope you can believe I was not under the impression that Iberico is the only pork product produced in Spain. What gave you that idea? I was replying to his comments on the thread he cited, but I certainly didn't think this discussion would just interest him. It seems it actually doesn't interest him because I am too ignorant of Spanish cuisine to discuss these issues. One can only hope he is much more competent than me when he discusses Italian cuisine. Francesco

I am happy to bow to your superiority in all things Spanish. Clearly, I didn't get my message across well. I was simply making the points that 1) one cannot discuss the relative merits of different cuisines on the basis of the top restaurants in each country 2) if one accepts the first point, then neither you nor anyone else has offered any evidence to suggest that Italian cuisine is behind Spanish cuisine. I limited myself to citing Iberico because that was the only Spanish product mentioned in the thread you were originally referring to. And I was simply making the point that you'd need more than Iberico to convince me or any Italian that there is a Spanish superiority even within the limited area of pork products. Well, then I really grossly misunderstood. If you read the thread you cited, at some point someone makes the point that Italian cuisine is the greatest in the world and your reply to the individual in question says "Re "the greatest cuisine in the world" - it seems the news about Ferran Adrià and the Spanish culinary revolution hasn't percolated down to every corner of the old US of A...." which, to everyone's mind, might suggest that you disagree. But no matter, I did suggest you were making those statements tongue-in-cheek and you chose to ignore that. Francesco

Victor, I am getting the impression that you trying to argue that Spanish cuisine is "better" in some sense than Italian. I think you're doing this with a substantial tongue in cheek, but I'll take you up on the challange regardless I find the arguments that you've used, however seriously you mean to put them forward, rather weak. You can certainly argue that there is a sense throughout the world that Spanish haute cuisine is at the top in terms of creativity. I believe the explanation as to why it hasn't happened in Italy is two-fold. The first reason is Ferran Adria. What is most interesting to me, however, is the second reason. I actually do believe that Adria would have had a much harder time had he been born or worked in Italy and the reason is just one word: expectations. I strongly believe that modern Spanish avant-garde cuisine was allowed to develop precisely because Spanish cuisine itself had no big luggage in terms of expectations within the international community that goes to haute cuine restaurants. If you follow e-gullet's Italy forum, you will often read a significant amount of posts where Italy's haute cuisine restaurants are often dismissed because they don't provide the "true" Italian dining experience. This, BTW, is part of the Italian mentality as well. The most common comment is that they are some imitation of French. It is very difficult for such restaurants to carve themselves a niche where they can survive given that everywhere haute-cuisine restaurants depend heavily on the the need to provide an Italian experience. Thus, up to now you've either had the lone ranger in a big city that compares himself to the great French tradition (Marchesi) or the provincial restaurant which elevates traditional cuisine to new heights (Santini at Il Pescatore). Still the problems exist: I have always found Italian haute cuisine restaurants the easiest to make a reservation at with short notice. It was no coincidence that it was only in Italy that women who had not trained as chefs have the majority of 3 stars restaurants. The consequence is that only now some people like Alajmo and Cedroni (does anyone know him outside of Italy?) are beginning to go in the "creative" direction. Even now when many Italian chefs have made their trip to El Bulli or even trained under Adria, very few restaurants dare go completely in that direction. Alajmo and Cedroni were butchered by certain Italian press for years. Incidentally, I am not too unhappy that Italian haute cuisine has not internationalized itself too much. Besides, if I had asked "where in Spain is a chef under *31* of Massimiliano Alajmo's quality?" what wold you have said? Once you leave haute cuisine, however, things are quite different. I know how you feel about Michelin but while I am perfectly happy to believe that there is a strong bias against Spain, I also believe and most Italians believe that there is a strong bias against Italy. And yet Italy has about double the Michelin stars that Spain has: that tells me something about the quality of restaurants at lower levels. If you forget about restaurants and look at products and cuisine themselves, I just don't see how you can argue that Spain is superior in terms of either variety or quality. Surely Jamon Iberico cannot be the only example (and besides, Prosciutto di Cinta Senese is a worthy competitor for that style of ham). What about other pork products? Is there anything like Culatello, Lardo di Colonnata? What about the cheeses? What about the wines? More generally, does Spain have the variety of regional cuisines that Italy has? This is where you discuss cuisines, not restaurants and I think you'll have a tough time on that front. Francesco