Social media in Italy is all the rage following Combal.Zero’s loss of a Michelin star yesterday when the new Italian Michelin Guide was announced. Thousands of people have shared a design created by Torino based designer Bob Noto with the words Je Suis Scabin.
Davide Scabin, one of the most inventive Italian chefs was surprised by the decision. The chef said he does not want to associate his situation to events that are considerably more tragic. “But it is not far from a form of terrorism in which they break your legs without telling you why,” Scabin told Italian website Identita Golose.
Considered to be one of the top chefs in Italy, Scabin said he has been humbled by hundreds of messages he received from followers and friends. “I did not expect such a reaction. These words of support give me the courage to push ahead with more freedom and independence. It is time for us chefs to get away from old and incomprehensible system,” Scabin said.
The Italian chef said he has not been contacted by Michelin or told the reason the managing editor Sergio Lovrinovich said yesterday that ‘it was all related to the food’. He added that he could not understand how they had become ‘so bad’ given that L’Espresso had recently given the restaurant 19 points out of 20 only recently.
The Italian chef said he did not know what happened. “The restaurant has never worked better and we are always full. We were thinking that we could get a third star, rather than losing a star.”
The Italian media have also quoted Michelin director Michale Ellis saying that the decision to remove a star was inevitable. “We do not like doing this. We are very conservative. But in this case, we visited the restaurant many times, including with a foreign inspector. We did not find the quality that could justify a second star so we could do nothing else but to remove a star,” he was quoted as saying.
Combat.Zero is known for its innovations. The chef recently started to present a menu called Up&Down which starts with the heaviest dishes and ends with the lightest dishes on offer.
This is not the only controversy in this year’s Italian Michelin guide. A chef, Mattias Peri who died in August following a short illness retained the star despite the fact that the guide was published weeks after the chef passed away.
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