Two Kitchens: an exclusive extract from Rachel Roddy’s new book, part one: Of course I thought Rome was glorious, but I didn’t want to stay. A month – three at most – then I’d return to Sicily to finish the clockwise journey I had interrupted. An area of the city called Testaccio tripped me up with its workaday, easy charm. It was where I met my partner, Vincenzo, a Sicilian, and it was nearly 12 years ago that we settled into a life there. Although Testaccio is in the heart of the city, it feels more like a village; it is where Roman food – distinctive, traditional and inextricably tied with the history of daily life of the place – seems to permeate everything. It was living in this quarter of Rome that the idea that “every cuisine tells a story” made absolute sense. I soon discovered that if you ask someone to show you how to cook something, they almost always give you a story too – be it a small domestic tale or a great, sweeping history. You also get lunch … possibly a rambling … [Read more...]
Mélanie Englebin to close restaurant Cecila in August as she looks for restaurant with larger kitchen
Mélanie Englebin, the chef of Brussels restaurant Cecila has decided to close her restaurant at the end of August. The young chef who was awarded the Gault & Millau 2017 Young chef of the year for Brussels explained that there were various reasons for the closure of this restaurant. " It is true that the pedestrianisation of the Brussels centre has made it difficult for a gastronomic restaurant to do well in central Brussels but this is not the only reason why I have decided to close Cecila." "In the four years since I have opened Cecila, my cuisine has evolved and I know exactly what I want. I need a restaurant with a larger kitchen, with a bigger dining room in a house that has character like at Cecila. I also need a terrace or garden," she said. Leaving the current location will enable the young chef to create the restaurant of her dreams enabling her to continue her road to cook with great produce and discovering new perfumes and flavour combinations. Just before she … [Read more...]
René Redzepi launches foraging app called VILD MAD (wild food)
René Redzepi, the Danish chef behind one of the world's most successful restaurants noma, has launched an app and website aimed at help you to forage. The app is called VILD MAD, Danish for wild food and is designed to teach you to read the landscape and to discover its culinary potential. Redzepi is known for introducing foods that had been foraged to the fine dining restaurant scene and now he wants to help people to learn what is edible and what is not. The aim behind the app is to help people explore their program cataloguing wild ingredients found in the Danish landscape, and the many ways to cook with them. The app is a comprehensive and free resource designed to help the Danish public sustainably explore and cook with wild food. René Redzepi announced VILD MAD during the anniversary celebration for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants earlier this week. The initiative includes a website and app, a curriculum for Danish schools, and foraging workshops led by fifty park … [Read more...]
Tokyo meets Alba in unique four hands dinner between Enrico Crippa and Zaiyu Hasegawa at Piazza Duomo
When Zaiyu Hasegawa went to Alba the first time it was just a very short visit lasting less than 5 hours. He had been at an event in Milan and couldn't resist a visit to the temple of the white truffle. Little did he know that some time later he would be invited to cook with one of his idols Enrico Crippa, chef of the three Michelin star restaurant Piazza Duomo in Alba. Collaboration and sharing knowledge is one of the secrets to success in life. And when this happens in the kitchen of one of the best restaurants in the world, then magic is bound to happen. That was the case of the four hands dinner between Crippa and Hasegawa in Alba last week. That this would be a match made in heaven was to be expected. The Japanese chef of Den is known for his playful style of modern kaiseki. He also has access to produce grown in his sister's garden which supplies his restaurant. On the other hand, Enrico loves Japan and Japanese culture and has worked for three years there in the past so … [Read more...]
GELINAZ! strikes back: this time it does Upper-Austria
GELINAZ!, the collective of chefs which each year organises ambitious events across the globe is returning in the summer month of August with an event at Mühltalhof (Neufelden) in Upper Austria. Details of the event have not yet been fully revealed but the lineup of 24 cutting edge chefs (12 men, 12 women) that will first head to Vienna and then to Mültahof has been announced. What is maybe unique about the event is a huge lineup of female chefs that will take part in this 'itinerant foodart performance'. The organisers are promising a tribute to Upper Austria and the Austrian culinary scene and will bring with them 8 contemporary artists and a global sound installation. It will be about Generative Thinking, Generative Music and Generative Cooking. The chefs taking part in this summer retreat in Austria are Lukas Nagle of Bootshaus (Das Traunsee, Austria); Bo Songivsava of Bo Lan (Bangkok, Thailand); Felix Schellhorn of Hansi Hansi (Bad Gastein, Austria); Magnus Nilsson of … [Read more...]
Weekly roundup of great reads on food and wine #117
The New Foodieism: Like many of us, I spent the winter muddling through a mental miasma, pondering the meaning of life and democracy. I did, of course, think about “food” — how it’s produced, marketed, discussed, consumed, and so on — during my self-imposed hiatus from near-constant writing, which began more than 18 months ago. But I also wondered about its relevance. So much so that, after the election, I said that working on food issues had to take second place to “defending democracy”: It seemed to me that food was somehow less important than it had been BT“Before Trump.” Since this is a food column, after all, we could also say “before the chickens came home to roost,” acknowledging that the founders actually established a faux-democracy, which allows the system to be rigged to the point where even a statement like “all white men are created equal” is a joke; and how that, in turn, left a large enough number of voters apathetic and/or frustrated enough to make room for a disrupter … [Read more...]
Inside the magical world of Enrico Crippa’s garden is the secret to his legendary salad
For a food lover or chef, visiting Enrico Crippa’s garden just a few kilometres outside of the town of Alba is a bit like visiting the magical world of Roald Dahl's chocolate factory. To understand the Italian chef of Piazza Duomo in Alba, one of the best restaurants in the world, you need to understand this garden. Ideally, you need to wake up early and visit it with him. Because it is here that you will discover the secret to his success, to his flavours and to his story. His ‘Insalata’ or salad as it is known is the stuff of legend. A lot has been written about it, photos taken and he describes it as the best dish he has ever made. “But there is no cooking or preparation,” he smiles. You may have come with preconceived ideas about the dish but nothing prepares you for the experience. A table of eight people including Zaiyu Hasegawa, the Japanese chef of Tokyo restaurant Den, Andrea Petrini, one of the co-curators of The Gelinaz! and host Roberta Ceretto representing the … [Read more...]
Share a moment of generosity with Brussels chef Pierre Balthazar in aid of Operation Thermos
On 18 September, chef Pierre Balthazar of The Restaurant in Brussels will welcome 70 guests for a charity gastronomic dinner. The proceeds from the event will go to the not-for-profit association Operation Thermos. Reservations for the event have opened now. The event is expected to finance 2,000 meals for those most in need. This is not the first charitable gesture of chef Pierre Balthazar. After organising the Belgian Christmas tree Design gala dinner for two years in a row, and having himself contributed to Operation Thermos food distribution efforts, it was important for him to do even more. Operation Thermos was set up in Brussels in 1987 on the initiative of a few young scouts who were affected by street poverty. A non-profit association of several hundred volunteers was created. The aim of Operation Thermos is to help the homeless and other disadvantaged people, in particular through the daily distribution of full hot meals at the Botanique Metro station in Brussels … [Read more...]
Round trip for four chefs starts at Le Coq aux Champs
The concept of four hands dinners has become common over the past few years. The idea is that of allowing the chefs to experiment, to exchange ideas and views and learn from each other and also to offer the restaurant's clients something different. Christophe Pauly of Le Coq aux Champs has taken four-hands dinners to the next level by inviting three chefs of well known Belgian restaurants to join him at his restaurant this year. He will then reciprocate with a round-trip to the restaurants of these three chefs next year. The first chef to visit Le Coq aux Champs will be Dimitry Lysens, of Michelin star restaurant Magis in Tongres. The dinner takes place on 5 July. On 16 October, it will be Filip Claeys, chef of two Michelin star restaurant De Jonkman in Bruges who will cook together with Christophe Pauly. The guest chef on Sunday 26 November will be Karen Torosyan, chef of the Michelin star restaurant Bozar Brasserie in Brussels. Pauly will join the chefs in their … [Read more...]
Belgian Blenders: bringing Belgian coffee roasters to the fore
Ine Vanheyste, founder and CEO of Belgian Blenders is on a mission to introduce Belgian coffee and its roasters to the world and bring them to the fore. Italy may be world famous for its coffee and its coffee culture but few people know that the Antwerp harbour in Belgium is store to the world' largest coffee warehouses in the world with the capacity to store 350,000 tonnes of coffee beans in over a million square metres of space. Out of this international trade from Antwerp, over many years, small Belgian coffee roasters have emerged using an artisanal method and low temperatures to roast the coffee beans and make high quality coffee known by coffee lovers. Building on the knowledge of her father who has been working in the sugar business and who knew many of Belgium's top coffee roasters, Belgian Blenders have selected coffee from 7 Belgian coffee roasters to offer a range of 14 different coffees. The seven artisanal coffee roasters of Belgian Blenders each ensure an … [Read more...]