AN APPETITE FOR ITALIAN

What makes Italian one of the world’s most popular cuisines?

Chef Umberto Bombana picks up a plump truffle and deftly slices paper-thin slivers over three small bowls of risotto. Heads turn as an intense, intoxicating aroma permeates the busy dining room.

The lucky recipients, a young couple from Tokyo for whom this meal at the chef’s Otto e Mezzo restaurant in Hong Kong is a holiday highlight, record the performance excitedly on their smartphones. Sandro Brusco, Bombana’s restaurant manager, pours a smooth-as-velvet Barolo into two voluminous crystal wine glasses, explaining to the Japanese pair why that vintage is particularly appropriate to accompany the risotto al tartufo.

Many customers are enjoying the restaurant’s degustation menu, which offers five courses of elegantly presented delicacies, but those willing to spend the money have chosen from the truffle listing. Portions are manageable, allowing diners to enjoy a range of exquisite presentations without overeating.

This is fine dining at its pinnacle – recognised by Michelin, the only restaurant guide with real authority acknowledged by industry professionals. Bombana is currently the single Italian chef working outside his home country to be awarded three stars.

DINER DEMAND

It seems the world just can’t get enough Italian food. From simple pasta dishes and pizza right through to the sophisticated cuisine served by Bombana, there is no shortage of demand. Surveys of diners in the US and Europe regularly place Italian as the top draw when it comes to eating out… and Asia is ordering from the same menu.

This global appetite provides a boost to the economy in Rome. “Consumers all over the world are seeking Italian food and we want to help producers meet these needs with real Italian products,” Minister of Agriculture Maurizio Martina said in 2015. According to the national

agricultural association Coldiretti, food exports to the US increased by almost 30 per cent in the first six months of 2015, while exports to China in the same period blossomed by a whopping 57 per cent.

Asia’s enthusiasm for eating Italian is obvious to Pino Lavarra, director of Tosca, the glitzy eatery perched high above Hong Kong Harbour on the 102nd floor of the International Commercial Centre in the Ritz-Carlton hotel.“Italian cuisine is the most well known and best appreciated around the world,” observes Lavarra, who earned Tosca its first Michelin star in 2014.“The freshness of the ingredients and the variety is the best passport for our cuisine,”he adds. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Parmesan cheese, prosciutto di Parma and dried pasta are all well-known exports but are just a small sample of Italy’s cornucopia.

What is it that generates such passion? For Bombana the answers lie in“the easy approach people around the world have towards Italian food. It’s accessible and straightforward. ”He looks to history for further explanation. “We create good things using inexpensive ingredients. Pasta is a great invention – there is so much variety coming from this simple thing made of grain. It’s very creative.”

In Tokyo’s Ginza district, Luca Fantin, executive chef at Il Ristorante Luca Fantin in the Bulgari hotel (awarded its first Michelin star in 2012) points to the “well-balanced meals – the Mediterranean diet – that contain vegetables, fish and meat. The flavour is simple but complex at the same time and this makes Italian food more interesting, together with the wide range of gastronomical culture from the north to the south of the country.”

Mario Caramella, chef-director of Singapore’s In Italy bar and restaurant, thinks that Italian cuisine followed a different path of development in Asia than America and much of Europe: “Italian cuisine arrived in Asia with professional chefs, not immigrants. Here we started immediately with authentic cuisine and original ingredients.” Like Bombana, Caramella has been working in Asia since the early 1990s, and in the year 2000 he co-founded the Gruppo Virtuale Cuoche Italiani (GVCI), a network of chefs, restaurateurs and culinary professionals working outside Italy that now has over 2,200 members working in 70 countries.

CHANGING TIMES

One theory for the popularity of Italian food in Asia points out that many of the ingredients used – tomatoes, fish, shellfish, aged cheese, anchovies, preserved meats and mushrooms – are rich in “umami”, the so-called fifth taste – in addition to salty, sweet, sour and bitter – that is found in soy sauce in Asian food culture. In the Italian tradition umami is more integral to the elements making up a dish.

And tradition is important. All these chefs serve highly refined, contemporary, award-winning cooking described as l’alta cucina in Rome, Venice or Milan. The stereotypical traditional image of Italian food abroad as modelled on that cooked by ‘ nonna’ (grandma) seems anachronistic and inaccurate in comparison.

The challenge for modern Italian chefs is to navigate that creative tension between tradition and innovation. “The more authentic you are the more successful you are,” says Lavarra. “But being authentic does not mean replicating in exactly the same way. It can be authentic but have novelty.”

Bombana points out that Italian food has always been in a state

of development, and has been influenced by many throughout history:“I see the chef at my restaurant in Shanghai, he is Sicilian and he cooks in a different way to me. Sicily is one of the richest; it has many influences. The Arabs were there but because there is some of their influence does it mean Sicilian food is not Italian? I don’t think so. These cultural influences can make the food much better.”

How do these talented chefs maintain the link to their culinary tradition when they create new dishes?“I offer contemporary cuisine. ‘Contemporary’ means the moment in which we are actually living together with the memory of the past,”Fantin explains.

Like Caramella, both Bombana and Lavarra consider Asian diners to be increasingly knowledgably and demanding, but all agree there has had to be some adaptation to local tastes. Texture is important to Asians, and palates used to soft noodles can find pasta cooked al

dente, which in some regions of Italy can mean almost crunchy, a challenge too far.

Some dishes just don’t translate, like classic renditions of Tuscany’s famous Bistecca alla Fiorentina steak cut from Chianina or Maremmana cattle. The meat, though full of flavour, is too chewy for many in Hong Kong. Bombana has a spectacularly innovative version utilising Japanese beef on his menu, served in the traditional manner, with olive oil and aromatic herbs from Italy. This dish is indicative of the modern Italian approach – a playful but respectful attitude that sees traditional dishes reinterpreted for the modern palate.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INGREDIENTS

The Italian state as we know it today did not come into existence until 1861. Despite this, most Italians are fiercely protective about their cuisine and are not shy when it comes to pointing out inaccuracies in the recipes of others. The tomato, surely the ingredient most symbolic of Italian food, did not arrive on the peninsula until the mid-15th century after its introduction to Europe from South America by Spanish conquistadors.

Twenty-first century travellers returning from the Italian peninsula complain tomatoes available in their home markets just don’t taste the same as those in Rome. This presents a logistical challenge to chefs working thousands of kilometres away in Asia, especially as these culinary professionals all agree on the importance of high-quality raw materials. “Fifty per cent of my job is finding the greatest ingredients, especially from Italy. It is very important to create relationships with suppliers and farmers,”says Bombana.

He and Caramella agree supply lines have improved enormously. “It has definitely become easier to obtain great Italian ingredients. It was difficult before to find fresh vegetables, but now I have puntarelle in my fridge and that can be hard to find even in an Italian market.” (Puntarelle, a variety of chicory with a bitter flavour, is a popular seasonal delicacy in the capital city.)

“The situation has changed a lot since 1991,”says Caramella.“We can now buy any fresh product regularly from our suppliers… because many of the companies doing the importing are managed directly by Italians.”

However, it’s not a prerequisite that all elements of a dish must be Italian. In Tokyo, Fantin is blessed with outstanding local ingredients and he uses them to full effect. “What we do here is Italian cuisine prepared in Japan based on the local Japanese ingredients that are seasonal,”he says.

Bombana’s network of suppliers extends to wherever he believes he can find the best the world has to offer.“I use abalone, crab and scallops from Hokkaido because they are the best available. There is no question about it. I have famous gourmets from Europe, they come here and they say ‘this is the best’.” His menu also features baby lamb and pork from Spain and Tajima beef from Japan.

Back in Italy there remain many relatively obscure ingredients to be discovered and employed in Asia. “I now use the cicerchia bean from central Italy – I make a purée with olive oil and it is really something special and unique,”Bombana says. “This bean is not well known and it grows wild. I serve it with baby pork from the Pyrenees. It is a modern interpretation and contemporary approach.”

Modern or traditional, contemporary or classical… in the end, it doesn’t matter. When the food on your plate is this good, you’re unlikely to hear any complaint.