Modern Roman food
This Italian chef enjoys pulling off meals that fuse his heritage with his international experience.
NOT many people can say they literally grew up in a restaurant, but Italian-born chef Diego Reali did exactly that. As a child, Reali spent hours in his family’s celebrated restaurant L’hosteria Amadeo near Rome, Italy. The eatery has been around since 1958 and Reali recalls serving water and bread to diners when he was just eight years old.
“That’s how I started out, and then I moved to the kitchen and learnt how to cook with my mother and grandmother. I never went to culinary school – my mother and grandmother were my teachers and the restaurant was my school,” he says.
At 18, Reali left Italy and ended up working all over the world – from Australia to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. He has now been in Malaysia for seven years. Last October, he was appointed the head chef at the newly-minted Natalina Italian Kitchen in Avenue K, Kuala Lumpur, part of the Cinnamon Group’s portfolio of restaurants (the group also owns popular eateries like Aliyaa, Kikubari and Nadodi).
At Natalina, Reali has been able to truly flex his creative muscles. As a result, he has put together a menu that has Roman cuisine at its heart with contemporary flourishes here and there.
“You need to adapt the food to wherever you are, so I would describe the food here as modern Roman cuisine, because in Southeast Asia, some Italian ingredients are not available or not widely used for religious or cultural reasons, so we have to improvise.
“So the menu is something I have developed myself – it is not really authentic but it still has the strong, intense flavours of Roman cuisine,” explains Reali.
According to Reali, Roman food is also designed to be hearty and filling, in keeping with pre-war times in the early 20th century when people often had very little money to spend and subsequently designed substantial meals to keep there is a lot of hard work that goes into perfecting the pappardelle con guancia de manzo, which makes use of wagyu beef and is packed with flavour from start to finish. the hunger pangs away.
“Before the war, people tried to fill their stomachs with lots of carbs or meat, so the food that evolved in Rome is very tasty and comforting.
“It is also slightly more salty, because we use Pecorino cheese (a hard cheese made with sheep’s milk) which has strong flavours, in a lot of our dishes,” explains Reali.
Part of the appeal of the food at Natalina is the eatery’s use of a Josper oven, an acclaimed charcoal powered grill and oven that imparts lovely, smoky flavours to meals.
To begin a meal here, try the Eggplant Parmigiana (RM42) which is essentially oven-baked eggplant with mozzarella and tomato sauce reduction.
The dish is delightful – the eggplant is incredibly luscious and pillowy soft and makes a perfect complement with the tomato base, which gives it a sweet mouthfeel. The mozzarella meanwhile is the glue that holds everything together, imbuing the dish with overt cheesy notes. Even card-carrying carnivores are apt to find pleasure in this vegetarian offering.
Next, indulge in the Polpo In Umido (RM39) which is made up of slow-cooked baby octopus in puttanesca sauce served with toasted sourdough. The dish has its roots in the south of Italy and Rome, where it is very famous.
In this installation, Reali slowcooks the octopus with tomatoes, capers and anchovies for over an hour to elicit maximum flavour. And all that TLC shows because this is the sort of comforting soul food that makes the world feel better, even after just one mouthful. The octopus is tender and limber and soaks up the flavours of the puttanesca sauce, which is dotted with olives. This in turn provides a lovely tart counterpoint to the meal.
From the pastas on offer, indulge in the Ravioli Al Nero Di Seppia (RM65), made up of ravioli envelopes stuffed with prawn and squid cooked in marinara sauce. The ravioli is pliant and cushiony but still has some push-back. These large pockets are filled to the gills with seafood, and the entire concoction is further complemented by a marinara sauce heaped atop which is studded with even more seafood, in what proves to be a memorable underwater journey where aquatic flavours prevail.
The Pappardelle Con Guancia De Manzo (RM62) is a pasta dish that encompasses pappardelle pasta and wagyu beef cheek ragu, topped with Pecorino cheese. The meal may look deceptively simple – basically pasta and meat, but Reali puts a lot of work into this dish.
The beef cheek is first grilled in the Josper oven, before being slowcooked for six hours until it breaks down into pull-apart, pliant meat.
The result is a flavour bomb from the word “go”. The pasta has a firm, but gently yielding hold and is coated in generous portions of ragu, which pack plenty of hearty, bovine flavours underscored by distinctly smoky nuances.
It’s the sort of meal that gives rise to care-free childhood memories, mostly because it evokes so much instant happiness.
If you’re after something truly designed to feed the soul, the Ossobuco (RM130) ticks all the right boxes. This hearty Italian stew is made up of veal shanks served with saffron mashed potatoes and Josper-grilled onions. The veal in the stew is slow-cooked for four hours to break down its musculature and render it submissive and willing when probed and poked.
Ultimately, it is the components in this meal that make it a wholly satisfying eat, from the succulent tenderness of the meat (and the spectacularly rich marrow that can be spooned out of the bone), to the hearty undertones of the sauce; the rich, decadent mashed potatoes; and the lovely bursts of sweetness from the onions.
Together, this is a class act – a meal deserving of applause and just begging for an encore.
Like most chefs – Reali says things have been hard going since the eatery opened in October last year. He estimates that although the restaurant is nearly a year old, it has actually only been open for dine-ins for less than six months given the lockdowns in place, which is why it will be an uphill battle establishing a wider customer base.
“There are things that I want to add to the menu, but for now, I won’t be touching it for the next six months. I need the time to slowly introduce customers to the flavours of modern Roman cuisine,” he says.
Order online from Natalina Italian Kitchen at www.natalinakl.com.