My Kind of Food

To the north-east of the centre of Milan is a Michelin 1 star restaurant called Innocenti Evasioni where I recently had dinner to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

Sometimes the fact that a restaurant’s front door is difficult to find is a portent of hidden treasures to be discovered.  In this case the door was also locked and it was necessary to ring the bell.  Was this also a sign of exclusivity and privilege?  It had been the same at the best restaurant in the world, Osteria Francescana in Modena and the Red Door in North Hollywood; or was it the case that arriving as we did at exactly 8pm, they weren’t quite ready for service?  Time would tell.  The door was quickly unlocked by a guy in chefs whites – really?  He was very welcoming and showed us to our table.  We were the first to arrive and indeed the staff were still putting the final touches to the tables.

Things soon settled down, menus were brought, and nice sharp Franciacorta aperitivo served  together with the most delicious grissini.  To my mind they were what I would call cheese straws, a sort of long thin version of the best cheese scone it would be possible to imagine.  They were loaded with cheese and butter flavours yet still crisp and crumbly.  I could easily have a made a meal of them and almost did as more were offered.

The dining room was long room with all round tables, perhaps a little bit too close together, especially as the next able consisted of an Italian couple being bored to death by a very loud English guy giving them the benefit of his business knowledge.   This in contrast to the peace and stillness of the Zen garden on the other side of the windows.

A decision was made to order the tasting menu.  In this case it was a modest one of 5 courses at a very reasonable price of €68 with optional wine pairings that would have cost a further €25.  We opted for a bottle of red from a wine list with a decent range and very reasonably priced and in may case copious amounts of water as I had to drive.

As the first course arrived i remained a little worried that the chef who had let us in half an hour earlier still hadn’t gone to the kitchen.  Who then was cooking?  Mama? Nonna?  Was it a regeneration kitchen with lots of steam ovens to reheat bought-in food?  All sorts of things go through the mind when apparently the chef is in the wrong place!  Well it turns out, although I didn’t discover this until the next day, that the restaurant is owned by two chefs and one of them (Eros Picco) therefore could well have been at the stoves. Tommaso Arrigoni (a TV chef)  is the front of house guy and responsible for buying the wines.  All good but I would not have been so anxious if he hadn’t been dressed for the kitchen.

I needn’t have worried about who was cooking.  Each course, even if the individual ingredients couldn’t always be identified on the plate, represented a masterful amalgam of flavours.  The astice carpaccio consisted of barely cooked lobster with cardamom, mango, wafer thin celery, rocket and gin jelly.  Next, the duck foie gras terrine was the only disappointment of the evening and then only because it was a bit pedestrian compared with the other dishes.  The toasted brioche with which it was served seemed dry.

Stinco di vitello (veal shin) was stuffed into little ravioli and served with saffron flavoured buffalo cream, broad beans and crystallised sage leaves – heaven!  This was followed by loin of Iberian pork with star anise flavoured carrot puree and caramelised red onions.  The pork was lovely and pink with a slightly caramelised outside and with the most amazing salty taste.  The texture though was  bit strange, probably because  of the use of the ubiquitous water-bath.  I’m coming to dislike sous-vide cooking.  A good chef should be able to cook meat by eye.

Dessert, not normally my favourite course at any meal, was simply gorgeous and not too sweet.  Listed as Caramelised Millefuille, it was gorgeous puff pastry with chocolate, mango puree and the star ingredient, goats cheese ricotta which added a slightly salty tang to contrast the caramel glaze on the pastry.  A perfect combination!