“Breakfast is the most ill-treated meal in the diet and food habits of Italians. We all know it’s the most important meal of the day, yet high-end restaurants do not consider it to be anywhere near the importance of lunch and dinner.” Corrado Assenza is a man of his word, in the sense that in addition to being the most famous Italian pastry chef in the world (thanks to Netflix), he is a cultured person who never opens his mouth without a good reason. His Caffè Sicilia in Noto is crowded with people looking for the perfect granita and cannolo, from the great tradition of Sicilian pastry making. But they find more. Very little sugar, only what’s needed, lots of flavor and sweetness straight from natural Sicilian ingredients, or at the most, from a drop of honey.
Upscale breakfast doesn’t exist
High-end restaurants don’t even consider breakfast. In hotels, even the ones that boast starred restaurants, breakfast is the work of pastry chefs, and often it isn’t very characteristic of the place, of the local ingredients, customs and traditions. It almost never represents the philosophy and cuisine of the chef. There are no real restaurants that open for a menu to be served at 9 am. It’s a shame, because they miss a chance to make a statement (and earnings). And so he’s giving it a shot. He cooks an entire menu at 10 am. “There are no pre-existing schemes and models, so I feel free to work and propose different techniques and ingredients, and compose a real menu ranging between sweet and savory.” It all starts with an almond milk cappuccino and ends with coffee-flavored nougat. On way you get humus, vegetables and cream of zucchini.
Sweet or savory? Wrong question.
Is Corrado Assenza a pastry chef who cooks savory dishes? Maybe he’s a chef who likes to prepare desserts. Or maybe the question is wrong because, as Assenza himself explains, “nature is neither sweet nor savory, these are only definitions with which we catalogue foods and recipes, to arrange them in an arbitrary order on a menu.” Can a pepper or a ripe tomato be considered savory? They are fruits, and they are sweet, in fact Assenza put sweated Pachino tomatoes in a tart. And meat in ice cream. Even before savory desserts, vegetable fruit salads, artichoke desserts and savory ice cream became trendy. You can watch him in action on Netflix. He’s one of the two Italians (the other is Massimo Bottura) who has starred in an entire episode of Chef's Table. Watch it.