There is plenty to say about Lido 84, the restaurant in Gardone Riviera, on Lake Garda, run by the Camanini brothers. It has an outstanding location and setting, it offers some of the best food in Italy, according to food critics and gourmets, and it is constantly busy – even in winter when Lake Garda is practically shut down. This is a place securely at the top of the Italian guidebooks: one Michelin star (everyone is convinced that a second one is coming in November), five hats in the Guida Espresso, and three forks in Gambero Rosso magazine. What’s more, in February it was honored at The World Restaurant Award in Paris for the signature dish of the year (the famous Cacio e pepe en vessie) and it is expected to receive the Miele “One to Watch” award in Singapore, a recognition from this kitchen appliance manufacturer as one of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, creating anticipation for possibly seeing it in this highly sought-after classification within a year. There may be some sleepless nights in the meantime.
The Camanini method
This is the goal, the end result of a unique system in our country that transformed a solid local restaurant into a real laboratory of ideas, bringing young cooks from all over Italy to Garda Lake. In the dining rooms you will hear accents from Apulia, Liguria, Sardinia, Mantua, Bergamo and more. They are all at Gardone Riviera to find out whether the Caminini method works as they have heard. And to find out whether Lido 84 is the sweet spot halfway between a convent (serene) and a anarchist’s club. It is certainly a place with complete interchangeability in the kitchen and attentive to savings. Riccardo is an eagle-eyed monitor of everything from the lights in the restrooms to the use of detergents and ingredient expenses, although in the latter case he is happy with the results. “The guys weigh everything and have an uncanny ability to calculate the food cost of our dishes, including sales tax,” says the chef from nearby Lovere.
A motley crew
“When Giancarlo and I opened in 2014, we had only 6 employees,” Riccardo remembers. “Now there are 22, all permanent, with their leave time, permits and benefits. Bed and board, of course, are on us. This is really what makes us the proudest, as we started with a goal of the restaurant being entirely self-sufficient, which made everything slower and more difficult. I have not forgotten that he and I went two seasons without drawing a salary.” The team includes the earliest veterans, an important core staff from Alma, the well regarded culinary school near Parma, and staffers chosen based on their résumés. “We get 150 of them a year, 95 percent of them going to the kitchen. Our careful choices have paid off and continue to pay off, for example with a sous-chef, Gilles Fornoni, who started his career here,” Giancarlo Camanini described the hiring for Lido 84. When Riccardo was the heart and soul of Villa Fiordaliso, he was the manager at Fondital in Vobarno, and he was so good at running the dining room (and more) that in 2017 he won the Gambero Rosso as the best in Italy.
Related roles
So the dining room operates like a fine watch, it only seems disorganized, with cooks at the tables switching places for each dish in a precise order. Riccardo sets the schedule and checks the work in the kitchen, and Giancarlo watches everything in the dining room, provides updates on the situation and solves any little problems that may arise. They have a unique style. “Every January, Riccardo and I decide on about a dozen projects, and when we re-open we present them to the team and try to implement them fully. The projects may be new dishes or a new tea menu. We also try to make savings where we can. The important thing is to assign ourselves tasks beyond the normal routine. We have a couple of executive briefings each day, and on Saturdays everyone spends an hour reading a book we choose,” explained Giancarlo, the man who created a database of roughly 300 recipes the restaurant has used since the beginning. An example is Spaghettoni with butter and brewer’s yeast, which enchanted the Parisian chef Alain Ducasse and appears on the menu of the restaurant in the San Francisco MoMA, where the angle is recreating the best-loved dishes from top international chefs.
Research and tradition
If scanning their Classics menu is exciting, the Oscillazioni menu – seven courses that vary with Riccardo’s mood, as can be seen in the photo gallery we put together – is an incredible feat of the inspiration. Camanini might riff on tomato paste, or on a technique that aroused his curiosity. It’s an exercise in style. The latest technique is smoking with a Josper charcoal oven for a charred flavor, including breads and vegetables. The great obsession is, of course, pasta, which was served today with an explanation on the menu: it was cooked for 84 hours and 11 minutes, using a starch crystallization process that made it nutty, perfectly al dente and highly digestible. And in this whole muddle of ideas – apparent in a crazy menu that careens from “imperial blu prawns, bitters, orange and marigolds” to “Rognone alla pressa” following a recipe by Apicius – tradition and location are never forgotten. Rose cake with VOV zabaglione is easily the best in any of Italy’s restaurants; the sardine skewer glazed with bergamot and strawflower honey is quintessentially Brescian, replacing the prohibited birds of the traditional version with a freshwater fish; Garda pike is cooked au bleu and topped with almonds, parsley, capers and lemon.
Marchesi’s example
Something else that distinguishes Lido 84 is that it is the most discussed restaurant in the world of professional chefs. At any meal you may see at least one chef from somewhere else there to eat. “Friends and those who are curious want to see how we manage to offer tasting menus at 80 to 90 euros, respectively, on the Classics and Oscillazioni menus. It is because we are a sustainable operation, and we had to do it with our own money, one small step at a time.” Rhetoric aside, Lido 84 is a place steeped in passion and ethics. “Because if I treat my employees right, there is a good chance that they will treat me right in turn. And while I expect a lot from them, I am always here. I come in at dawn to make the bread and clean the fish. These things relax me and let me think. Remember what Marchesi used to say? Example is the highest form of teaching. The master chef was right about that, too.”