A phenomenon that starts with street food and ends up on a menu where nonna’s classic dishes are re-interpreted. It is a nostalgic return to the past in the gastronomic sense. After years of avant-garde, rebellious culinary shifts and pushing the envelope of dogmatic traditional cuisine, it seems that today diners prefer soups and ossobuco with polenta and spices to noodle bars and sushi.
The times have changed. Before, tripe and fresh pasta, timbales and lasagna, were the Sunday food in the average Italian household and a family repertoire that was the same for decades, handed down from generation to generation. Then the generational link was interrupted, and at dinner, they started de-frosting ready-made meals and seasoning the pasta with sauce made in jars. And in the countryside, there was no one left to make preserves and there was no time to cook a dish that takes three hours to cook; now these kind of meals are only found at Christmas. Everything that seemed normal has been supplanted by easy and quick recipes, and grandmother's cooking has become a whistful memory.
While at home, they used to cook the roast, when out to dinner, families looked for the unusual, the ethnic, or tastes never tried before. Today, you can make couscous for dinner because it's faster than pasta and you buy everything ready-made – there’s even uramaki at the supermarket! This means there’s a craving to go back to the traditional trattoria – where young chefs cook yellow risotto and ossobuco, polenta and codfish – and everything that takes too long to cook, especially when you live in a busy city.
In fact, the most successful restaurants in cities like Milan and Turin these days are the trattorias in the modern version – with that extra-special element of slow-cooked meatballs and soups on the menus, something you won’t find at home anymore.
Trippa by chef Diego Rossi and his partner Pietro Caroli, is the home-cooked meal that everyone wants: the meal made by loving hands that churn out small dishes (with Michelin- starred experience) that arrive with a warm smile from your server. Forget the trimmings. The square dishes and the fake elegance of many modern trattorias that, over the years, have given way to well-ironed tablecloths, a touch of exoticism and micro-portions for tasting are not here. Here at Trippa, everything is new (they opened in June 2015), and the warmth of wood paired with simple silverware and dishes make for a cozy and inviting atmosphere – to be enjoyed with a draught wine or vermouth aperitif. Since 2016, it is considered “Bib Gourmand” by the Michelin Guide (meaning it’s one of the spots to get the best bang for your buck), and in 2017, Trippa was named the Best Trattoria in Italy by the Guida Ristoranti de L'Espresso 2018. The venue was also awarded three shrimps by the Guida Ristoranti de Il Gambero Rosso 2018. In 2019, Diego won the title of Best Chef of the Year by the Identità Golose Guide.
Friends of everyone, these two restaurant founders have marked their place in history as new entrepreneurs, creating a space for the kid in all of us to enjoy classic Italian cuisine – just like it once was at nonna’s house. And at Trippa, they’re not interested in overcharging you for the experience: you can enjoy a full meal for around 30€! Veal tonnato, their speciality, takes you back in time – but this time, it’s even better than you remembered, thanks to the lightness of the tonnato sauce. The codfish doesn't have the heavy flavor of a stockfish; the boiled meat is tasty and tender; the tripe is fragrant, fried and very light.
That's the point. If in the countryside or even just at the first tollgate off the highway, real trattorias still exist – and many have never stopped making quality dishes as they once did –in cities like Milan, they have all but disappeared. And where they have survived, they have changed their philosophy – and their prices. The dream of a proper meal off the beaten path and the little spots with a kitchen where you can “eat well and spend little" is broken down in the city with poor ingredients, cooks with little to no skill and very little professionalism or customer service.
But some of those recipes, along with the spirit of the Italian grandmother, remain alive to this day – in small corners of Milan. Like Trippa.
In the cover picture Pietro and Diego, photo by Paolo Zuf