Expectations, perceptions and moods from all backgrounds and styles of cuisine. Do you like this dish? How can you answer that? It’s like when someone asks you if you love your Mom or Dad anymore. Of course you do. Little sparks or fireworks from unexpected tastes and different textures: a first bite is a little bit like the first kiss; you never forget it. A little bit like “I taste, therefore I am”? Sure. Road trip, anyone? On to Via Vandelli.
Our guide through this culinary adventure is chef Valentino Cassanelli: born in 1984, Cassanelli’s curly hair falls in cascades with the look and smile of someone who feels good about himself. That’s because this young chef from Modena, where he was born, has found his way in the world. At the age of 14, Cassanelli already knew that his future would be spent in the kitchen, and he knew at 17 that he would leave his hometown to soar to even greater heights – to take the road that led him first to London, his home for some time and the place where he would work in more than one prestigious restaurant like the Italian venue Locanda Locatelli. Our young chef then moved back to his home country, to the hustle and bustle of Milan, where he found himself a place within the excellent network of world-renowned chef, Carlo Cracco. But the best masters, as we all know, are those who bring out the skills of the student, and this is precisely what happened between Cassanelli and Cracco. Now, as a master himself, Valentino is ready to go it alone on his newest adventure at Lux Lucis, the new restaurant and heart of the recently renovated Hotel Principe Forte dei Marmi – where he can finally add the title Executive Chef to his name.
Though the title of Executive Chef is important to Cassanelli, the true significance of taking the helm at the restaurant means “being able to tell my story and express my creativity to the fullest.” And of course: for any Italian chef, creativity is important; but what does that mean?
For Valentino, it means putting what he feels on the plate: ingredients and ideas that win him over, that which represents him as a chef and an artist. It means that Cassanelli’s Fillet of mullet with maritime pine – with its sweet scent of resin, reminiscent of a sea breeze that crosses pine forests, making its way toward the mountains. It means taking a deep dive into an ever-changing sea of flavors that takes you wherever the young chef desires – where the most traditional tastes blend with experimental avant-garde flavor and other exotic touches.
Because for Cassanelli, a chef that considers himself forever tied to his homeland and to the authentic flavors that he brought with him from Modena, these recipes are ingrained in his DNA; they keep Valentino ever-anchored in the region’s traditional culinary culture. But maintaining tradition doesn’t mean you have to avoid change; on the contrary, for Cassanelli, it’s represented in his continual search for products that tell the story of the land, the small things that made the biggest impact on his travels around the world. It means "flirting" playfully with food and tradition, to see if one thing fits (or doesn’t, as the case may be).
Valentino is now head chef at a restaurant where he won his very first Michelin star. The Lux Lucis, located on the top floor of the hotel, is a space full of light with a continuous flow from the kitchen to the dining room – where you can watch Valentino and his brigade arrange small works of art on the dishes, in a sort of dialogue where taste is protagonist. No walls, no distance.
The tasting menu
On the road, Via Vandelli: this is the new tasting menu proposed by Valentino that retraces the old commercial and military route created by Duke Francesco III d'Este to connect the Duchy of Massa with that of Modena – through a futuristic and winding road that challenged the Apuan peaks. Starting from his city of origin, he arrives at the destination of his adopted city – in a journey that is gradually enhanced with wines proposed by the maître and sommelier, Sokol Ndreko. Ndreko’s taste is in perfect harmony with the chef – like a circle that closes, where the wine blends perfectly with the dish… as if they were one.
"Our beginning" starts with six morsels, each standing as a symbol and testament to every year spent in the restaurant world since 2012. "When I won the Michelin star at the end of 2016, many people advised me not to change the menu because they obviously liked it. But it was impossible; standing still is not part of me. So, I summed it up at the beginning of the meal.”
And then there’s the Virgin Mary cherry tomato, marinated with salt and pepper, Worcester sauce and tabasco; the mullet with sea pine, seaweed, pine nuts, sea water essence, pine shoots; the carrot infused with Sichuan pepper, balsamic vinegar and milk cream; the mackerel with coffee, purple potato chips, snail cream and fermented quince; the Tyrrhenian shrimp with mango ceviche, the veal jus and blown nervetti chips and the Pearl in the mussel (a dish in which the mollusk, opened in steam, is made ‘dirty’ once again in Garfagnana spelt flour and contains, like an oyster, a pearl filled with mint mussel water, ginger, celery and chili pepper). And to close the amarcord tour: we are in 2018 with Around the world in a bite, or crispy potato tacos. Meanwhile, 2019 is a different kind of story to tell. But Cassanelli does just that, and you can feel it as soon as you sit down at the table. You immediately understand the chef’s evolution, the change: from the most irreverent power of his debut to an increasingly mature and conscious style that acquires the elegance of balance. So, come on, let's go: from Forte-Modena, the awakening (with the tortellino of parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar as the protagonist), we continue on to the dish Hunting between countryside and sea where rabbit and amberjack appear, and then we find ourselves Among the brambles of Garfagnana scent of the sea: together with cappasanta, coral, bitter herbs and sea urchins. Next up is La gGavetta del Pescatore e del cContadino where the pasta and beans welcome a peaty-flavored crab, then we pass onto Profondo, where you find black fish from the depths of the sea with sea snails, peas and morels. And so it goes until you arrive at the last dish: Should I Stay or…?, a dish that becomes a question you ask yourself; why would anyone want to leave such a perfect culinary exploration of flavor? I don’t know about you, but we’re staying.
Valentino Cassanelli is, undoubtedly, a member of talents for the new generation: chefs more or less all the same age, who will be the great chefs of tomorrow; chefs that follow the only rule of “free expression of Italian cuisine” as Valentino says – a young chef who now soars among the stars. Among the Michelin stars, that is.
Article by Simona Sirianni