It is in Rome the best ice cream pastry bar of the year. It's Grué in Viale Regina Margherita. Marta Boccanera and Felice Venanzi's restaurant won first place at the 2019 Barawards which were held at the IBM Studios in Milan, the new technological district opened by the multinational in the heart of Milan, as "Bar Pastry Gelateria of the Year", distinguishing itself between the many competing for its excellence in products, customer care and hospitality.
The Barawards 2019 is the award aimed at enhancing professionalism and innovation in Italian bars, restaurants and hotels, promoted by the magazines Bargiornale, Restaurants, Dolcegiornale and Webar.
Gruè's pastry idea is to enhance the tradition of the great Italian desserts, however, giving them an important, more contemporary aesthetic that responds to precise canons. A return to great patisserie in a contemporary key: we return to work according to the canons of the past (when there were no ready-made preparations, and each dough was produced in its own laboratory in a peculiar and unique way, with small defects that made it different from the others) influenced but from French and Japanese techniques, which have redefined the importance of beauty in the perfection of desserts. Therefore very high quality in the basic products (flours, butter, natural flavourings, absolutely homemade productions) to ensure that the aesthetic excellence is also a sign of the absolute selection of the raw materials.
It was a big challenge at first. A challenge destined to be won by Marta Boccanera and Felice Venanzi who were inspired by the greatest masters of Italian and international pastry, each for its own peculiar characteristic: Iginio Massari for the rigor of the products, Luigi Biasetto for the technology used and Pierre Hermè , in Paris, for innovation and research.
Marta and Felice's sweets are born from an idea born, perhaps, while walking in front of a shop window, looking at the color of a dress, the texture of the fabric, the texture of the fabric. Back to the laboratory with the idea of a cake that recreates that same tint, obtained from exclusively seasonal products, seeking the balance to give textures and perfumes that recreate the sensation of silk, regulating the doses so that an excellent taste is achieved . A long journey, made up of trials, criticisms, tastings.
An example is that of Noisette, a classic, where you can find good single-origin chocolate, with a prized hazelnut inside (the Gentile del Piemonte), which underwent dozens of improvements and processes before becoming what it is today. We played on shades (because Gruè desserts are never a single colour) and on textures: from creamy to crunchy, to soft and gelatinous, to highlight every flavour.
Gruè is today a large modern pastry shop, ice cream shop, savory gastronomy and cafeteria.
All Gruè desserts are produced in the 300m15 laboratory located under the pastry shop, at a controlled temperature where XNUMX pastry chefs work. The laboratory is divided into three rooms corresponding to the pastry sectors. In the first room, the largest, all the cooked pastry production is concentrated, such as all the bases for cakes, sponge cakes, biscuits and shortcrust pastry. The second room is dedicated to the processing of chocolate for cakes and pralines.
Here is positioned the RoboQbo, an advanced machine that is able to cook, cool, knead, cut, homogenize, pulverize any type of food product in just a few minutes, giving results of extraordinary quality. In fact, the product is kept intact and its scents and colors are enhanced in a totally natural way. It was an investment in technology to make pastry bases more precise and technically perfect. The third room, the coldest, is that of the refrigerators and blast chillers and here the negative and positive conservation of the preparations is concentrated.
"The entire laboratory - says Marta Boccanegra - is always perfectly organized and it is possible to visit it for all the patrons of the pastry shop (in compliance with the hygiene rules): only in this way can one understand what the daily work of the pastry shop means!".
This is where the iconic sweets of the Viale Regina Margherita pastry shop are born: first of all, Torta Gruè, a basic crunchy made with a hazelnut praline and milk chocolate, a chocolate sponge cake (bisque), a single-origin Caribbean chocolate mousse 66 % with a very intense flavor, enhanced by an infusion of cocoa grue (the seeds of the cocoa beans) with cream. Inside there is a Chantilly cream flavored with Tahiti Vanille Grand Cru Bora Bora vanilla (the most prestigious and awarded in the world with two gold medals in 2019), which releases accents of tropical volcanic earth and aromas of plum, vanilla , licorice and chocolate. And then the Torta Marta created for Felice Venanzi's entry into AMPI, the Academy of Italian Pastry Chefs, the Babà, and the infinite variety of mignons.
