At 37, cooking for 500 people, statesmen, entrepreneurs, artists, diplomats, scientists, Nobel laureates, exponents of the political and cultural world gathered in Milan from all over the world to attend at the inauguration of the Teatro alla Scala the evening of December 7, an appointment on the international calendar, is not for everyone. In the exclusive rooms of the Società Del Giardino, an obligatory rendezvous for VIPs for an after-theater dinner, where the opera just seen is commented on but important relationships are also forged that decide politics, careers and business, this honor if score of the greatest starred chefs, from Milan and beyond.
Then the other year, for the premiere of Attila, he arrived, Daniel Canzian, with his 37 years, originally from Valdobbiadene, chef and discreet and measured owner of a trendy restaurant in the very central Via San Marco in less than ten minutes on foot from the Teatro alla Scala, leading a brigade of over twenty chefs, distributed in the three kitchens of the historic building to satisfy the demanding palates of the noble public.
A good bet also for the organizers of the evening. But Canzian, not starred, even if for some time now it seems to smell like a star, had good quarters of virtual gastronomic nobility to put on the scale, those of having been pupil and collaborator of the great Gualtiero Marchesi, who had opened his Marchesino at La Scala.
It was his official consecration among the great chefs not only from Milan but from Italy.
The long association with Gualtiero Marchesi
That Marchesi had qualities he understood immediately. Calm in manners, very polite, very far from the stereotype of the spotlight Chef, protagonist, self-referential, arrogant, Daniele Canzian, son of art (his parents had restaurant Sapio, Lignano Sabbiadoro) cultivated a great passion for reading from an early age and for music and above all for external and internal reflection. Which is a bit rare these days. He was immediately appreciated by Marchesi – whom he continues to call Mr. Marchesi with sacred respect even today – because his culture was directed towards the “nature” of cooking, respect for raw materials, the passion for seasonality that had taught by his parents and that he had developed over time to almost the level of a religious belief.
Marchesi himself had told him one day seeing him work that he appreciated it "because the authorship of the dish no longer exists". The most beautiful compliment that could be expected from a grand master of haute cuisine who has always believed in the evolution of the recipe, distrusting creative cooks who wake up with the Idea in mind. That dish lived on its own light and not on reflected light.
To tell the truth, his beginnings had not been the most fortunate. Despite having a passion for cooking from an early age in the family restaurant, learning the basics from his father and uncle who ran the stove, Daniel still remembers his first official outing in the kitchen. He tells it like this: “A disaster! I was 15, it was in the afternoon. Captain in the restaurant three Americans asking for a pizza and my uncle (pizza chef) was not there. What to do? I immediately set to work. But they came out with a hole! The guests ate them anyway. Looking at me, they understood my state of mind and very elegantly complimented me on my tenacity”.
The first steps with starred restaurants
The tenacity, which his mountain upbringing wrote in large letters in his DNA, didn't make him break down, far from it. And it prompted him to immediately enroll in the Vittorio Veneto Hotel Institute: something like this should never happen again. Once the Alberghiero was finished, Canzian looks around and the first 'high-sounding' name that appears to him is that of Graziano Prest, Michelin star, who inherited the legacy of the great Walter Bianconi at the Tivoli in Cortina d'Ampezzo, one of the brightest signs in the gastronomic panorama of the "queen of the Dolomites" where the patron chef demonstrates - according to the Guide - that he is at ease with tradition.
Canzian doesn't think twice, he leaves, introduces himself, and begins to understand what high-level cuisine is. From Cortina the next step is al Dolada restaurant in the Belluno area where Enzo del Pra, another Michelin star, carries out a gastronomic line dedicated to research, but respecting the flavors of the local tradition. “When tradition and modernity – underline the judges of the Rossa – coexist happily”.
Tradition and Research, two categorical imperatives which from that moment on directed Canzian's professional career without hesitation.
But it is the meeting with Gualtiero Marchesi that marks him deeply. An encounter that has the flavor of a confluence of the young Canzian in the great river of gastronomic culture of Marchesi "which founded and totally formed my vision of cooking".
From an internship at the Albereta to executive chef of the Marchesi Group
It happens in 2005. As if to tell when dreams come true. Canzian proposes himself for an internship at the legendary “Albereta” in Franciacorta, kingdom of Gualtiero Marchesi. He is taken and from that moment the young aspiring Chef slowly but progressively starts his spiritual elevation to the culinary verb of the great Master. First intern, then commis, then game manager. Until Gualtiero Marchesi, who after years of absence from Milan returned to the Lombard capital where, in 2008, he opened the "Marchesino" in Piazza della Scala, he considers him so trustworthy that he is placed there as 'Executive Chef. Canzian is only 28 years old and is skyrocketing. But that is not all. Because the cultural unison that has developed since his entry to the Albarella becomes something more of a collaborative relationship with the master, to the point that the latter three years later entrusts Canzian with the coordination, as executive chef, of the Marchesi Group.
Nine uninterrupted years of fruitful collaboration and assimilation of Marchesian concepts give him awareness, strength and confidence to open his own space in Brera. The detachment is painful but it is not a separation, it could not be such after a strong emotional and professional union that lasted two decades. And in fact Marchesi, a little out of affection, a little intrigued by the footsteps of his favorite pupil, continues to follow him. Often in the last years of Marchesi's life, he crosses the threshold of the Canzian restaurant to sit at the counter like a common customer to drink an herbal tea, to exchange a few words with those he met in the restaurant, to nibble on some dishes (what an honor to make your legs tremble! To taste Canzian's tomato broth that he liked very much, or that of "citrus flavored chicken" under the admiring and fearful eyes of the restaurant staff). With the modesty that is typical of him, Canzian comments: ”He was fine with us, that's all. One day I learned from someone who had said: Daniel can make a dish that doesn't fit my idea of cooking but since he did it, I trust him and therefore it's fine. The best, I think."
Of this extraordinary relationship and above all of the influence that Marchesi had on Canzian today remains a Manifesto of Contemporary Italian Cuisine in which Canzian elaborated all the concepts assimilated in his growth and training path. It is very long and this reflects his meticulousness in wanting to sort out all the concepts that formed him with the precision of a university professor, because for him the kitchen is like a work of art, in which every detail has its own reason , is the result of a thought, and not of chance, it has a fundamental function even though it is part of a fundamental whole.
The Chef starts from afar to explain his thoughts: "Almost 2000 years ago Seneca maintained that, when the recipes were not "corrupted by the pretensions of pleasure", the human body was healthier and stronger while with the introduction of infinite sauces and condiments “what was food for hungry diners became a burden for sated stomachs”. Even Mr. Marchesi, with his subtraction process, highlighted how the key to appreciating the true flavor of a pigeon breast was precisely separating it from the sauce”.
From which it follows that the superior inspiring principle of his cuisine is the recovery of essentiality combined with the enhancement of the natural taste of raw materials: “Picasso said he spent a lifetime learning to draw as a child, translating a natural and emotional technique into a painting. For the chef, creating a dish by recognizing only the law of balance imposed by nature encompasses the same thought and is the secret for tracing the path of cooking in the near future”.
Nature as the main rule of the Renaissance of Italian cuisine
Another fundamental point is the strict respect of the seasons which are the basis of sustainability in respect of the rhythms of nature, which uniquely allow us to safeguard the excellence of a rich territory such as the Italian one.
And Canzian has always applied this: “Since 2013 I have worked with forty different suppliers distributed throughout the country, capable of guaranteeing me the freshness and quality of the ingredients based on seasonal availability. Furthermore, in my cooking I do not use any fish that is not of Mediterranean origin: anchovies and mackerel, for example, are nutritious and not farmed".
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, painter and lover of gastronomy, claimed that to become "chefs without prejudice" one must recognize nature as the main rule.
Canzian echoes him today: “It is necessary to "restore" tradition in order to look to the future. I like to think that, once the techniques and basics of traditional cuisine have been perfectly learned, the time comes to put them aside to move forward, since tradition does not mean "remaking the past", but it is the unique ending from which two nouns start: translate and betray. To translate the past into the future it is necessary to betray it and, in Toulouse-Lautrec's words, "it is not necessary to do it out of ignorance or negligence" but to evolve knowledge and reach a new awareness."
In practice these principles translate into revival of regional recipes that the Chef "restores" - still a concept linked to art - "lightening and simplifying them to make them appreciable by contemporary palates".
Obviously in this religious concept, almost wholesomely maniacal of tradition, its essentiality and its infinite expressive capabilities, all forms of contamination which are so fashionable today with esoteric gastronomic cultures are banned.
Canzian has no qualms about making himself champion of a battle for the purity of Italian cuisine: “Today we find ourselves contaminated by a series of different cultures far from ours which stimulate us to learn about new techniques and flavours, but we cannot forget the great value of a Sicilian, Tuscan, Abruzzo or Milanese dish. Italian cuisine – according to Canzian – has what it takes to be great, it has exceptional products and great chefs. After the Expo, it was finally understood that Italian cuisine cannot be relegated to cheap trattorias and restaurants but that our gastronomic culture, which is the basis of the Mediterranean diet, must be raised. I am convinced that there are the ideal conditions for presenting top-level Italian cuisine to the world. Let's take an example from France, where there are classic recipes that everyone knows and which form the basis of the success of their cuisine”.
In short, for Canzian the high level achieved by Italian chefs can be the starting point for re-evaluating our traditional cuisine provided you abandon fashions and reinterpretations. “Now more than ever, our techniques, our thoughts, our recipes, our ideas must be exported with pride. I am convinced that regionalization in a few years will be normal for us". But starting from one indispensable assumption, namely that "nature is the main rule of the future". Words from the Renaissance of Italian cuisine.
And then it will be clear what was the great teaching of Marchesi and of those who have taken up the baton.
