If you think of sitting down at a table to enjoy an even excellent dinner, thinking of something else, well here, at Davide Palluda's restaurant on the first floor of a central XNUMXth-century building, a room as modern as it is essential in Canale in the province of Cuneo, you are wrong big. Here you don't stop to eat but it's like sitting virtually in a four-horse Landau to go along old paths to discover the Roero, a territory full of charm, a romantic trip down memory lane of this historic Piedmontese region of peasant people, famous for its high quality wines, for its truffles, for its traditional cuisine, for its hazelnuts, for its honey, and its fascinating ancient villages, which has suffered, over the centuries, a little shade from the most aristocratic Langhe, but which appears intent on redefining its own territorial identity especially after having obtained its inclusion in UNESCO together with the Langhe and Monferrato, in the list of goods of the World Heritage Site.
Who takes you on this virtual journey is an almost fifty-year-old Chef, Davide Palluda, so rooted and in love with his territory that he has chosen the kitchen as a sort of book to leaf through to enter its deepest essence and identity. And he did it so well that he earned a Michelin star which is, in his case, a tribute to his search for simplicity, even in a modern vision of life.
Cooking as a story through the wisdom of anonymous peasant housewives
His cuisine is, in fact, a story of the territory and of the home wisdom of many anonymous peasant housewives, which you will be able to observe as looking out from its virtual Landau, but in the present, what appears to you from the windows, transferred to the gastronomic level, does not in the least indulge in nostalgia and is not enclosed in the comfortable elegy of tradition and the past. Far from it, because its menu, which religiously follows the seasons of the Langa and Roero, opens instead at contaminations of colors and flavors, which are the result of travel, research, creativity, in a nutshell it turns into a highly topical menu.
Obviously the categorical imperative here is respect for the quality of the ingredients, both noble and poor, pursued with an insatiable yearning for their most authentic expression. The relationship with fruit and wine is inseparable: a tribute to a land blessed by Heaven and with excellent products throughout the year.
No wonder at this point that the Michelin guide defines its own restaurant an undisputed point of reference for refined gourmets for its colorful and creative cuisine, emphasizing how the springboard for many dishes are the extraordinary Piedmontese products to which, however, are also added those of the Ligurian sea in original interpretations. In short, a high quality cuisine that deserves a stop.
Getting to this level was no cakewalk. Let's say right away that Palluda is not born in the family: his father was a mechanic, had an Iveco and then a Mercedes dealership, dealt with trucks while his mother ran a clothing store. Logical that the young Palluda, a model student at school, thought as a child that when he grew up he would be a mechanic. Then growing up he changed his opinion, perhaps influenced by some television drama where the doctors are all beautiful, handsome and fascinate pretty girls: he thought that perhaps it would have been more interesting to be a doctor rather than tinkering with pulleys and pistons. Until at the age of 15, thanks to his father, a gourmet and lover of quality products (certainly not a difficult exercise in these parts) he decides that cooking will be the course of his life.
A decision that was not immediate because the young Davide began attending the Barolo hotel management school, initially thinking simply of learning to cook and then doing something else. However, along the way curiosity turned into interest, the somewhat elaborate first course that he prepared himself, crepes with mushrooms, (“they came out very well”, he still remembers) made him turn on a light bulb. And the interest soon became a real passion. For this he thought well to begin to widen his horizons of him. At the cooking classes he had pastry and bread-making courses followed to ensure a dynamic mental formation of an all-round kitchen.
His choices are shrewd for the first experiences that have marked his professional growth. The first great chef who welcomes him into his kitchen brigade is Giorgio Rocca di Felicin in Monforte in the province of Alba. A restaurant-institution founded in 1927 by Felicin father and which Giorgio Rocca had inherited transforming it, thanks to the experience of many trips abroad, into a restaurant sanctuary in the Langhe, frequented by an international clientele.
If the first impression was exciting, the next move from Pina Beglia at the Balzi Rossi in Ventimiglia, the most important restaurant in Ligurian history, loved even by the great Alain Ducasse, which could boast two Michelin stars in its bag of awards, is nothing short of exciting. But beyond his enthusiasm, young Davide also aims to give himself a systemic vision of his culinary philosophy. The rigor that still characterizes his way of cooking comes from his passage to the legendary restaurant Le Cerf by Michel Husser in Marlenheim in Alsace, Palluda has the opportunity to see an international chef at work, heir to a starred family who dictates the law in the world. Three Michelin stars, winner of the prestigious title of Iron Chef in 1999 (in Japan), winner of the Bernard Loiseau Award in 2016. President of Les Etoiles d'Alsace flagship of Alsatian gastronomy, Husser, one who declares “The values I defend the correctness of taste and respect for the products, my generous and modern cuisine is inspired by the seasons and the terroir, all combined with the technicality of the Great French Cuisine, of which I was one of the very young candidates in the 90s” becomes a experience that leaves a strong mark.
Paladin of a rediscovered territorial cultural identity
Sunny and curious in character, "even if sometimes a little moody" - these are his words - Davide Palluda, with this wealth of experience, was finally able to open in 1995 with his sister Ivana, the restaurant "All'Enoteca", annexed to the Regional Enoteca of Roero, based in Canale. Finally the Roero that is in his blood can be translated, put into practice, metabilized into a series of gustatory sensations at the tables of his restaurant. “I was just 24 – he remembers with emotion – but dreams and enthusiasm to spare. And I jumped on that first headcount project to enhance the Roero wine and food civilization, hitherto inhibited by the notoriety of the sister hills of the Langa”. At the end of five years, his place conquered a strong momentum. In 2000 he was judged the best young chef of the year by the L'Espresso guide, in the same year he also received the Michelin star. By now he is a standard bearer of the values of his land, he feels invested with the role of architect of the enhancement of the civilization of the Boero table. The restaurant is no longer enough for him to demonstrate all that the land offers, a few years later, with his wife Annalisa, married in the year of Michelin star and the election as young chef of the year – as in a sort of cabalistic completion of the fortunes of his life – he also opens the “DP” laboratory. “Canale and Roero – he admits with a real declaration of love for the land that gave him his birth – have nourished my dreams and accompanied my ambitions as a chef. I am aware of it and grateful. For this I have done everything to reciprocate: always in the saddle at work and in the kitchen, chef-champion of the territory and its rediscovered cultural identity".
His project becomes all-round, you go to Canale to experience moments of great emotion at the table but you return home bringing the memory of that land, studied and elaborated products, combined by merging raw materials, technology and research from "DB". His laboratory is a sign of homage to tradition, together with the desire to preserve over time what has an ephemeral life in the restaurant with the aim "of maintaining the freshness and delicacy of the taste and primary aromas and with two inspiring reflections as old as man: the beautiful idea of one season thinking of the next and the concept/dream of maintaining quality over time”. Said by someone who said: "I have a goal that will commit me for life: get as close as possible to the flavor of Sister Angela's vegetable minestrone, the cook of the kindergarten years", you can believe it.
What to want more? Three children, Francesco, Vittoria and Cecilia who crown the marital happiness of Annalisa and Davide. His inspiration from the "villager" principles, his passion for the values of the peasant family that have been handed down over time, lead him to love his family extremely much, Annalisa, above all "a fantastic wife who has never made me weigh my work and my absences” and puts these principles into practice, in his experience, deciding right from the beginning of his career as a top chef to always set aside time to cultivate domestic atmospheres. “ I decided to close on Sundays 20 years ago to dedicate myself to my family and so I continued to do so. I also close every time the kids are on vacation, Christmas, New Year's, August XNUMX and …”.
The only passion he allows himself, but only in his spare time, is to run, the only impulse he can't resist is rooting for Juventus “I am a Juventus fan and I go to the stadium frequently”.
The rest of his life is in the kitchen, at the stove to express a kitchen without complications. Outspoken, firmly anchored to the territory but not rhetorical and static. A cuisine that focuses on the material “from which I extract the soul in search of the essence. In the awareness that the search for personal style "is the most complicated path for a chef and it takes years and a lot of work to find, define and keep it alive".
And if you want to see all of his philosophy translated into practice, just taste his stuffed pasta "I worked a lot on it as it is a strong tradition in our area subject to continuous comparisons", or Il fassone dalla testa ai piedi a dish dedicated to the fassona breed , 6 tastings of all those parts incriminated in the mad cow disease period and, to close, the Vanilla and Pink Grapefruit Soufflé which comes from "a great technical gesture that perfectly combines all our thinking".
Odorado Spadaro in 1939 brought to success a song that recited: "How delicious it is to go on a wheelchair" ... if you put Palluda on that Landau's tape, a satisfying journey into the soul of Roero between tradition and innovation, peasant wisdom and modern taste, documentation and research, it is assured.
