I don't know what you think, but from an 11-year-old girl who takes over the family stove and brings out a plate of "pork chops with cognac, pineapple and crispy bacon", what could one expect great? You will find the answer by going to Sappada, a picture-postcard town nestled in the Dolomites between Cadore and Carnia on the border between Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, surrounded by pastures and coniferous woods, waterfalls and alpine lakes where capercaillie, pheasant mountain, the ptarmigan, the ermine, the red fox, the alpine hare and the squirrel. In this fairy-tale landscape there is a restaurant obtained from an old stone and wood building dating back to the 600s which in 1997 two young men "beautiful and ardent with each other" but above all in love with that pristine area which is a triumph of nature, they created a gourmet restaurant on which a Michelin star rested, the Laite.
The kitchens of that restaurant are the realm of Fabrizia Meroi, the little girl of chops who has done so much professionally since then, while the dining room is the undisputed territory of her life partner Roberto Brovedani, Sommelier of the Year in 2015 for the Guide “The Espresso Restaurants of Italy. The name of the restaurant "Laite" is already a calling card of Fabrizia Meroi's cuisine, in Sappadino with this term, derived from the medieval German spoken in Austria around the year XNUMX, the steep meadows attached to the rocks are defined. And therefore this restaurant speaks of the history of these lands, their perfumes, their herbs. It is no coincidence that Fabrizia has more than a passion for the herbs of her mountains, a real cult. Walking with her in the woods is an unforgettable experience. She knows how to recognize one of more than fifty different species of vegetables and she knows how to describe their aroma, flavor and suggest possible combinations in the kitchen.
“I haven't done any specific courses – she admitted in a recent interview – I'm an amateur. But I'm in love with herbs: in a small size, in a leaflet, there is an extraordinary strength. I love them all, but lovage, in my opinion, is really my herb! If you know it well, you can use it to best enhance many courses: appetizers, first courses, meats, desserts…”.
After all, the story of his profession seems to follow the rhythm of a walk in the park where small discoveries and small steps are made little by little, with a pace cadenced by the joy of the natural elements which then combine splendidly in the its preparations.
In fact, it was by chance that, when he decided to move from his native Cividale del Friuli for an internship in a restaurant in Sappada, he met Roberto; it was by chance that the two, eager to build a common path for themselves, thought of catering, more than anything else to test themselves by transferring to the table what they saw by looking around on their walks.
“At a certain point we said to ourselves – recalls Fabrizia – that it would be nice to open a small restaurant where Roberto would take care of the reception and the wine/dining room service, and I would take care of the kitchen. The distribution of our roles was instinctive without any fear, I really liked cooking but I had never thought about it before that this passion could become something more concrete. The nice thing is that neither of us thought too much about success or the future, but we lived the present with enthusiasm, always trying to improve ourselves".
Sure those chops cooked at 11 had a sense. Even today she declares herself satisfied even if they didn't find the enthusiasm of her relatives: “in my opinion they were really very interesting, for my family it was a good but daring dish. My dad stated that he personally wasn't very inclined for too particular foods ”.
Just as the effect that a gourmand dinner with her family had on her at the age of 12, “at a restaurant near her home where I tasted various dishes, very different from those of my mother (without detracting from anything). Some of them, rather exotic and strange… tickled my sight, smell but, above all, my mind. I remember a turtle broth, a stuffed porcini mushroom chapel, flambéed pineapple”. In short, a predestination was in the air even if it would manifest itself much later.
Curiosity, here, is one of the main characteristics of her character that she carries with her from her youthful passions of a slightly shy and dreamy girl. “I have always loved animals – she says – and I wanted to be close to them, help people, make myself useful to make them feel better in any form or genre. At the same time, she attracted me a lot to painting, art, the whim of being. I've always wanted to travel, discover new places." Perhaps all of this came from her Cividale origins, a city that has changed its belonging and cultures over time: first Venetian, then Napoleonic, then Austro-Hungarian, then Austrian and finally Italian. A past that marks you, that broadens your mind to new things, but that also teaches you to temper choices and emotions.
“There have always been many good things in my house, even though as a child I never had much of an appetite. Thanks to the vegetable garden, the orchard and the farmyard animals close at hand, I had the opportunity to taste and memorize the tastes and scents, the consistencies of pure materials picked at the right time at km0, manipulated by the expert hands of my mother, who cooked above all for pleasure".
So the meeting with Roberto in 1987 was a convict if these memories of sensations, atmospheres, perceptions took shape and consistency, three years later, in their first restaurant opened in Sappada: the "Keisn" a Sappada word once used common, today almost unknown to the younger generations, a way to underline the strong link with the territory. And this is the moment in which from the heart and mind of Fabrizia, who likes to define herself as a "self-taught cook", the memories of her childhood resurface forcefully when she had two valid teachers, her mother and her maternal grandmother, who ran a renowned tavern in Cividale .
From that moment on, Fabrizia's life took a much different turn than the slow walks through the Dolomite woods. Cooking is something that allows her to express three feelings that she has always carried within her: curiosity, creativity, courage.
Little Keisn, born almost in a whisper, like a child who comes as a surprise rather than a long-desired one, immediately takes flight. People like to delve into the culinary journeys of the chef who put the old gastronomic traditions of the area in an effervescent and creative light, and they also like Roberto's fundamental contribution in knowing how to assist you with great familiar professionalism in recommending reasoned pairings with a cellar that has built a bottle after bottle with unique pieces.
At this point, the self-taught Fabrizia begins, as a good mountaineer, to see the top of the mountain of quality catering, and begins to climb it with determination, making prudent choices as is in her character. The beginning is a 15-day internship with Enzo de Prà of the Dolada restaurant in Belluno, "where I was able to see how to operate in a real restaurant". The next step is an internship with Gianfranco Vissani at Casa Vissani in Baschi, “very useful as regards the assembly of ingredients”. Then it was the turn of Cosetti's legendary Roma in Tolmezzo, with a Michelin star, of which Luigi Veronelli wrote: he is «the most modern cook Italy has ever had, because first of all he intuited the absolute value of its herbs, its mushrooms, the products of its pastures». From here she went to Sissy Sonnleiter in Mauthen, the refined country house frequented by an exclusive public, from which the starred Austrian chef developed the so-called Alpine-Adriatic cuisine. Let's have a couple more international meetings at Madrid Fusion, the great multicultural event where internationally renowned chefs and promising newcomers from all over the world meet, and we have thus completed the training course of Fabrizia Meroi who in the meantime has joined the circuit of Jeune Restauranteurs d'Europe, won the Three Forks of Gambero Rosso, and obtained the coveted vote of 18/20 from the Espresso Restaurant Guide.
Finally in 1997 the long-awaited great goal, the Michelin Star.
The old Keisn is now decidedly close to the Meroi-Brovedani duo. A suggestive location of seventeenth-century origin for one part, not large but full of charm and peasant history, with an immense stube to warm up the atmosphere, becomes the ideal place to continue the climb and concentrate more and more on quality. And two years after the opening of the restaurant, the Michelin star arrives again. Without fail. By now Fabrizia Meroi sits at the table of the great Italian chefs, she is one of the 44 Italian chefs at the head of starred restaurants. There are only 141 in the whole world. His climb continues unabated. A few more years and Fabrizia Meroi receives from Michelin – it's recent history, we're in 2018 – the Michelin Female Chef of the Year Award. A good result, no doubt about it.
Motivation is a beautiful medal that can be pinned to the chest: “The years of training in Friuli, Veneto and Carinthia have built up his gastronomic knowledge. The flavors of these lands and the products of each season characterize his menus. She works with simplicity and precision, offering a suggestive experience of local gastronomy with a decisive feminine touch both in the flavors and in the combinations. An experience that conquered the inspectors as well as anyone who sits at her table ”.
In a restaurant or picking fragrant herbs, alone in the snow or in a moment of family serenity: it is from everyday life that Fabrizia finds inspiration to imagine, create and perfect her dishes. At the roots of her cuisine are scents, colours, flavors and sensations linked to the territory and the seasons, combined and reinterpreted by an instinctive sensibility, refined in over thirty years of activity, study and research.
“The seasons dictate our menus,” says Fabrizia. For the Sappada of tourism there were once two, the summer one and the winter one. All four triumph at Laite, each with its own products, its perfumes, its flavours. When Sappada wears its autumn livery, mushrooms, game, chestnuts return to the Laite menu…
And every perfume, every flavour, every ingredient must be felt in his dishes, sometimes forgotten flavours, which then suddenly take flight in compositions where every initial contrast dissolves in a delicate balance. As happens in his Cod, fennel, milk "a different thought that represents the primary nourishment in different shapes and textures" in his Tortello all'uovo which is a real explosion of sweetness and flavor or in the dark deer, tubers and roots " maximum expression of my territory, recreates a walk in the woods”.
