Igles Corelli, five stars out of the pack always looking ahead

With that improbable name, someone called Igles could only be destined to become a voice out of the choir. As if his parents, owners of a restaurant in Alfonsine, about forty kilometers from Brisighella, one of the most beautiful villages in Italy, land of Sangiovese, home of the Moretto artichoke, blackberry salami and marzolino truffle, had already intended their unborn child to stand out in carrying the name of the inn high over time, a hereditary witness in the sign of the taste of the products of the Modenese Apennines.

What is certain is that Igles Corelli, sixty-four years old, with his Emilia-Romagna smile always printed on his curly face, on which, as a habit, he sometimes loves to wear Wertmuller-style colored glasses, in his long, intense career as a great Chef, has surpassed the expectations his parents placed on him. For starters at 9 years old he was so in love with his tiny hometown, Filo di Argenta, that behind a war memorial he left a prophetic inscription during his games: “I will do everything to make you great”. And she gave it her all.

Histrionic, unpredictable, provocateur, innovator, restless, rebellious, destabilizing, irreverent: they have defined him in ten thousand ways in all these years and they are always reductive adjectives of his multifaceted personality, always poised between a tradition that he intends to keep alive and current in his cuisine and a future that constantly reinvents itself day by day , without ever passing through a present which for him, in the kitchen, is just a philosophical concept, the antechamber of something to come. It almost seems to recall an old claim of a famous goldsmith brand from Arezzo in the seventies that had invented the catchphrase: I love you "more than yesterday, less than tomorrow".

And certain is that we are faced with one of the great protagonists of the history of Italian cuisine, one who traced history, together with his great friend, first teacher then competitor Walter Marchesi. One that sinks its cultural origins in two sacred monsters of catering, Nino Bergese, nicknamed "the cook of kings, the king of cooks" for having lent his services to the high Italian aristocracy, and the great international industrialists, who led the "San Domenico" of Imola to become a monument of Italian catering in those years, and Valentino Mercattilli trained at the school of the great Troisgros, Roger Vergé, father of nouvelle cuisine  and Mado Point, and who at the "San Domenico" in New York became ambassador of Italian cuisine to the greats of the world, heads of state, politicians, industrialists, actors, singers.

Corelli has it in his blood to stand out from the crowd. From an early age, when after finishing her studies at the hotel management school in Brisighella and making her first practices in the kitchen of his parents' restaurant, she had decided to go to work on cruise ships that sailed between the United States and the Caribbean. A decisive experience for his career, getting to know new worlds, new cultures but above all having an immediate impact on a frenetic reality such as that of the world of ships. “You learned much more than in a restaurant, an all-round school because you went from kneading the bread to working the meat. But above all the most important lesson was to be able to face crisis situations in the face of the most unexpected difficulties. I still remember that during a crossing we encountered a very, very strong sea. It all came crashing down, a real disaster. But at dinner time the guests had to eat, and in no time at all we had to reinvent the whole catering process”. 

Trigabolo di Argenta, a unique experience that has given birth to 21 starred chefs

At the beginning of the 80s, when a large part of our northern cuisine was anchored to the glories of tradition (the southern one would explode later) and the great Ferran Adrià began to take his first steps in the then unknown restaurant "El Bulli" in Roses on the Costa Brava, ours was already an uncontrolled explosion at the stove of Trigabolo di Argenta. The writing he had left on the war memorial has not remained a dead letter. Corelli is the head of a fierce kitchen brigade, a real laboratory of culinary inventions that pulls dishes that have remained in the memory of many out of the hat. He is only 22 years old, he surrounds himself with a group of young people full of ideas, eager to make it big who respond to the name of Bruno Barbieri, Italo Bassi, Pierluigi Di Diego, Mauro Gualandi, Marcello and Luca Leoni, just to mention a few, who form with him a real cenacle, a magic circle that lives only with a view to giving a new face and new flavors to the kitchen. An astral phenomenon that perhaps will never repeat itself again. If he's 22, the others are all sixteen or seventeen. When the owner of the restaurant Giacinto Rossetti wanted to take them around to study the kitchens of the great restaurants it was a problem for transport, Corelli was the only one who had a licence. “Our day was entirely focused on food, we only thought about how to cook, it was a cheerful game that occupied all our thoughts, even if we went to a tennis match or to the disco or with the girl we were always focused on food for do something new. And I have to say from a pizzeria, because when we arrived, it was a pizzeria in 13 years we managed to bring the Trigabolo to be judged the second Italian restaurant behind Marchesi even if at first for a "chapeau" we had received we savored the thrill of getting on the podium... They recognized us as the most creative restaurant ever". And it is not a case 21 starred chefs have come out of that experience, which lasted fourteen years.  Federico Umberto d' Amato, creator of the Espresso Guide described Trigabolo in 1982 as follows: "... one arrives in an improbable, lunar square, as if it sprang from the metaphysical fantasy of a naive De Chirico... at the door one of the partners acting as host, big and thick like a character from Pulci or Rabelais… his whimsical gastrosophies that the young chef Igles Corelli manages to transform into delicious uses are the exact opposite of the salama da sugo, the pumpkin cappellacci and the cappelletti in broth…” and that is “… vegetable terrine in tomato sauce and Champagne vinegar… hot prawn, mushroom and chervil puff pastry… sole zabaglione with green pepper… “. It is a laboratory that revolutionises and surprises, collects numerous awards, and soon captivates two stars in the Michelin Guide. For 14 years Corelli churns out inventions from Trigabolo: it is he and the very talented young Vissani who are blowing a breath of fresh air into Italian cuisine. They are years in which Carlo Petrini spreads the gospel of the dish that to be good, as well as being cooked well, it must also be clean and fair, and Luigi Veronelli travels far and wide to promote the diffusion of the Italian food and wine heritage. Corelli is in the midst of this new philosophy of eating.

After 14 years Corelli decides to open a new chapter in his life, it is the turn of the Locanda della Tamerice in Ostellato immersed in a sort of natural park. At the end of the 80s, experimentation in professional kitchens was a fact. The new is overwhelmingly making its way among our most shrewd chefs. Corelli tamong the first in Italy to discover the pacoject, a revolutionary and avant-garde machine for the times, then the vacuum, not only used for storage but also for cooking. Will follow the use of distillers, of smokers and ultrasounds, just to name a few. A rapid and unstoppable evolution that is expressed in various forms, such as in the work of Ferran Adrià, where technique and morphosis become almost obsessive, or with Heston Blumenthal, a self-taught English chef awarded three Michelin stars since 2004, considered one of the main exponents of molecular gastronomy, where the experience involves all the senses, or Rene Razpecki and the new Nordic Cuisine, where the collection of wild products becomes the fulcrum of the kitchen.

“In those years – Corelli recalls today – I involuntarily acquired a rich collection of visual, olfactory, gustatory, sound memories. A collection enriched by encounters and readings, by mistakes and successes. A gastronomic memory that inevitably conditions my approach to cooking today. How the products, cleaned, cut, preserved and cooked, react to the various treatments and how they interact with each other, both from an organoleptic, aesthetic and socio-cultural point of view”.

The years of Garibaldi's cuisine

It is clear that we have entered a new cultural and professional dimension of being a Chef, no longer just a food maker but a discoverer of the essence of matter and an exalter of its infinite possibilities. And Italy is a huge deposit of materials that are unique in the world.

These were the years of the "Cucina Garibaldina", as Corelli calls it, to describe his personal approach to cooking "made up of research for the best products that our beautiful country produces, a cuisine that unites”.

However, his cuisine is always evolving, and inevitably becomes more complex and articulated. “Today my approach to a product, be it a fennel or a prawn, is the same. I see the product as a complex entity, made up of various parts, sometimes obvious and visible, others not immediately distinguishable. I use each part to obtain different preparations that can culminate in a single dish or be dispersed in a multitude of different preparations”.

Even the experience of Tamerice lasts 14 years and arrives a new Michelin star.

From 2010 to 2017 Corelli moved to Tuscany, he was the executive chef of the Atman restaurant in Pescia, his research work and the rigor of the service were recognized and rewarded with a new Michelin star.

Also in those years he moved to Lamporecchio in the province of Pistoia, bringing with him the name of the Atman restaurant and also his deputy in Pescia. And guess what? Capture another Michelin star. And we are at five!

Books, TV formats, cooking classes at the Città del Gusto, an all-round activity

Between one star and another, enthusiastically indefatigable, Corelli also finds the time to write 11 cookbooks, in which the territory and the rediscovery of gastronomic traditions always excel. In "Il Gusto di Igles", he presents 60 zero-waste recipes, a theme that for him almost becomes an obsession, in which he proposes a simple and natural cuisine that uses 100% ingredients, even the part considered waste with very few fats, lots of aromatic herbs, plays on textures and temperatures, drawing a new culinary horizon that brings together the good, the healthy and the eco-sustainable. With "Di Zucca in Zucca" he celebrates the poorest vegetable of our countryside transforming it like a modern Cinderella, which becomes chutney, cream, croquette, bundle, dumpling, kugelhopf, soup, risotto, sandwich, pie, meatball, savory pie and more still with little mystification and a lot of style, 28 variations on a theme that are as surprising as Corelli's ability to change tone, to subvert our preconceptions. The same goes for Rosso Pomodoro, Corelli demonstrates that even tomatoes have personality. In the first place it reminds us that it is a fruit, whose sweetness and acidity, more or less marked, determine its best use in the kitchen. Each preparation requires a different balance of flavors and therefore a specific type of tomato. Bavarian cream, jellies, puff pastry: even these desserts can be made with the right tomato which certainly won't be the same that will give its best in focaccia, sandwich or velvety soup. And he still writes "White and red meat, the Gambero Rosso cooking school", "In the kitchen with Igles", "My Garibaldian cuisine", "Game", "Soups", "Barbecue", "Igles", " Game". Like King Midas who transformed everything he touched into gold Corelli of every material he speaks of reveals unsuspected qualities, properties, tastes and ways of use.

Books but not only. Then there are the television appearances, the different formats on Gambero Rosso Channel, the various RAI broadcasts (Uno Mattina Estate, Italia sul 2, Linea Verde), he is busy as director of cooking courses at the Città del Gusto, he is the organizer of major events gastronomy, also of international importance, collaborates with restaurants, hotels and companies in the agri-food sector, in Italy and abroad in the drafting of menus, in the training of kitchen staff and the creation of events. His in-depth knowledge of the most advanced culinary technologies and the approach to a kitchen that minimizes waste allow the reduction of raw material costs and the creation of dishes of great impact and originality.

It's the turn of the circular kitchen and of Mercerie, the "democratic" haute cuisine

His latest conceptual elaboration has a name which is again a “Circular Kitchen” program.

“As happens in nature – he says – nothing is neglected, thrown away, everything is transformed, through specialized and subsequent processes, into a multitude of other products. The whole process is cyclical, circular, from a complex entity, through successive transformations, we pass to a simplification which is nothing more than the starting point of new, more complex entities. The motion is circular, perpetual, which can evolve over time, taking different directions, while still remaining circular. Here's what I mean when with my playful style I invite people to form a circle and say, all together: CIRCULAR COOKING!

It is his last, at the moment, revolution. The affirmation of a concept of gastronomic democracy accessible to all and feasible everywhere which manifests itself with a series of high-level recipes summarized in pralines, buttons and lasagnette, always different also according to the seasons, presented in an attractive and easy format consumption, also ideal for take-away.

The place assigned to materialize this new philosophy of eating, the Little Athens of food, is its latest creation: "Haberdashery", a trendy restaurant in the heart of Rome, in Largo Argentina, right in front of the archaeological remains of the Temple of Giuturna, built to celebrate the victory achieved over Carthage in the battle of the Egadi islands, where Igles Corelli landed in 20127 after concluding the experience of Atman.

“From an ancient fabric shop – which stood in the beating heart of ancient Rome – our project, explains Corelli, borrows the name and finds the inspiration for a proposal of haute cuisine attentive to detail and aimed at enhancing the Italian tradition through the use of the best raw materials on the market”. At the Mercerie there are no appetizers, first and second courses but a vast choice of lasagnette, savory or sweet buttons, pralines, gourmet dishes and "Italian sushi" to be enjoyed in the living room, but also to be placed in the elegant packages designed by the Chef to bring his haute cuisine to the street while admiring a monument or a church. More democratic than that you die!

On his body he wanted to imprint the cursus honorum of his exhilarating career as a kind of seal: on the palm of the hand there could not be without the Trigabolo, the space shuttle from which his adventure took off, on the forearm there are the five stars Michelin, on one side, the three forks of the Gambero Rosso, on the other side the four hats of the Espresso Guide, and so on, all the awards it has received. In short, we are not yet at the levels of Fedez, there are still large spaces of free skin to be able to tattoo the new successes.