The electrocution he caught him from an early age, one Sunday morning when his grandfather took him with him from Saviano, a small town near Nola, the city of Giordano Bruno, dei Gigli, a Unesco World Heritage Site, shopping in Naples, to the phantasmagorical Porta Nolana market. In that world crammed with tangled people, colored goods, licit and illicit merchandise, multi-ethnic voices, barker cries, perfumes, the young Luigi was fascinated by the open-air vegetable stalls and above all by those large vats a huge tide of fish of all species and sizes. An unknown world, a sensation that will remain so imprinted on him that it will guide his first steps in life, because he wants to carry that world with him. And this is how, at the age of fourteen, in fact, he made his first experiences with restaurant kitchens. At eighteen he enrolled in the Hotel Institute, won a scholarship and set off to have his first experience abroad, in Sweden. Upon his return, she immediately embarked on the path of high quality cuisine, starting to work first in Val Gardena at the Grand Hotel Rodes and then at the Taverna Estia with Francesco Sposito (two Michelin stars). He will stay here for two years and then move to the Mosaico restaurant at the Hotel Terme con Nino DiCostanzo, another giant of Neapolitan cuisine.
He then continued his training at Marennà, a restaurant owned by Feudi di San Gregorio di Sorbo Serpico as Paolo Barrale's sous chef, where he refined and improved the techniques and tricks of the trade, learning respect and precision.
During this experience, in 2013, wins the “Birra Moretti Gran Cru”, 10.000 euros which invests in travel and dinners to discover, experiment, see what is being cooked around the world, from France to the Basque Country thanks to which he will be able to travel and visit the best restaurants in Copenhagen, Paris and San Sebastián. His biggest challenge, however, began in 2015 when he took over the restaurant's stove Piazzetta Milù (where he will remain until 2019), in Castellammare di Stabia, conquering after less than a year, in 2016, a Michelin star, remaining to date the youngest chef from Campania to have received this recognition.
In 2019 he gave a new turning point to his career. The meeting with the entrepreneur Lucio Giordano, who started his own original journey within the gastronomic world by investing in a format of successful Japanese restaurants called Misaki, which he opened in Salerno, Sorrento and Pompeii, is essential.
Giordano wants to open an Italian cuisine front. Luigi salomone for his part he wants to go back to work in Nola because he believes that with the Cis there are concrete possibilities to carry on a high-level gastronomic project. And so it happens that the premises of an ancient nineteenth-century building behind the main square of the city are completely revolutionized in a modern minimalist dimension, a contemporary design of aluminum and geometries that dominate the scene, inspired by the work that Gae Aulenti experimented in the early ' 70, or rather ancient and new in comparison, a strong game of chromatic contrast where the light colors of the entrance are contrasted with black and Pompeian red walls of the passage areas and then return to the light colors of the hall
The idea is to convey that you are in a place with a contemporary kitchen and design but which does not forget tradition, rather transforms it
Even the name says it all, a seemingly indecipherable Kings Saints and Lions. Where king stands for the homage to King Ferdinand of Bourbon, king of the two Sicilies; Santi stands as a dedication to Agostino, son of Giordano and Leoni is the dedication to the entrepreneur's other son, Leone.
The transliterated "Neapolitanity" of the sign also reflects and summarizes the Chef's culinary philosophy a careful, targeted attention to the flavor of the material which can never be betrayed by daring or deviant experimentation, which must always be identified and which it must speak to the heart, arousing persuasive emotions in the client also a look that does not forget the charm of the past, the sensations of the territory (the memory of the fish and vegetable market of Porta Nolana carries it in the soul), and which relies on contaminations studied in his travels abroad which know how to enhance this union. “When I create a dish – says Luigi Salomone – I think of my family and friends who don't normally approach this type of cuisine, and therefore I look for interesting, elegant but at the same time understandable solutions”.
And a few months after the opening, the recognition of the Red Guide with a Michelin star, and in November last year iThe "Emerging Chef" award of Guide Restaurants of Italy 2022 of Gambero Rosso.
Simplicity is its watchword, a word that in the kitchen takes on a meaning that is diametrically opposed to the literary one, which means rigor, technique, creativity, thinking of themselves as customer first and of course like thatf, conjugated in the ability to speak to convey and communicate their emotions. Which can be found in the recipe for Mackerel, green apple, cucumber, celery and seaweed that we are proposing to Mondo Food readers this week. A dish of poor materials starting with mackerel, which Luigi Salomone knows how to transform into a classy proposal not only for its flavor but also for all the nutritious and beneficial properties of its components.
The recipe of the Mackerel recipe, green apple, cucumber, celery and seaweed
Ingredients for people 4
For the mackerel
• 2 mackerel
• 60 grams of sugar
• 60 g of salt
• Peppercorns to taste
• Aromatic herbs to taste
• Lemon to taste
For the tare sauce
• 100 g of soy
• 20 g of ginger
• 20 g of spring onion
• 60 g of mackerel bones toasted in the oven
• 30 g of mirin
• 50 grams of sugar
For the anchovy mayonnaise
• 100 g of seed oil
• 20 g of salted anchovies
• 1 egg
For the celery and apple coulis
• 100 g of celery
• 100 g of apple
• 20 g of lime juice
• Xanthan to taste
For the celery and cucumber granita
• 100 g of celery
• 100 g of cucumber
• 10 g of EVO oil
• Salt to taste
For the rocket bread
• 20 g of bitter rocket juice
• 50 g of stale bread
For the garnish:
• Nasturtium to taste
• 1 cucumber
• 1 apple
Procedure:
For the mackerel: Fillet and bone the mackerel keeping the bones; marinate everything with salt and sugar for 8 minutes. Rinse before serving, sear over a high flame and glaze with the tare sauce.
For the tare sauce: toast the bones in the oven at 160° for 8 minutes. Add all the ingredients and let them simmer for 20 minutes. Finally, filter.
For the anchovy mayonnaise: emulsify all the ingredients together.
For the celery and apple coulis: centrifuge all the ingredients in an extractor and then add salt and a pinch of xanthan gum.
For the celery and cucumber granita:
blend all the previously frozen ingredients.
For the rocket bread: blend the ingredients together and pass everything through a large-mesh sieve.
For plating: blanch the mackerel, brush with the tare sauce and finally arrange: the celery and apple coulis, the anchovy mayonnaise, the mackerel, the seaweed powder, the nasturtium, the rocket bread and at the serve, the cucumber granita.
To complete a few slices of cucumber and apple
