"Life - said Charlie Chaplin - is a theater work that has no initial rehearsals ... So sing, laugh, dance, love, cry and live intensely every moment of your life ... before the curtain falls and the work ends no applause." We do not know if Marco Sacco, Chef crowned by Michelin with two stars, with his "Il Piccolo lago" restaurant in Verbania, on Lake Mergozzo, once combined with Lake Maggiore, have ever read this quote from the great English actor, but it is certain that in his ultra-dynamic life as a successful XNUMX-year-old, he did his best to live intensely on emotions. “I like having fun – he confirms – and entertaining is part of my job: it's my way of expressing myself, the restaurant becomes sharing, participation between me and my audience. Everything becomes theatrical and I decide the score. Look, smell, taste, listen, we go on stage”.
Marco Sacco discovered the theater of cooking at a very young age. Son of art - his parents Gastone and Bruna, had opened a family-run restaurant in the area when they were young, then they had decided to invest in a second larger restaurant to which they had given the name of Piccolo Lago. Marco is nine years old when the father lets him into the new place, the proud father shows him his kingdom, takes him in his arms then puts him on a case of water while he continues to cook. For Marco it is as if a curtain were being opened on a fantastic comedy, made up of frenetic movements, pots, fires, fumes, chasing voices: it is immediately fascinated by that so enthralling forge of sensations, colours, scents, people who nervously go from one place to another. It's a flash of lightning: “I smelled perfumes – he recalls today – and I looked out onto a magical world that I have never abandoned and this is how over the years this passion becomes curiosity, interest and then knowledge”.
From windsurfing champion to starred champion in the kitchen
Sacco, having grown up, walks straight into the kitchen, helps his father and mother, tastes, experiments, creates, dares new combinations, wants to take over that world that he feels intimately his. He looks for new sensations and not only in the kitchen. He discovers the thrill of flying over Lake Maggiore with the windsurf, a sport that is exciting here due to the almost constant presence of winds such as the Inverna, which blows in the afternoon from spring to autumn and has an intensity of about 10-12 knots, or the north wind, the Favonio, or Fohn, the most loved by surfers which can also reach considerable speeds. Just as he has two minutes of free time, the boy takes his board by the arm and roams around the lake letting himself be carried away by the wind that gives him a thousand emotions. And he immediately makes himself honour, in his early twenties he becomes a promising champion placing well in national and international competitions.
Meanwhile, he travels the world to gain experience, at some starred restaurants in Provence and on the French coast, including thehigh-ranking Oasis member of the prestigious chains Relais&Chateaux, Les Grandes Tables du Monde and Maitres Cuisiniers de France, two-star restaurant of the Raimbault brothers in La Napoule the exclusive holiday resort a stone's throw from Cannes where he explores and appropriates the basic organizational principles of great cuisine, the function of the brigade, of hierarchy, of order. But that's not enough, the anxiety of growing up has not yet subsided and so he decides that the time has come to fly high. And one fine day he knocks on the door of Roger verge, disappeared a few years ago who will be remembered as one of the greatest chefs of the XNUMXth century, founding father of Nouvelle Cuisine who from his three-starred restaurant il Mougins mill on the Côte d'Azur he imposed a real revolution on French catering. Sacco is not intimidated by so much name and introduces himself like this: "I'm a young Italian cook who wants to understand what the stars are". Vergé is struck by his bold determination and good-naturedly accepts him in the kitchen. He will stay there for three years. Three years of formidable and unrivaled experiences. Marco can touch first hand what the spectacle of the highest cuisine is, where everything works like a Swiss watch and how, then, from this geometric architecture gastronomic masterpieces are created that touch the feelings and all the senses. But even France is close to him. Following the advice of Vergé who in his time had explored distant culinary territories in Morocco, Algeria and even in Kenya, Sacco further broadened his cultural horizons. Not only Kenya and Maghreb souks, like his master, but also the Far East from Laos to Korea, Japan to Myammar, up to Shanghai and Hong Kong. He wants to discover not only new flavors, new raw materials, new spices, new condiments, new combinations, but above all new cooking techniques and methods. And all this international baggage takes him to Lake Mergozzo, an environmental oasis, where motor boats are prohibited, where nature is respected and protected by the Park, combining it, declining it in new combinations. “With travel – he says – I learn from the masters, from the territory and from the new flavors encountered around the world. When I return home the transformation is complete and my dishes are born”.
In 1991, his father Gastone disappeared. Marco helped by his brother Carlo and his mother picks up his baton. He is 28 years old, has strong shoulders and very clear ideas. His "Little Lake" a stilt house suspended on the edge of the lake with a beautiful open steel kitchen, a breathtaking view of the water, that of Mergozzo must become a "dream on the water", an hour from Milan, where "imagination and creativity must mark the time", a place where food enthusiasts and gourmet enthusiasts meet to travel with the senses and imagination. It must be more than just a restaurant. It must represent a corner of suspension from the world, where you can get lost in the flavors of the area, a haven of elegance and relaxation.
Goodbye Windsurfing, it's time to work hard and put to use everything he has learned up to that moment. And from that moment it's all been a rush. In 2000 he was chosen among the finalists in the Chef of the Year competition. The following year, with his brother Carlo, he was called to play the role of ambassador of ossolan products in California. In 2004 the first Michelin Star arrives. In 2005 he became one of the founders of the Stelle del Piemonte team. Marco Sacco understands that he has taken the right path and insists on further refining his cooking procedures, his combinations, the scenic impact of the preparations, the exaggerated attention to maintaining the quality of the raw materials treated. In doing so convince the judges of the Red Guide that in 2007 they rewarded him with the second star. But it is not only the Michelin judges who appreciate its refined and surprising cuisine: the Veronelli Guide assigns it the highest score and again in 2007 it is invited as MasterChef to the World gourmet, Singapore's global culinary event attended by the greats of world cuisine. It is his definitive consecration.
His world between lake and mountains reinterpreted in a modern key
International success does not lessen the beating of his heart for the lake that has seen him grow and does not disengage him - it is appropriate to say - from the flavors of the surrounding area, the lake and that of the mountain valleys. The restaurant becomes like a synthesis of his life and the audience from which to admire the whole world that revolves around the lake. Because a lake – as Henry David Thoreau said, the great American philosopher and poet of the early 800s – is the most beautiful and expressive feature of the landscape. It is the eye of the earth, looking into which the observer measures the depth of his own nature”.
In the end, his kitchen becomes a mirror in which the chef's great love for the surrounding lakes and valleys and for the raw materials and materials that are part of them is reflected. “The lake is my life. I learned to swim earlier than to walk. Water itself is life. The lake is a microcosm, something enclosed, but it always has a river that flows into the sea. It is autonomous and independent but, at the same time, it is open to the world. How can you not love him?”
And obviously freshwater fish becomes the protagonist of his dishes not only for its (forgotten) flavors to be rediscovered but because it also has a social as well as gastronomic value having suffered a slow and inexorable crisis in recent years, of numbers, of image, of reputation, with dramatic consequences on the territory and its economy. A decline that has meant the loss of companies, of jobs, above all of memory, of culture.
His cuisine thus ends up bearing the signature of his territory, the Val d'Ossola, which includes the whole triangle between Lake Maggiore and Valgrande, the largest wild area in Italy that Sacco reinterprets in a modern key, sometimes not afraid to amaze, but always faithful to the exaltation of its values and flavours. With the scent of the woods from which it draws sap, red fruits, wild herbs, watercress, juniper, wild asparagus, wild fennel, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelions and nettles arrive on your table. And the meats also come from the woods, those of the Alpine brown cows, renowned for their excellent milk, and which in summer are moved to the mountains, sheep and goats, from small herds scattered in the area, the resinous woods that mixed with local herbs and juniper they are used for smoking meat and fish while the rye used for bread comes from the neighboring mountains. And even materials from that territory enter his kitchen bringing to the table the historical memory of the places, the stones of the Toce, the river that rises at 1800 meters in Val Formazza and then flows into Lake Maggiore, which are cooled to serve the Formazza butter , and Ossola beola, the typical stone of this area, used since the 1600s in construction for floors and walls, which, when heated, becomes a surprising bread basket.
His menu is a succession of dishes that speak and tell his culinary theater: such as “From the water...…at the table fishing in lakes, rivers and the sea which is equivalent to a gustatory “immersion” of five courses plus dessert. A proposal that embodies the Chef's affection for water in all his expressions. Among the proposals on the menu we find "Mergozzo trout burgers in the traditional "smoking", balsamic vinegar sandwich bread, tempura onions", "Bettelmatt flan (a handcrafted cheese and in small numbers in the summer pastures exclusively above the 1.800 meters), "Light pear mustard, spiced mountain blueberry sauce", "Nougat of duck liver marinated in port wine and Armagnac in apple variation, yellow polenta wafer" , "Pike-perch, rhubarb compote and foam of its roe, fish snacks, carrot puree”, “Traditional Piedmontese breed rib-eye cooked on beech embers, vegetables and flavored tomatoes”. In short, borrowing the term from geographical cartography, it can be said that a lunch at Piccolo Lago is like a bird's eye view of a fantastic corner of Piedmont in many ways to be discovered.
