An enlightened entrepreneur, deeply in love with his land; an extraordinary territory, the Cilento, rich in archaeological evidence, which has earned it inclusion in the sites of Unesco World Heritage Site, but also rich in enchanting landscapes, where the beauty of nature marries with the integrity of the environment, with history, with culture, with a countryside that produces extraordinary fruits where the Buffaloes that have made Italian mozzarella famous throughout the world. And a Chef who is equally in love with this land to the point that in his cuisine he has always set out to enhance its most hidden meanings and flavors that refer to the gastronomic tradition of this beautiful corner of Italy. These three ingredients, united in an astral conjunction that is difficult to repeat, materialize in the "Tre Olivi", the refined restaurant of the "Savoy Beach Hotel". We are in Capaccio, a name that says little to most people, one kilometer as the crow flies from Paestum which instead says a lot in Italy and abroad.
But let's go in order. The entrepreneur who responds to the name of Giuseppe Pagano and of those who can be counted on their fingertips and who have dedicated all their energies – and they are truly many, irrepressible, irrepressible – to enhance the beauties of this land. He started as a small hotelier by taking over a boarding house run by a German on the beach of Capaccio and frequented by Germans (as usual much more forward-looking, in terms of culture and environment, than the Italians) when this strip of land had not yet been discovered by the mass tourism. From there he set out to build a hotel stone by stone that was worthy of the millenary tradition of this area and the Savoy Beach Hotel was born, a luxury four-star hotel surrounded by a palm grove and scenic swimming pools which, upon arrival, you wonder if you've ended up in the province of Salerno or in California in one of those big hotels where American billionaires go to spend the winter. "With what Cilento offers - he says proudly - we are second to none and we must keep our tourist offer high".
But a hotel seemed little in Pagano: in that area the ancients, first Greeks and later Romans, made precious wines. So off he went, he threw himself into producing wines, of course favoring and enhancing native vines and adopting environmentally friendly biodynamic viticulture, wines that he has been able to bring in just five years, being guided by the number one of the Italian oenologists, Riccardo Cotarella, on the tables of the most important starred restaurants in Italy and which, needless to say, win awards in Italy and abroad. But this is also a land of oil, the third edition of the Best International Olive Oil Contest (Best-IOOC) was held here, one of the five most important international competitions dedicated to extra virgin olive oil, as certified by the World Ranking Extra Virgin Olive Oil (WREVOO). And what is Pagano doing to you? He buys land and starts the production of organic extra virgin olive oil which, due to its properties and its importance, is sold in precious glass bottles very often, like those of the most expensive perfumes "because the oil from here - he says - contains the perfume of the earth".
But Capaccio is also a stone's throw from Battipaglia, home of buffalo mozzarella, a celebrated and appreciated champion of Made in Italy all over the world, and here is our entrepreneur also starting a model buffalo breeding, which more than a stable looks like a living room, from which he obtains a milk "serene and not stressed, I don't care about the quantity but the quality" with which he produces mouth-watering mozzarella and ricotta.
Having thus secured the basic elements of local catering, oil, wine, meat and cheese and vegetables from their own gardens, it was necessary to find the right person to whom to entrust the direction of the refined restaurant, all centenary olive wood and crystals, (hence the name), able to share and interpret the feeling, the passion, the taste of the culinary traditions of this land.
And here it materializes Matteo Sangiovanni, a big boy at the time shy of manners, concrete in deeds, a Chef who discovered his passion for cooking by chance but then got overwhelmed by it, as happens when you know a great love and hold onto it for a lifetime. Pagano decides to bet on him. And once again the choice of him is a winner. But how was Chef Sangiovanni born?
“I wasn't born as a cook in the family – he confesses – my parents were farmers and I went to hotel management school only because it was easier than normal school. But it happened that one day, thanks to my professor Giacomo di Motta – whom I will never stop thanking – a light bulb went on for me. He was able to take me in the right direction and make me understand how fantastic the world of cooking could be. It happened suddenly and from that moment I decided that this would be my only reason for living, that I was absolutely not interested in doing anything else”.
And since the young Matteo, even if he does not confess it, is incurably stubborn, from that moment he began to build his life as a Chef, starting from the pastry shop which, due to the strict discipline it requires, attracted him a lot and was in line with the its "framed" character to then arrive at catering.
Sangiovanni is eager to forge ahead. He doesn't even finish the three years of hotel management school, he wants to test himself, and follows his teacher Giacomo di Motta in the restaurant of a hotel in Palinuro. Important training experience but it was clear to him that it could only be the first step of his climb towards a highly professional kitchen. “I don't know why, but without anyone advising me, a voice from within told me that I had to go further”. Going further, even beyond the border, to gain experience. The voice inside suggests once again that he must take over the "kitchen system". And having packed his bags, he leaves for Lucerne in Switzerland where he arrives at the restaurant "Mostrosa" run by an Italian, Ernesto, but German-owned and also German in terms of work setting. The Chef himself, even though he was Italian, had expatriated in Switzerland for 30 years so he had acquired a rigorous mentality on setting up his work. For someone as mathematically minded as he was, the year spent in Switzerland was highly educational.
Having taken this step, there is now something to grow in quality and excellence. Reading and studying, he learned that there was a very important cooking school in Venice. On the coast of Sottomarina di Chioggia at the Hotel Airone, Rossano Boscolo, one of the great dynasty of Venetian hoteliers, had set up in 1982 the L'Etoile Cooking and Pastry Specialization Center, the mother of all Italian schools of haute cuisine and pastry. A revolutionary reality for those times that had introduced the dictates of French haute cuisine in Italy - which only then began to show the first gastronomic exploits of excellence thanks to personalities such as Gualtiero Marchesi, Valentino Marcattilii, Gianluigi Morini, Gaetano Trovato – through which, just to understand each other, they have passed from then to today beyond 30.000 chefs and pastry chefs, the cream of today's Italian haute cuisine, including many starred.
“I immediately understood that this was the path I had to take to grow. At the time there weren't many starred restaurants in Italy, the big boom came after 2000. Today those who want to learn seriously try to be accepted by a starred restaurant, but at the time those who wanted to grow had to gain experience in restaurants of luxury hotels".
Matteo burns on hot coals to go to l'Etoile. He tries to respectfully get in touch with Boscolo several times but they never let him through. “So one day I plucked up the courage and asked to speak to Renato, as if he were a friend of mine, familiarly giving only my first name. The expedient worked, and Boscolo came to the phone”.
Sangiovanni introduces himself on the phone with great determination: "I'm a boy from Salerno and I know that if I come to you I can have many good experiences. I would like to come to your school to work even without money, there are no problems if you don't pay me, I'm interested in learning".
Boscolo after a moment's hesitation, the time to appreciate the audacity and impudence of the young man from the South, replies with equal determination: "there is a boy who was injured today, if you know how to work as you say, introduce yourself immediately, otherwise it's it's useless for you to come".
And Sangiovanni remained in the Boscolo companies for four years. “Four extraordinary years, I went from the kitchen to the pastry shop, I learned from the great Italian masters and from the great French chefs whom Rossano called to give lessons in Chioggia. It was all very exciting because new things were discovered every day, new cooking methods, new combinations and how to treat raw materials. I didn't just work at the Airone, Boscolo also made me work at their Hotel de la Ville in Vicenza, at the Boscolo in Rome, I also opened the Albergo Leon d'Oro and Verona.
After the Boscolo experience, Matteo now wants to deepen the relationship between modernity and tradition in the kitchen, his ever-present passion, his desire for loyalty to what his homeland offers. AND runs in Milan to Sergio Mei, first Executive Chef of the Compagnia dei Ciga Hotels owned by the Aga Khan and then of the Four Seasons restaurant in Milan. Awarded as "Disciple of Escoffier" in Cannes, "Golden Chef of Italy" and as Italian Chef of the Year by the Academy of Italian Cuisine. A recurring phrase of Mei is: “I reinvent and reinterpret traditional recipes. Perfection doesn't exist; but there are extraordinary recipes“. Gold for the ears of Sangiovanni who binds to Mei from a deep friendship: "For me he was a great master, I have always appreciated him both as a man and as a professional. Never an over the top tone, someone who doesn't take it easy, who treats a subordinate like a great starred chef. Someone who knows how to pass on all his experience and culture to you ”, And Matteo also stays at the Four Seasons for a year. He is now a complete chef who seeks excellence. And he decides to try another daring coup, to be accepted by the Cerea brothers in one of the most celebrated restaurants of Italian cuisine, the legendary three-starred “Da Vittorio” Relais & Chateaux in Brusaporto” in Bergamo. And it succeeds.
“Another amazing experience. I must say that if there is a place in Italy where you learn everything, from cooking, to management, from hospitality to the entrepreneurial component, well, this is definitely "Da Vittorio" by Cerea. A restaurant that bills, that always works, all year round, not like many starred restaurants where if you go during the week you may find only one or two occupied tables. If you go to Da Vittorio there are always people, people who travel from far away on purpose. And if this happens, there is some reason. And since I'm very hands-on in things, I go to the concrete, I'm a businessman, I can say that at the Cerea's I was able to cultivate and deepen my convictions, or rather that cooking is built, not invented. It is a reality that must absolutely be lived if you want to grow”.
Between a visit to Villa Gritti in Verona and Capo d'Orso on the Amalfi coast, Sangiovanni finally arrives at the Savoy Beach Hotel. The meeting with Pagano was an understanding at first sight, they reason in unison and in a big way, above all they are moved by the desire to make everyone understand that Cilento is a unique cultural, sensory, sentimental experience that must be discovered little by little and savored in all its facets. And the “Three Olives” it becomes his kingdom, the laboratory where he can metabolize everything he has learned from his great masters, dedicating himself body and soul to the gastronomic heritage of his land. The "Tre Olivi" also becomes an arena for confrontation with great starred Chefs, here it organizes four-handed dinners with Ernesto Iaccarino of Don Alfonso, with Ilario Vinciguerra from Gallarate, with Paolo Barrale from Marennà, with Josean Alija, the Spanish chef whose restaurant inside the Guggenheim museum has become one of the temples of creative Spanish cuisine over the years.
His cuisine becomes a magnifying glass to discover the territory in detail and each component he uses is studied in depth to put it in different lights and make it clear its great qualities and great potential. And so it appears on the menu: "Spaghetti di Gragnano garlic, oil and chilli pepper with clams and cod mousse", "Carnaroli rice with white prawns creamed with a reduction of Gioì (bubbly from the Pagano company), grated oysters and Amalfi sfusato ; "Lamb from the Picentini mountains with seasonal vegetables at Km0"; “Mediterranean Prawn Variation”, proposed raw in the form of carpaccio, steamed with natural bean cream, cooked and in the shape of a roulette stuffed with potatoes and asparagus, cooked and in the shape of pure prawn pulp ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese; “Artichoke absolute” a dish that uses all the parts of the artichoke cooked with various techniques, “Bufala mozzarella” with four types of processing.
As can be clearly understood from his menu, the Chef's research is all about the discovery - better to say - the rediscovery of the flavors that we have at hand but that we are no longer used to reading in depth. His talent consists precisely in the knowledge and respect for raw materials, in his technical ability, and in his creativity. The dishes that come out of his kitchen are a harmony of balance and lightness, and conquer the palate with their captivating simplicity, a simplicity that is only apparent, because behind each course there is a meticulous and in-depth, almost scientific study of the exaltation of substance and its flavours.
“In my opinion, the great media success that has graced Italian gastronomy in recent years has prompted many chef colleges to look for particular effects, to exasperate the dish with many techniques, to overdo it with miscellany of flavors to try to show what we can do . It's a bit of an exaggeration. I believe that everyone should take a bath of humility and take a step back, focusing on the product. Italy has an agri-food heritage that the world envies us, our job is to enhance it to the maximum, not to disguise it. And believe me, working on the intrinsic nature of a product is not easy. For some time I'd like to put a simple dish of our tradition on the menu, Pasta and beans with mussels. I've been studying it for a long time but still I haven't been able to find a satisfactory solution for my principles. The identity of a mussel, of Gragnano pasta, of a Controne bean, are too important things to be played with”.
