The passion for cooking was not a vocation for him but a discovery, born over time and over time become a choice. His journey to discover the culinary art started from a small hill on which stands a village dotted with white houses, flanked by green expanses colored by poppies and sunflowers, Specchia, a small town of 5000 souls in the province of Lecce, down almost to the tip of the Italian heel. From there the young man dreamed of taking off as a fighter pilot admired by the acrobatics of the military flights of the 36th wing of the air force which departed from the base of Gioia del Colle which is an hour's drive from his village, for their missions flying over with the skies of those parts roared. The fascination of aviators, as we know, has always been high among young people and, among other things, it also has a strong hold on girls. But when the age of choices arrived, the perennial aspirations of the parents for the future of their children took over: "the culture of the past - says Pietro Penna today, Talented and successful chef of the Casamatta di Manduria restaurant, a 900s neo-medieval style manor in the heart of the Primitivo lands – was to give your son a diploma that would allow him to immediately enter the world of work”. And for his bricklayer father and teacher mother, the hotel management school of Santa Cesaria Terme was the right compromise.
And it was in the hotel industry that, step by step, the possibility slowly appeared on the horizon of building a career in the kitchen by refining the commitment, perseverance and will to master the knowledge and know-how of cooking in the Institute where he learned the theoretical foundations of Italian cuisine. "I have not decided but it has been a slow, constant growth, where all the sacrifices, professional growth, my determination and perseverance in achieving targeted objectives, my wife who has always believed in my abilities and motivated me with every perplexity I have they at some point made me believe that there was something in me…something that could thrive and one day become something concrete.”
A concreteness that today has presented itself as a winning choice, opening it up to a national dimension.
From the institute of Santa Cesaria, the young Pietro begins to take his first training steps in some restaurants in the province of Lecce, but immediately his desire to learn, to perfect himself and to constantly improve his professional skills push him to take flight towards other destinations. And the first possibility is offered to him at the Kulm Hotel in St-Moritz, a five-star luxury frequented by an international clientele since 1856 with a breathtaking view of the Engadine ski resort lake. A dimension that for the Apulian boy already represents in itself a jump from a ten-metre trampoline because here he has his first real approach to great cuisine, and here, between consommè and jus de viande, he learns all the basic preparations of classic French cuisine . But it's not over. Because from there Pietro Penna move on to the Richemond in Geneva, a traditional luxury hotel, a member of the Preferred Hotels & Resorts chain, e equipped with a restaurant awarded 5 stars by the Forbes Travel Guide in 2018. The next step is the great school of the Milan Fourseason, the undisputed reign for 20 years of the great Sergio Mei, born in 1952, from Santadi (Cagliari), winner of the Culinary World Cup of Luxembourg (1994), voted state Italian Chef of the Year byAcademy of Italian Cuisine in 1998, a true grand master who trained some of today's greatest starred Italian chefs. Mei is a master who directly confronted the raw material, sought and found in the places where nature offers it. "This heritage of knowledge and experience - Penna recalls today with gratitude - was transferred to me, becoming for me a practical program and a precious spiritual gift in my professional journey".
We have reached the great levels. But for Pietro it is still not enough: “The“ hunger to savor ”new experiences – he says – has never left me. So I went to Paris. Paris is a big, huge stage, Jean Cocteau said: "Everyone in Paris would like to be an actor and no spectator". I attended this great show at the George V Hotel, two Michelin stars, led by Eric Briffard”. The boy didn't take a roundabout way to grow up. The great Briffard, who before settling at the prestigious "Le cinq" had already won two Michelin stars at the Plaza Athénée, decorated by President Mitterrand at the Elysée for his career, and later director of Culinary Arts at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school , is the best a young person can aspire to forge a successful career. A career that requires effort and sacrifice, and we know this, but also a lot, a lot of determination, when you find yourself, as happened to the young Pietro who was the only Italian in a brigade of 80 all-French elements.
“This starred experience – he admits today – allowed me to look forward to an innovative and creative cuisine. What I learned there became a treasure that I still use today: precision and rigor always tending towards an inexorable crescendo”.
Certainly if he passed all these difficult tests Pietro Penna owes it to his character, he defines himself as "a fairly sociable, sensitive, humane, sometimes cheerful person", but he is also a very thoughtful young man who does not like being the center of attention. And this has been his strength since he was young, because he loves the concept of organization a lot at work, he doesn't like superficiality and he also becomes touchy if he feels subject to judgments without constructive motivations because his belief is to build, train, grow , observing everything around him and listening to all the voices to constantly question himself at work and in life.
The return to Italy passes through a good experience at Restaurant in Piazza Repubblica in Milan. “At this point in my journey, I therefore decided to stage my creative cuisine in a refined but informal environment”. The refinement in the details, the obsessive attention to the raw materials and to the nutritional dictates, principles that he assimilated in his formative pilgrimage through the great masters of the kitchen who have trained him up to now, lead him to the creation of some dishes that obtain immediate favor among the customers of Piazza della Repubbica: Octopus and Stracciatella, Creamed Sardinian Fregula, Beef cheek and Truffle Stuzzico. And it is precisely on the truffle that he bases a refined menu, from appetizers to desserts, to which he gives the name "110 e lode". He explains it this way: "The goal I tried to achieve thanks to the experience at the Piazza Repubblica restaurant was to be able to make gourmets, the "gourmands", experience food as listening to a orchestra: the individual flavors do not overlap, but each of them provides its own contribution so that the final result is a real symphony".
After all this traveling Salento finally, his Salento made up of dreams, flavours, perfumes, sensations, youthful emotions powerfully reappears before his eyes in the project that the sisters Marika and Simona Lacaita, owners of a castle of twentieth century in the Manduria countryside surrounded by olive trees and vineyards as far as the eye can see, transformed into a Vinilia wine Resort, a refined location for hospitality and an oenological experience, they offer him: to set up a gourmet restaurant that embodies the philosophy of their company: territory, sustainability , organic production, tradition innovated with taste and refinement. In their eyes, Pietro Penna is the right man for “Casamatta” and the opposite can also be said.
In the kitchen of Casamatta Penna he transfers the techniques and knowledge that are part of his international baggage, combining them with Salento traditions, nothing revolutionary, for heaven's sake, but building a path of knowledge and progressive deepening of the values of this land. And from the organic garden of the Vinilia Wine Resort he also draws the flavors of the vegetables he brings to the table as well as the strictly organic wine and oil. And just to complete the picture, homemade bread and breadsticks are rigorously made with Senatore Cappelli wheat with a low gluten content.
In paper we therefore find a constant reference to the territory as a bird's eye view reinterpreted with a touch of innovation. Among the starters Collection of pomo d'oro, avocado, amberjack, stracciatella and vanilla; Sea urchin and white shrimp, potatoes and celery, False raw meat ravioli chanterelle mushrooms and stracchino cheese; Mussels and mozzarella carosello, friselle and watermelons. Among the first courses: Spaghetti Pastificio dei Campi, sponsale, oregano and cuttlefish; Buttons of potatoes, octopus and caciucco; Sagne curled with burnt wheat, pinti beans and ricotta cheese. Among the second courses: chop, friggitelli, summer scorzone and raspberry; Roast lamb, chamomile tea, morels and olives; Turbot and capocollo, onion and figs; Cod and almond, smoked pepper and carousel.
And finally as a dessert: Burnt cream, orange, mango and licorice; Tiramisu, cocoa, mascarpone and coffee ice cream.
And the concept of the symphony so dear to Penna, protagonist and legible components and flavors that are articulated in a result of gustatory harmonies.
A harmony that the L'Espresso Restaurant Guide directed by Ezio Vizzari awarded with a hat recognizing that in Pietro Penna's cuisine "technique and interpretation of the territory go hand in hand", a persuasive cuisine that does not look for all costs, which does not put itself on display - in line with the Chef's character - but which aims to make people think and question themselves about flavors and combinations.
“Thinking about my youth – reflects Penna – is a bit like going back to that world made up only of curiosity and ingenuity where we used to take refuge: a smell is enough (the scent of meat cooked on the grill of my grandmother), a taste , a noise, to awaken in us old memories that seemed dormant and which, however, in the end make us think …. there is nothing more beautiful and exciting than retracing the narrow streets where once as children you used to play with your friends and find the same houses, the same lights, the same street noises ... all this turns out to be the key of my whole life: what you learn in school or on the street, you will one day be bound to use as an adult in relating to others. Key period that generates tomorrow's adults today. ..but in my youth a good portion was taken up by rigid, severe and strict rules ... not understood but accepted ... still today I do not fully agree with them and I wonder if these have helped me in my growth or have made me too much a person rigid and critical”.
But one can also wonder if without that rigor and that critical ability the young Pietro would have reached, as he has, these results that portend further goals for him, starting from that group of white houses, flanked by green expanses colored by poppies and sunflowers where as a boy he roamed looking up at the military fighter jets which, like kites, made his sky cheerful.
