It will be for that cascade of curly hair that seems to be worn like a protective helmet, it will be for his introverted character, it will be for his constitutional shyness that moves him to polite smiles, it will be for the calmness of his speech, but it is certain that when you talk to us , one immediately thinks of Riccardo Cocciante and one of his songs "At the center of silence": "There/at the center of silence/there is a shore and a sea/and a light that/spreads bright peace/and I sit and watch / I'm still there / I ageless / suspended there…”
The Là di Cocciante, for Valentino Cassanelli, who left Modena and landed on the beach of Forte dei Marmi, in Versilia, eight years ago is "Lux Lucis" (see Cocciante), the restaurant of the exclusive Hotel Principe Forte dei Marmi, where Cassanelli arrived as food & beverage manager brought to you by Carlo Cracco called to oversee the opening of the new hotel restaurant.
Its qualities have already been extensively tested by Cracco who had him by his side in the kitchen for three years. Three fruitful and formative years that opened his mind "to a kitchen that has no boundaries" and during which Cracco taught him the fundamental concepts of kitchen management.
A lesson so well learned that in the end Cracco returned to Milan and his television super exhibitions and the young Valentino Cassanelli, at the age of 28, became Executive Chef of the hotel restaurant that the owners wanted to launch as a point of reference for the excellent gastronomy of the region.
A big responsibility no doubt about it. We are in a Versilia with an upturned nose, great industrialists, intellectuals, artists, names that make the cover, the great quarters of the nobility have passed and pass here, from the Della Gherardesca to the Rucellai, from the Rospigliosi to the Sforza Paola Ruffo di Calabria was born here , who will marry Albert of Liège and who will become Queen of Belgium upon the abdication of King Baldwin.
The road was paved by Giovanni Gentile, by Guglielmo Marconi by Thomas Mann, by Renato Fucini, by Italo Balbo, by Curzio Malaparte, and then to follow by the Agnellis, who had the beautiful Villa Costanza in Forte dei Marmi, today's Hotel Augustus; widely quoted by Susanna Agnelli in her autobiographical book: Vestivamo alla marinara and then again the Siemens, Aldous Huxley, the sculptor Henry Moore, Luchino Visconti.
Here is the Capannina, which boasts the nobility of being the first disco in the world, having opened a hand-cranked gramophone in 1929 which invited patrons to good music and which saw Gino Paoli take turns in front of an international audience with his taste of salt and Bruno Lauzi with his return, Edith Piaf and Patty Pravo, Ray Charles and Grace Jones, Gloria Gaynor and Billy Preston, Ornella Vanoni and Patty Pravo.
In short, the bet of Lux Lucis is audacious. But Cassanelli, introverted yes, but "determined and happy", as he defines himself, throws himself into it with commitment and with the will to win. His Cocciantian "Là" draws inspiration between "a shore and a sea", like an undertow on the shoreline that now runs to discover the flavors of the earth now runs towards the infinite possibilities of marine scents, as well as his gastronomic journey that has brought from Spilamberto a small town in the countryside outside Modena, in the middle of the Po valley, an agricultural land of excellence, to the beaches and sea of Versilia where he found his most satisfying realization up to the gratification of the Michelin star, conquered in 2017, at the age of 33, and five years after taking office in the restaurant, all light and glass, on the roof of the Hotel Principe.
A path that for Valentino Cassanelli was in a certain sense predestined. At the age of 9, try to prepare – as happened to him – a recycled baked pasta with olives, mozzarella and marjoram, to be found nice and ready for his mother who was late for work. He did and liked it. There's no denying, cooking was in his blood, and he says it: "I experienced it as a natural evolution - he recalls today - I loved cooking right away and I faced his lifestyle by making it my own" .
It promised well from an early age. Already at the age of six he had made his father's eyes sparkle, fresh from separation and a little awkward in domestic affairs, who wanted – with no experience, he was a carpenter by trade – to organize a little party for his birthday by inviting some of his friends. The young Valentino practiced a botched pasta and potatoes, and his friends ate it all.
But who had marked him in his youth had been his maternal grandmother of Bolognese origin who on Sundays, having understood how the boy delighted in pots and pans, called him with her to knead the egg pasta sheet and made him become familiar with tortellini, tortelloni and tagliatelle. .
With these precedents, once middle school is over, the predestined and obligatory step is the hotel management school of Serramazzoni, in the province of Modena, a member institute of Eurhodip, an international body that brings together the largest and most prestigious hotel management schools in Europe, with the aim of qualifying and certifying the preparation of the students.
Thanks to this important acknowledgment, students of specialization and Higher Education courses can obtain a certificate which in all European Union countries is a guarantee of highly qualified professional preparation.
And Valentino, who specializes in both cooking and pastry, can immediately benefit from an internship in France at the prestigious Istituto Vatel. The foundations are now laid. At the age of 17 he flies to London, has his first great experience, in the "Locanda Locatelli", the realm of starred Italian cuisine in the English capital, a "trendy and sophisticated restaurant - as the judges of the Red Guide describe it - with an refined, frequented by famous people”.
After Locatelli, the next step is at Nobu, one of the trendiest places in London where “the innovative menu mixes South American influences and Japanese cuisine. A concept that has generated many imitators all over the world”. We are in full Fusion, in a dimension of great mental openness beyond traditional schemes. And with this culture, which Valentino assimilates with voracity, it is appropriate to say, he descends in Italy and lands once again on the safe side, in Milan, at Carlo Cracco's restaurant, where he remains for two years, putting himself in sight and being appreciated . In his desire to get to know and get to know each other better, he also spends short periods in other important kitchens such as Berton, Ghezzi, Lopriore, Roncero, Munoz.
He thus completes a picture of excellent experiences which, he acknowledges, had a great influence on his training as a cook and also from the point of view of personal growth, especially those with Cracco and with Locatelli, experiences which will be the premise of the Michelin star that will arrive in 2017, as well as the 4 hats awarded by le Guide de l'Espresso, or the Best Dining Experience by Condé Nast Johanssens.
Since 2012, therefore, it has come to light - the play on words fits both with the name of the restaurant and with Cocciante's song - his cuisine, understood as, is his mantra, "Free expression of Italian cuisine", the freedom of inspiration , of a personal creative process that amalgamates territory and reminiscences, flavors and aromas, innovation and techniques, encroachments of gastronomic cultures, with the strength of a wave that arrives and retreats and envelops everything and recreates everything.
Thus Cassanelli ensnares his customers, involving them in an emotional atmosphere that is his, in the first place. A relationship that he begins before tasting his cuisine with a travel notebook and a map that illustrate his journey to the customer in order to speak first to reason and then to the senses so that everything is fully perceivable.
Thus, in all its conceptuality, the meaning emerges, for example, of his Maritime pine mullet with seaweed and sea, his representative dish, which contains the essence of Versilian scents, the scents of the resin of the pine forest that occupies the gaze up to the mountains bringing with it all the meaning of the earth and that of the extraordinary sea that unfolds down there before your eyes, with all its stories and heritage.
Or that of Spaghettoni with anchovies and umeboshi with burrata water and caviar, a cross-section of his idea of tradition and territorial raw material that travels and contaminates itself before returning to the plate. Or that of the Pigeon with lychee and octopus, an example of the intensity of land and sea when they merge into a new, unique taste.
And it is thus that "between shore and sea" the culinary wave of Cassianelli creates that "light that spreads luminous peace". And let us return to Cocciante.
