Considered one of the most beautiful villages in Italy, surrounded by the Maremma countryside, and protected by three walls, the town of Montemerano, stands perched on a hill between Saturnia and Manciano. The village was built in the 1593th century by the powerful Aldobrandeschi family of Longobard origin who belonged to the lineage of the Longobard King of Italy Liutprando. We are in the heart of the Tuscan Maremma, an area abandoned for centuries to itself, so abandoned that in XNUMX a "Motu Proprio" edict granted immunity to all those who had moved there without distinction of nationality and crime.
Criminals arrived from all over the place, who had their crimes cancelled, but who nevertheless continued their criminal activity. On this ground of poverty and human degradation the bad plant of banditry was fed which for centuries raged in these areas and which ended only at the end of the 800th century with the death of the notorious Domenico Tiburzi, Domenico Biagini, two of the most feared and well-known brigands of the Maremma, by Enrico Stoppa, Luciano Fioravanti killed in 1900 by one of his companions to pocket the bounty issued by the authorities, just to name a few.
In Montemerano today it is possible to visit a suggestive and fascinating Piazza del Castello, the Church of San Giorgio. which preserves an exceptional collection of Renaissance works of art, and above all the "Madonna della Gattaiola", painted around 1450 by an artist from the school of Sassetta, nicknamed Maestro di Montemerano, famous for a circular hole, at the bottom of the table, which is said to have been built by a parish priest to let his beloved cats pass through (hence the name) when the church door was closed for worship, and the theater in Piazza del Campanile which stands on the remains of the ancient Pieve di San Lorenzo remembered by a plaque on which you can read an inscription which is the interpretative figure of the atmosphere that is still breathed today in Montemerano: "here time has stopped and silence is heard".
So there are churches, bell towers, theatres, ancient palaces, but there is no museum that can tell and bring the history of these ancient and fascinating places back to life. There is no museum in the traditional sense of the term but there is a living one, on the other hand, which carries out an activity not only of passive protection, but contributes with its presence to the enhancement of the numerous resources available to the territory: historical, landscape, environmental, artisanal and food and wine, promoting with its presence a strong integration between tourism, culture and environment. And this Museum of such a modern conception is the Ristorante da Caino, where Valeria Piccini has always reigned, a life dedicated to the love for these lands from which she never wanted to be separated and which relive in his cuisine according to paths of strong territorial suggestion.
It all stems from an infatuation with a boy who is the son of a local sutler
A life for the kitchen that led her to the highest levels of signature catering, to earn two Michelin stars, to be awarded Chef of the Year by the L'Espresso Guide. A beautiful and singular adventure that in turn is born from the infatuation of a thirteen-year-old girl with a boy, the son of local sutlersShe liked that Maurizio (who would later become her husband) so much. Her parents Angela and Carisio, nicknamed Cain, had opened a modest restaurant in 71 which was a wine shop and served simple dishes. Maurizio worked at the travertine quarry during the day and in the evening he lent a hand at the bar counter and in the dining room of his parents' restaurant.
And so, after school, the enterprising Valeria, just to see her Maurizio up close, went to Signora Angela's restaurant, saying she was interested in learning how to cook. At the same time Valeria spends a serene and fulfilling childhood – and this can be understood when you talk to her, now that she is 61 years old, and has many successes behind her, from her very polite and kind way of presenting herself pleasantly without showing any tension – living with her they were farmers the country life.
“It was a period of great serenity for me – he recalls – I studied and helped my parents in what I could. I participated especially in the summer to do the work in the countryside, to dig up the potatoes and pick up the leaps! Picking fruit and vegetables was a great pleasure for me!!!”. In short, the earth, with its products, with its seasons, with its ancient life, with its traditions, has entered her blood.
Her parents wished her a peaceful future, she graduated in chemistry, a promising subject of satisfying employment.
But in Valeria, who entered the kitchen out of love, as we have seen, a new passion was born over time.
“My grandmother and my mother – she recalls – naturally cooked for the family and involved me to make me learn and this happened above all on holidays, in which I helped my grandmother to prepare the classic recipes (ragù, gnocchi, tortelli, etc… ) to kill chickens, rabbits, lambs and clean them. What was consumed in the family all came from our company (or almost). Grandpa, on the other hand, made cheese every evening and every morning, he too involved me and the thing that struck me was that with a touch of his fingers he was able to perceive the perfect temperature that was needed for the milk to curdle. What good milk products! Perhaps they are the ones I miss the most, curdled milk, cuculo (cheese paste), scottino, ricotta and even the whey was good!”.
With Maurizio that the spark is triggered at 14 and the two get engaged. Valeria's tenacity won...
Chemistry doesn't attract her that much, her world is there in that village blessed for its beauty and uncontaminated territory that offers so much grace of God only to those who know how to grasp it. The kitchen becomes a real magnet for her, she thinks of nothing else. In the meantime, when she is 20 she marries Maurizio. Her in-laws welcome her with open arms and appreciate her so much in seeing her work in the kitchen that after a few years they decide to give her the place in the kitchen. Valeria feels invested with a great responsibility, that of not betraying the trust placed in her.
Two Michelin stars that have never left it
“Having not attended adequate schools for this job, I immediately realized that I lacked the basics of cooking to be able to grow, which is what I wanted to do. So I studied a lot on my own, but the journey was certainly a little longer. I wanted to do an internship with Girardet because I had bought a book by him and it fascinated me. With the help of a wine producer, Mr. Raffaele Rossetti, I managed to get in touch with him who had never replied to my repeated requests, he asked me for a 2-year internship but in the meantime Andrea was born and I didn't feel like it to leave Restaurant and Son for such a long time. I reluctantly gave up."
Ma he concentrated tirelessly without ever feeling fatigue on an almost compulsive study of culinary excellence together with many pilgrimages to the temples of haute cuisine to learn, study and reinterpret in his own way. And at the end of the 80s what began as a country restaurant, just like Cinderella's pumpkin in Walter Disney's film, was transformed into a princely horse-drawn carriage, became a restaurant, seating 20 in all, for an audience of connoisseurs who gladly undertakes the journey to Montemerano, “a town of 500 souls and hens, including hens”, as Valeria likes to say with gentle irony, which is starting to be talked about because word has spread that a cuisine is served in able to compete with the great chefs who are starting to appear on the Italian scene.
And the rumor turns into reality a few years later when the Michelin Guide assigns a star to the Da Caino restaurant in Montemerano. “The moment had just passed when I wanted to go outside to learn faster and to understand what was happening in other kitchens. Naturally – recalls Piccini – the world of information technology was not so present and the news on catering was disclosed by the wine representatives; the rumor swirled in the air that there would have been a star in the Maremma, but everything I would have thought it would have been mine. We are already in the 90s, great satisfaction for an autodidact!”.
Valeria is moved but does not rest on her laurels, that desire to study the elements, the raw materials, to combine technique and nature that comes from her chemistry studies, push her towards further goals. And in 1999 the two Michelin stars arrive that will never leave her.
Valeria Piccini is now a national authority. Then there is to follow the entry of the restaurant into the prestigious Relais & Châteaux chain which gives it an international dimension. His Maremma presents the other face, the inwardly and intimately historic one of this region, the face of ancient customs and traditions that have remained alive in the passage from generation to generation, under the banner of the suffering but proud humility of these people, who in the kitchen However, Valeria knows how to make modern without giving up anything of a past that never ceases to amaze.
Exaltation of peasant culture between tradition and innovation
“Mine – he likes to underline – is a cuisine with intense and easily recognizable flavours, closely linked to the seasons and the flavors of our territory. I would call it a contemporary cuisine that feeds on the highest quality raw materials and modern techniques. Let's start from the assumption that whole animals arrive at the restaurant that we cut and process entirely (not loins and pre-packaged thighs). My peasant culture teaches me to use all parts of the animal, even the least valuable. Now there is a lot of talk about sustainable cooking and not wasting, it has always been like this for me ".
E Valeria Piccini has been able to raise this peasant culture in all these years to a level of culinary nobility always bearing in mind the importance of passing on, through the vegetables from their garden that their parents still look after as in the past, the oil that in these clayey lands takes on the flavors of the territory, the meat of zero kilometer animals, and the fish which comes from a spectacular sea, that of the Argentario, Talamone, Porto Santo Stefano which are an hour's drive from his restaurant, the ancient and modern meaning of this part of beautiful Italy once forgotten by God and men.
All of this translates into, for example, a "Cinta Senese tortello in chestnut and chicken broth", a dish that is based on a fundamental ingredient that manages to bind the Cinta Senese pork in the filling together with the chestnut in the broth: wild fennel according to an ancient custom in Maremma, of boiling chestnuts with flowers which are also sprinkled on roast pork. “This tortello, explains Valeria, for me closes the circle of Maremma taste”.
And he continues “My cuisine respects the territory and the seasons and tries to evoke the flavors and suggestions of the Maremma in every dish. In country life, everything was salvaged and waste was avoided, and this is how “Agnello e …surroundings” was born: ribs, cheeks, sweetbreads and brains accompanied by a sauce of roasted potatoes and a chicory sauce to recall the typical side dishes and more used in Maremma.
The other great protagonist of Tuscan gastronomy has always been oil. And here Valeria dedicates a dish to him that makes her guests think for a long time: “Extra virgin olive oil and orange emulsion with goat's milk ice cream and false Peruvian pepper”. Piccini explains it like this: “In the kitchen there is an ingredient that I use from bread, to appetizers, up to desserts and that is extra virgin olive oil. This sweet is linked to my childhood when we ate bread with oranges, oil and sugar for a snack and I tried to create that feeling again". “ If my cuisine is modern – comments Valeria – it has its roots in the local tradition, because I am convinced that no Chef should ever forget the traditions of their place of origin".
Here, then, with a few examples, explained the cheerfully and at the same time fascinatingly nostalgic world of the cuisine of a great Chef, who knows how to recreate the seductive atmosphere of the most authentic Maremma outside the prevailing fashions of these years with a culinary technique of their own and original as well as, by transferring us to another field, the cinematographic one, the Taviani brothers have been able to do on the screen with that unforgettable film that is the night of San Lorenzo, a great elegy of the atmospheres, flavors and identity of the Tuscan countryside and Maremma.
From Cain +39 0564 602817
Monday – Tuesday – Thursday 19pm – 30pm
Wednesday Closed
Friday – Sunday 12:30 – 14:00, 19:30 – 21:30
Church street 4
58014 Montemerano, Manciano, Italy
