QUALITALY 140

June/July 2024 VI MAGAZINE exactly new. It has a somewhat vintage name that we thought was slowly fading, slipping into the historical archives, like telephone booths and coachmen: gastronomy. Do you remember those middle-aged gentlemen, charming with ladies and children, winking at family fathers on a mission to catch up after a hard day’s work, dancing in their white aprons behind a high counter, offering ready-made cold meats and roasts, sumptuous sauces, jellied nervetti and veal? Here, in case you have such ancient memories, forget them. Because contemporary delicatessens, which have sprung up like mushrooms after the pandemic in many Italian cities, are something else entirely. FROM THE STARS... TO THE PARMIGIANA Take one of the latest openings in Milan, CreDa, the restaurant opened by Crescenzo Morlando and Dario Pisani . Two young chefs (in their early thirties) who met in the kitchens of Vòce di Aimo e Nadia and have experience in fine dining, from Enrico Crippa in Alba to Ramon Freixa in Madrid. But when they decided to strike out on their own, together, they did not aim for haute cuisine but rather for the great, and shared, popular tradition of Campania. “We wanted to do something more informal. Fine dining, where we trained, helped us acquire the various technicalities, gave us discipline, taught us how to recognise and choose ingredients. But I don’t feel it’s my cuisine,” Morlando tells us. “We felt the need to do something different that would be good for us and less stressful. Here we express cooking with love, as if grandma had cooked it for her grandchildren.” We are also reminded of the very high costs of fine dining, which is in fact on the hook for poor economic sustainability. “Michelin- starred cuisine has very high costs, due to the ingredients, the very high waste, the staff, the type of cellar, the design location. Everything has to fit together. Let’s say ours is starred pasta and potato.” The format is simple and no-frills, the layout reminiscent of ‘an old dairy or French boulangerie’ (but also, it seems to us, a country house). There are two entities that walk in parallel: the food, always available even at 4 o’clock in the afternoon (gnocchetti, parmigiana, meatballs with sauce, pan-fried seasonal vegetables). And the trattoria, with plentiful and tasty dishes verging on the delicious: the potato and provolone pasta, the diaphragm of Angus, the seared squid with vegetables. You can choose to eat in or take away the dishes from the deli, with prices slashed by 20 per cent and of course no service or cover charge. The clientele appreciates this, from a group of high school students to Airbnb travellers (we are in the delightful via Orti, very old Milan) to young couples to families. The cuisine is impeccably prepared, freshly made, no frills, at an honest price and, in the end, everyone likes it. Unlike the somewhat abstruse avant- garde of the starred restaurants. BEYOND PIZZA The king of Cilento pizza, Paolo De Simone , has also opened two gourmet pizzerias Modus in Milan. Here, too, the key is in the authentic flavours of Cilento cuisine, no sandwiches or standardised supermarket trays. Open from 8am to 8pm, the service is quick but not cheap, where ‘in a quarter of an hour and for about fifteen euros’ you can eat well and healthy. Things like a soup made with wild vegetables and potatoes or a stuffed aubergine. Great care is taken in the choice of ingredients (with a special focus on vegetables) and here too the possibility of take away or eating in and occupying one of the forty or so seats available. COLD MEATS AND COFFEE In short, this idea of combining retail and hospitality in one place seems to meet the needs of our busy and fast-flowing, which have emerged from the pandemic. The crisis of the hypermarkets is quite evident: people, especially in the cities, no longer feel like taking the car and setting off on the ‘weekly shopping mission’, perhaps they also feel more like socialising, a piece of advice and a smile, to feel welcomed in environments that feel more like homes than motorway services. With the option of taking dinner home if one is tired and has no desire or way of cooking. It is a formula that can be interpreted in various ways, as Attymo in Terni shows us, a shop that was founded in 2023 as a resale of Stefanangeli cold cuts, a business that dates back to 1964, but that has decided to be something more. In other words, a place where you can do your grocery shopping quickly because ‘there is no point in wasting time at the supermarket’, but there is also a search for quality: ‘you won’t find our products in the large-scale retail trade, they are more sought-after’, and there is also a proposal of simple dishes, displayed in the window (another ‘strong point’ of the delicatessen is that you can see and be tempted by the menu), delicious bread, and fine preserves. And then the café-bar “to meet the customer’s needs throughout the day, from breakfast to aperitifs”. A varied choice with speciality coffees and extractions that are also alternatives to espresso. “It is a chameleon- like place that changes its skin according to the time of day and needs. When I was offered the opportunity to work here, I liked the idea, in my opinion multitasking food is the future, nowadays you no longer have time to do anything,” says Luca Riccardi , the bar manager. MILANESE ENTREPRENEURSHIP The other strength of the format, besides simplicity, memory and empathy, is that it is rooted in the neighbourhood. And a historic neighbourhood delicatessen was Rosticceria Palazzi, also in Milan, and doomed to the inauspicious fate met by so many such establishments. Indeed, after 32 years it closed. It was a bad loss for the Crescenzo Morlando e Dario Pisani di CreDa