Smoke Signals: From Andreina, Errico Recanati continues to craft flavor spirals that connect the palate with avant-garde, ancestral past, and pure experimentation. Highlights include vegetables, new cooking tools crafted by a blacksmith, and bases obtained by caramelizing waste on embers, using specific cast-iron grates.
The restaurant
Where is the fireplace? That's the first question that comes to mind when entering the new Andreina after last year's renovation. The entrance is on the side, and in front of the fire, a grill table is set up for an itinerant dining experience. For instance, it's used for appetizers, strictly express. But overall, the place is more elegant and sophisticated, even in the details of the furnishings.
The cuisine remains incredibly delicious in its avant-garde experiments: pure archaeology of the future. Vegetables still take center stage, Suspended like still lifes on embers for an extraordinary low temperature. But there are innovations. New tools for use on the grill, especially reduction and concentration techniques that bring smoke into broths and stocks.
This happens by caramelizing vegetable, animal, or fish scraps on the grill, instead of the conventional oven toasting, before watering and reducing to one-tenth of the volume. A fire that is direct and expressive, always.
The research takes shape in the 12-course Flames menu, while the already established dishes make up the Smoke menu, including 9 items. The wine cellar is also evolving, increasingly attentive to local and natural wines, dynamic in its 400 labels.
The dishes
Must-tries include the bread with smoked butter and lard. Among the vegetables, the carrot stands out, cooked in salt for 2 hours, rinsed, placed in a salt and citric acid brine, cooked at low temperature, and roasted on the grill. It is then lacquered with the reduction of grill waste to bring out a sweet and licorice flavor, plus a drop of Laphroaig whiskey to enhance the smokiness through peat. Served on a plate with sweet and bitter pink grapefruit sauce, bitter almond, and iced grapefruit granita for contrast. "Because the grill needs freshness, so cold and acidity allow the palate to take a break."
Or the lettuce, a variation of a thousand little lettuces and Italian cabbage rolls. In this case, the leaves are grilled and soaked in Laphroaig whiskey with a little soy and sapa; they encase cubes of cod and end up on the house cast-iron grates, punctured for caramelization and Maillard reaction. This way, the cod cooks just enough, while its scraps become a broken milk with drops of herb oil reduced on the grill.
Another distinctive feature of the venue is the sea and mountains combination, like raw mantis shrimp with its crispy coral next to a mustard-infused wild boar tartare, with a base of mantis shrimp waste on the grill.
Even the first courses are smoky. For example, a partridge raviolo with pasta colored with burnt onion flour, served with roasted onion broth and burnt walnut for umami and the fatty sensation of essential oils.
The second courses focus on the grill and ingredients. See the duck cooked in two ways, with crispy skin, caramelized quince and chutney, its base, confit thigh, and the sour potato with shallot, grilled on a cast-iron pan. And if the fireplace isn't enough, a grill oven is on the way, created for the house and not by the usual brands.
Special mention for the desserts, as surprising as they are pleasant: grill-cooked flan with grilled banana and smoked cream ice cream, grilled fruit soups, and even the caramelization of meringue at the table, with the burning ember on the lemon curd of the small pastry shop.
Contacts
Ristorante Andreina
Via Buffolareccia 14- 60025 Loreto AN
M. +39 347 957 2088
info@ristoranteandreina.it
