Guido Restaurant in Rimini is a safe harbor: Here, the Raschi brothers serve some of the finest seafood cuisine on the Adriatic, where reverence for quality ingredients mirrors a bow to tradition. The classic cuisine from Romagna becomes a canvas for creativity and innovation.
Photo credits of Giorgio Salvatori
The Restaurant and its History
Rimini 1946, old sepia-toned photos on an endless beach, the youth of our forefathers in a brief, stolen embrace. The history of Guido Restaurant stretches far back, starting with a humble chalet where Grandpa Guido, his wife Augusta, and later their daughter Tiziana served their home-style dishes.
Spaghetti with red clam sauce, seafood risotto, cuttlefish with peas, and sea snails were classic favorites that brothers Gianpaolo and Gianluca Raschi, running the kitchen and the wine cellar, put on hold for a while as they pursued ambition and creativity.
The turning point came in 2002 with the menu "Technical Test Broadcasts," featuring daring seafood dishes with caramel and chocolate, experiments that today they remember with some embarrassment. Tradition then returned in a reinvented and original form, earning a Michelin star in 2008, a distinction they have maintained ever since. Meanwhile, the family's classic dishes were reintroduced in a separate venue: Augusta cucina e cicchetto, opened in 2020 in the central area of the old icehouses, retaining historical vestiges, with an entrance reminiscent of the foyer of the Amintore Galli Theater and a pleasant outdoor area for warm weather. Gianluca, who oversees both venues, often works here while also managing the menu of the Michelin-starred restaurant with sommelier Scilla Guidi.
On the other side in Miramare, Gianpaolo continues to work, a self-taught cook who completed a brief 100-hour course at the Palace Hotel in Rimini—no internships, no revered mentors. He's been dedicated to the same family-style cuisine for thirty years.
Over time, he's developed a few signature dishes that encapsulate his personal culinary philosophy, like the delightful spaghetti with oysters emulsified raw, blending the Italian classic with the French tradition of buttered shellfish, finished with a dash of chives inspired by Marchesi. Other notable creations include cuttlefish with squacquerone cheese, mantis shrimp that resembles a gratin and evokes the Adriatic low tide, and in the summer, a seafood pizza topped with raw shellfish.
The ingredients come from a trusted fishmonger, established the same year as the grandparents' kiosk, with a partnership that has lasted three generations. Seasonal varieties take center stage in the dishes, sometimes as the sole focus, even down to single-ingredient plates. These ingredients are prepared in a lab opened in 2019, supplying both venues, including bread. To accompany the dishes, there's a cellar with 4,000 bottles, showcasing local wines and regional varieties, from the renowned Sangiovese to the less common Trebbiano.
The dishes
There are two tasting menus, both featuring signature dishes: "Benvenuti a Rimini," with typical local preparations including grilled, marinara, and brodetto, and "Guido 2024," which contains more recent creations, priced at $118 and $172, respectively. The appetizers set the tone for the meal: zanchetta fish bones turned into a wafer, crafted in an electric biscuit maker, with burnt onion mayonnaise; eel meatballs with vinegar gel and cherry vinegar; delightful baby whitebait with olive oil and lemon gel; corn sponge with lightly smoked whipped salt cod; and fried piadina with "lard" made from shrimp dried in salt, part of a recurring theme of fish-based charcuterie.
Among the classic dishes, the welcome appetizer has become iconic: a Cuttlefish Cappuccino that's a far cry from Le Calandre because it's single-ingredient, designed to use leftovers from the squacquerone dish, using only the cuttlefish mantle. It features a toasted broth, white foam resembling milk, and powdered cuttlefish ink akin to cocoa. It's 100% cuttlefish. The salt cod is cooked sous-vide with fresh onion, oil, and vinegar; it rests overnight to harmonize the flavors and firm up the texture. It's then portioned, and a sauce is made from the scraps and cooking liquid, resulting in a pil-pil sauce with parsley-infused oil. At the base is a classic marinara sauce made with mussels, clams, white wine, and pepper.
The Mazzancolla with beurre blanc is inspired by a renewed interest in classic sauces. The raw crustaceans are seasoned and lightly seared with a blowtorch, then generously coated with beurre blanc infused with toasted shrimp heads and shells, giving it a distinctive orange color. A second sauce, a vegetable jus, adds structure to the dish, balancing the rich and sweet notes with a hint of bitterness.
However, the crowd-pleaser, the dish showcasing the restaurant's creative spirit, is the grilled mullet cappelletto in vinegar broth. It has almost an Oriental look due to the finely julienned raw vegetables. It represents an epitome of the Adriatic, combining two iconic preparations: stuffed pasta in broth and grilled fish. Yet it surprises the palate with unexpected flavors and an intense acetic note, derived from a mix of water and Rimini Sangiovese vinegar with fresh scallions, bell peppers, and chili peppers, with the charred skin of garlic and onion powder enhancing the grilled essence. It almost feels like an act of care, wrapping the humblest fish in the warmth of the pasta. "My mother used to cook mullet on a charcoal grill, seasoning it with vinegar, oil, garlic, chili, and parsley, then she'd leave it in the fridge overnight, and we'd eat it cold the next day. I hold that taste in my mind, and that's where this dish came from."
Then there's the squid that leans towards the bitter, with licorice enhancing the burnt flavor from the grill. "From late summer to early spring, our squid is quite small, with very tender and sweet flesh. It's marinated in oil, garlic, bay leaf, and white wine, then briefly seared on the grill. The same treatment is given to the seasonal mushroom, whether it's oyster or pleurotus. Plus, there's a broth made from squid scraps, flavored with licorice, and a cream made from the mushrooms."
The monkfish is served in its purest form, as a crispy sandwich. "I was looking for a dish to break up the long tasting menu, a transition between sections. I thought about creating a cracker from the monkfish tail fillet, left to dry in the fridge, frozen, sliced with a deli slicer, then dehydrated and fried. There's also faux lard made from the same fillet, cured like charcuterie, salted, washed, massaged with vinegar, pepper, and rosemary, then hung to dry. To lubricate it, I made a mayonnaise with smoked herring, something I'd put on everything, like bacon." The final dish is a lemon meringue dessert.
"I wanted to reimagine a classic international pastry in our own way. Instead of sponge cake, we use bread crisps soaked in vanilla butter and made crunchy. They're served with sage gel, pink grapefruit gel, fried capers, freshly made and flamed Italian meringue, and a lemon sorbet from the Amalfi Coast to cleanse the palate."
Contacts
Ristorante Guido 1947
Lungomare Guido Spadazzi, 12, 47924 Miramare RN
Phone: 0541 374612
