"I just want to support talented young people who maybe have a project, but few resources, and therefore enough motivation to start it: that's part of the reason they are leaving the industry. My feeling is that at this rate the Italian restaurant industry will dissolve." Agostino Iacobucci entrusts a skilled class of '94 chef with his new restaurant Ancòra: our report on the experience in Cesenatico.
Photo Credits: Lorenzo Noccioli
The restaurant
To dispel the doubts that have been hovering over the gastronomic community for some time, Ancóra, the name of Agostino Iacobucci's new restaurant in Cesenatico, is read with the accent on the “ó,” as specified in the logo, and means exactly “again,” and not "Àncora", which in Italian is the tool with which a boat is moored, the anchor. It is probably the immediacy effect of the brain, as in the case when it can read words correctly with the inner letters in bulk. And, similarly, when “anchor” is in a maritime context it is immediately associated with the mooring implement.
There, as soon as we walk through the entrance, we meet the chef from Castellammare di Stabia and immediately ask him how he arrived at the choice of this name for the new restaurant that opened a few months ago. He explains that it is basically the Italian, contracted translation of “Oops! I Did It Again.” “Exactly five years after the opening of Villa Zarri in Bologna,” Agostino explains, ” the opportunity happened to take this new place, the owners are clients of mine, and one evening while chatting they made me the proposal and I thought of launching myself again in a new restaurant adventure. For this Àncora."
The space is the one that for almost twenty years hosted Magnolia, Alberto Faccani's two-star Michelin restaurant, and last year, for about three months, Celestia's flash project.
Approximately twenty-four covers, three gathered rooms, with a linear design, neutral colors, minimal classicism, and with a few spurts of refined eccentricity, such as the highly polished resin counter shaded in different blues and turquoises, overlooking the large, bright kitchen.
Agostino Iacobucci, forty-four, is chef and patron of the Michelin-starred restaurant of the same name inside the majestic Villa Zarri in Castel Maggiore, Bologna (menu story here). He took up cooking at the age of fifteen in his aunt's restaurant in Lettere, Naples, then trained under Andrea Cannavacciuolo, father of Antonino. He worked with Gennaro Esposito and, after several internships in France and the United Kingdom, earned his first Michelin star in 2010. Confirmed two years later at I Portici in Bologna, where he stayed for six years, then opened his restaurant at Villa Zarri, which became starred within months of opening in 2019.
“I think this is the time to evolve in my role as a chef and become a trainer and supporter of young people,” says Iacobucci, “I think it is necessary to do something tangible to support talented young people who may have a project but lack resources, and therefore sufficient motivation to start it: this is also why they are leaving the industry. My feeling is that at this rate the Italian restaurant industry will dissolve." For the Stabiese chef, the opening of this new restaurant in the Leonardesco Canal Harbor town also represents a family reunion of sorts. The youngest of the Iacobuccis, Pasquale, Agostino's younger brother, after six years in the brigade at Osteria Francescana, and his son Eugenio, a very young man, along with others in their early twenties are joining resident chef Marco Garattoni.
The chef and the cuisine
Born in Cesena in 1994, he began his journey at the Berton restaurant in Milan, where he stayed for four years, starting as an intern until becoming sous chef. Thanks to Berton he flew to Barcelona and for more than two years worked at Disfrutar. With Alberto Faccani there had already been brief periods of sporadic work, so back in Italy he joined the brigade of the Magnolia restaurant to fill the role of sous chef.
“I always went to eat at Alberto's,” Iacobucci says, ” and there I met Marco in person, we already knew each other obviously on social media. Then a colleague told me he was about to leave Magnolia, so I contacted him, offered him to be the executive of Ancòra, and he married the project."
“You could say I went back to my roots a little bit ,” Marco adds, “ the first years of my work at Magnolia I was in this very place, I always loved Cesenatico, and last but not least I am close to home.”
The restaurant's clientele is predominantly local, and the people seated at the table, for the most part, are Bolognese with second homes in Cesenatico, former customers of Iacobucci's at Villa Zarri. The dining room is expertly run by Apulian maître Antonio Lo Basso, brother of chef Felice, along with, among others, Prabath Manjula Halwinnage, “Manju,” who has been following Iacobucci since I Portici, with significant experience at Enoteca Pinchiorri. The concepts that materialize in the dishes take off from cues from Marco and Agostino, in most cases starting with the ingredient, and still in the embryonic stage are shared with the whole brigade, so that there is a collective thought behind the creative phase.
What comes out reveals a clear and limpid sense of taste that emerges at the precise meeting point between elegance and enjoyment, along with an aesthetic approach exhibited with extreme naturalness. All encompassed in two tasting menus, €69 and €89, respectively; in addition to the chef's free-hand menu, there are, of course, a la carte offerings and the lunch special, on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, at the chef's choice, at the very pop price of €59.
The dishes
The welcoming amuse bouche set includes a flan of chard, zucchini, and lightly smoked sardines; a cube of watermelon, marinated mackerel, horseradish mayonnaise; a bao with tuna sauce, sweet and sour cucumber, trout roe; a tartlet with crabmeat and beet, taco with ricotta, Cantabrian anchovies, sun-dried tomato, caviar.
A kaleidoscope of hints of sauces mimicking the tones of Russian salad accompanies the raw purple shrimp, which can be dressed in a variety of hints, including even the savory aromatics of caviar and a froth of giardiniera.
In the Caprese 2.0, basil leaves are infused into the mozzarella's water, the dairy is juxtaposed with yellow dates, red dates, green dates, seeds, basil, and caviar oil. Alongside, a burst of freshness with cantaloupe melon ice cream, saffron tomato water jelly, basil oil.
Hazelnut miso emphasizes the sweetness of freshly seared scallop, with Jerusalem artichoke, arugula, seaweed, caviar, and sea air. While on the side, a raw scallop is covered with a crispy pasta shell, to be broken up and mixed with the shellfish, with cilantro, hazelnut, Jerusalem artichoke.
Always present in Iacobucci's routes, and certainly could not be missed in Cesenatico, the succulent and meaty Comacchio eel, lacquered with annurca apple water, white sesame, seaweed salad, flavored daikon, shiitake, and Tosazu sauce.
The transposition of the homemade "seppia e piselli", cuttlefish and peas, into haute cuisine takes place with the cuttlefish offered in four preparations, raw, fried, grilled, in ragu, to be passed in a creamy pea cake, raw peas, veil of pea pod water jelly, tomato, squid ink.
After the legendary "tortello Napoli incontra l'Emilia", Agostino's signature, here the pasta filling is the main condiment of the most popular pasta dish in Romagna, namely spaghetto alle vongole (spaghetti with clams). Inside the unmissable bottoni are "poverazze", special type of clams, seasoned then with sea air.
“Being originally from the sea ,” says Iacobucci,” once I moved to Bologna, I found in Cesenatico my favorite seaside location, with its long beaches, the beautiful movement of people that reminds me of the Villa Comunale in Castellammare. Thirteen years ago when I first came with my wife, all I could see from the highway was greenery and hills, I could not get my bearings or figure out which side was the sea. In my memories, the sea also evokes the green meadow, so we thought of covering our risotto alla pescatora with green powder." The bitterness of the escarole gracefully contrasts the sweetness of the crispy mullet, in a beurre blanc with escarole oil, a sauce of mullet heads , caper leaf and olives.
To introduce dessert, a buffalo milk ice cream topped with a mousse of red fruits; dessert that can only be the unique and inimitable triple-rise baba, almost natural, with vanilla semi-whipped cream.
Followed by a lemon madeleine, Maldon salt; a meringue with oil ganache; salted peanut; blueberry raspberry, truffle chocolate, and a sfogliatella with vanilla custard.
Contact
Ancòra Restaurant Cesenatico
Viale Trento 31 | 47042 Cesenatico (FC)
tel. +39 0547 397207 | ristorante@ancoracesenatico.it
