Cannavacciuolo's new gourmet with talented chefs, relais in the woods and only 13 rooms: revelation at Le Cattedrali

At Le Cattedrali, the fine dining restaurant is in partnership with Antonino Cannavacciuolo, who has entrusted the kitchen to a real talent like Gianluca Renzi, a 35-year-old Roman with an important past. His philosophy? “You don't necessarily need to follow a fashion on everything or have to tell a story or a path philosophy. I try to do my best for the customer: the proof is when he comes back."

The relais

It is a very special context in which Le Cattedrali Relais was born, a place of great impact and understated elegance. In the Monferrato area, very close to Asti, bordering on its important paleontological park and surrounded by eighteen acres of woodland, it has been designed with spaces that exceed the needs of the structure itself; this is to ensure that guests can move with maximum freedom among the various areas that wind around the large hall that acts as its focal point.

The general manager, Massimo Chiappo Buratti, told us how Le Cattedrali is the result of a vision of the owner, Livio Negro, an Asti native and an entrepreneur in another field, who, when he found himself on this large plateau where he was already coming from as a boy, fell in love with it, buying it through more than eighty notarial deeds, then obtaining permission to build the relais. The name comes from the grandeur of the cathedral, the tallest religious building that rises high into the sky, among the plants of this large forest where nature is still wild, here where in the Miocene it was all sea.

On the environmentally friendly front, in which Le Cattedrali is perfectly integrated, the attention paid to sustainability through the use of green technologies is important including a 170 kWh photovoltaic array that provides for much of the energy needs. The rooms, a total of thirteen (1 loft, 3 suites, 7 junior suites and 2 deluxe rooms), are a masterpiece of refinement: understated, bright and full of state-of-the-art home automation solutions; special attention has also been paid to contemporary art with works by sculptor Urano Palma and Maria Vittoria Faldini , selected by Lorena Faldini, interior designer who developed the project. There is also a wellness area and a beautiful infinity pool.

Resident chef Gianluca Renzi

On the food and beverage front, the relais has a large and comfortable area dedicated to the lounge bar, with a rich assortment of spirits: lovers of mixology will have no difficulty finding plenty of satisfaction. Fans of haute cuisine will find just as much, because here at Le Cattedrali the fine dining restaurant is in partnership with Antonino Cannavacciuolo, chef who certainly needs no introduction, who has entrusted the kitchen to a real talent like Gianluca Renzi, a 35-year-old Roman with an important past.

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He tells us, “When I was growing up my father was a salesman, he traveled a lot for work and was out all week. On weekends we would go shopping together, he would take me to Campo dei Fiori or to the Monteverde market near home. We would buy fruits and vegetables and I would spend time with him cooking: I think that was my first stimulus toward this job; in eighth grade I had to choose whether to do art or hotel school, which would introduce me to work right away; in the end I chose to go to the hotel school in Rieti; living in the boarding school five days a week gave me a lot of responsibility, I became very passionate about food and slowly also about room service: I was undecided but in the end I chose cooking. Step by step, I found that my time in the kitchen flew by."

Gianluca's longest experience was gravitating to the world of Heinz Beck: “I had the good fortune to work with him for ten years: when I was twenty-five, he gave me the opportunity to manage Castello di Fighine, which already had a star.” At the end of a long and varied experience with the German chef, Renzi decided to start on a path of his own: “The biggest goal was to look for ‘what Gianluca liked to cook the most’.” His gastronomic thinking is well defined: “I think the most important thing is concreteness, in dishes and tastes. Obviously technique accompanies all this, along with the attention and teamwork with the boys in making the dishes always in the same way, always trying to improve them even more. Today, however, I would put it on the search for the product: that it be of the highest quality, seasonal: I want to cook what I like to eat, because I think that in this way you can convey to the maximum what I do best."

Before arriving here in Asti, Gianluca made other stops, including a Florentine one at Locale, a Bolognese stop at I Portici, and a small interlude in Cesenatico. At Le Cattedrali, in addition to putting himself on the line, because “coming here under the name of another chef (however great, ed.) was to put himself on the line another time, in another territory,” Gianluca gives another twist: “I changed the whole brigade because in my opinion in Cesenatico a cycle had ended a bit, and I will always thank the guys who followed me for so many years.”

The restaurant

Now here the team is made up of very young girls and boys, both in the dining room and in the kitchen, where the average age is twenty-three: "I have had the great satisfaction of finding people who are willing to grow and share a path, and I am also very lucky to have a dining room like this, with young people who are not plastered: in all these years I have struggled to have a shared philosophy, the one I have always had with the kitchen, because it is not easy to find those who live the same way as you do about daily life and sacrifice. Alessia (Chignoli, the 26-year-old maître, winner of the penultimate edition of Emergente Sala, editor's note) brings the barrow first, and she has the same head that I have: I'm very happy about that."

Also very young, but already experienced and enthusiastic, is sommelier Camilla Torresi, who moves nimbly with the pairings, fishing intelligently from a cellar, very beautiful to visit and of impressive breadth, which already has 12,000 bottles and 2,700 labels. The premises for a top-notch experience are all there, and they are not belied by the proof of the facts, because here you are very well, serenely enjoying from start to finish. Between thirty and thirty-two covers, the restaurant is spacious and elegant.

Gianluca Renzi's dishes are his own expression, because "Chef Cannavacciuolo leaves me completely free hand: I then share with him the new ones and the study of the menu, as well as the search for the best product. He really cares and has a great positivity for this place; like me, when he first saw it, he was impressed. It is an out-of-the-box facility." Gianluca is clear on what to do: “You don't need to necessarily follow a fad on everything or have to tell a story or a path philosophy, although often if you don't you can't be part of a system. I don't want to be labeled in a certain canon, nor do I want to chase anyone: I try to do my best for the customer: the proof is when they come back." And this, in the restaurant, often happens already after only a few months.

The dishes

The dishes are understandable, direct, essential, full of flavor, as Gianluca says: “Maybe without peaks of bitterness or acidity, because evolution is the lucidity of not using too many frills, making a dish too extreme.” Red tuna in bagna cauda, katsuobushi and capers, deliciously fresh, is inspired by the typical Piedmontese recipe: “We make it lighter and frothier but with the same taste, combining it with a Spanish Balfegó red tuna. We serve it all with a salted lemon gel, chunks of the same citrus fruit, caper powder and glasswort." "L'orto ghiacciato" is a dish of great elegance, born, they tell us, from the search for a pairing starting with a Champagne.

"80% of the ingredients come from our garden. We make a sorbet where there are 15 to 20 Mediterranean herbs. We play with textures and acidity, using a vervain sauce. It is always evolving and changes depending on the availability of the vegetables and herbs”; temperatures also vary, ranging from room temperature to frozen, such as fig and cherry granita. Scampo, sour Romaine lettuce salad and salmon roe is a perfectly harmonious synthesis of sweet, sour and bitter flavors and contrasts. Now a Renzi signature is the mouthwatering Fusillone, almond cream and sea urchin, cuttlefish and parsley: almond cream, fresh sea urchin cream and parsley at the base. Squid ink again, barbecued cuttlefish, crispy cuttlefish: one knows that in fine dining one should not ask for an encore, but in this case one would gladly make an exception.

Not to be outdone are the Bottoni di gallina bianca (white hen) with mushroom extract and saffron: the stuffing hen is a native species; the dish is served with a Gorgonzola fondue enriched with local saffron; finally, a super-reduced consommé with seasonal mushrooms.

Wonderful texture of the excellent Veal Sweetbread, bagnet verde, smoked eel and vermouth. From the heart of young veal, the sweetbread is cooked at a low temperature and pan-seared with butter and herbs, served with a jellied Turin vermouth, Champagne foam, and eel sauce. “We get the eels fresh, marinate them, and grill them with a teriyaki flavor.”

Also notable is the pigeon that comes from Tuscany: matured fifteen days, it is cooked and whole, cut off when called to the table, served with Nebbiolo sauce, black garlic cream, scorzonera and salted peanuts. On the side is the succulent skewer with liver, durello and barbecued heart; again, the lacquered leg with spicy sauce. It ends in freshness with the beautiful play of textures of basil, strawberries and Taggiasca olives, served with an excellent strawberry kombucha. A place of taste not to be missed.