On the rooftop of Lingotto there is a restaurant led by one of the most interesting young chefs on the Turin scene: Alessandro Scardina, born in 1991, surprises at La Pista.
The restaurant
Who knows how many models and car prototypes have whizzed by on the legendary Fiat test track on the roof of the Lingotto in Turin prior to the Renzo Piano-designed redevelopment? It has become a peculiar place, this one: transformed into Europe's largest roof garden with more than 40,000 plants including 300 different species and varieties, from up here you can enjoy a view that leaves no one indifferent, starting from the large glass and steel bubble designed by the same, celebrated architect, and then sweeping over the city, its hills and the Alpine arc.
Gerla 1927, a group headed by entrepreneur Roberto Munnia, has created a lounge bar and restaurant, La Pista in fact, where one of the most interesting young chefs on the Turin scene cooks. While it is certainly worth looking out and taking a look at the large circuit, the interior is no less: one sits in large, bright restaurants with impressive windows. Tables are well spaced out and the atmosphere is just right, even for a romantic dinner.
The chef
Alessandro Scardina, born in 1991, has the healthy ambition of someone who loves his profession from the bottom of his heart: ”I did not choose this job by chance, I was born and raised in a southern family - both my parents are Sicilian - in a very modest background with salaries that were enough to make ends meet. So my mother always did everything at home and I remember a childhood of genuine dishes, of vegetables, preserves, jams, fresh pasta and seasonality, never frozen or canned food: we always bought at the Porta Palazzo market.
I always cooked, never liked things like video games. I actually stayed with my mother, cleaned green beans and sang; I have a great passion for singing, I was in the children's choir at Teatro Regio. When I started hotel school, I felt ahead of the kids who didn't know what it meant to make fresh pasta, because I already had a chance to do it. Then I don't like to sit on my hands: if I get home and I'm not tired, I don't feel right." Beyond a few stops at well-known restaurants, including Noma, Alexander says he learned much more in his experiences in lesser-known restaurants.
“It's not about stars, it's about what you can take home from the experience." Like at the Risca brothers' Three Roosters, which now has Magazzino 52 in Turin: “After school I went to work with them, it was a good apprenticeship until I was 21. I learned quality discipline, education, they directed me to build a credible resume.” One year he spent with Adriano Cavagnini in London, at the Amaranto at the Four Seasons: “He taught me a lot of things, I worked with subjects I didn't know. Another one that marked me was Federico Zanellato from LuMi in Sydney."
We find him again in London, at Coya, a traditional Peruvian cuisine restaurant. Back in Turin, at the time of the pandemic, he found himself working as a private chef for a few important families until he went to Villa La Bollina in the Alessandria area, called by Ivan Famanni. Here he stayed a couple of years before spontaneously introducing himself to Roberto Munnia, aware that at La Pista the then chef was on his way out.
“Mr. Munnia asked me to cook for him and his wife for lunch; I went to the fishmonger at the market. Half an hour after eating he called me and said 'Scardina you are the new chef of La Pista.' A great satisfaction, I still have goosebumps. Now I've been here a little over a year and I'm trying to make it a restaurant where it's worth coming to eat."
The experience and the dishes
In our opinion, Alessandro Scardina has already succeeded, with a very personal cuisine, rich in ideas, which by freely drawing from his experiences becomes an original interpretation. “I work a lot on instinct, but if I'm not comfortable with myself I can't cook. Then there are days when I feel happy and maybe even 4/5 new and good dishes come out." By his side Daniele Lo Grasso: “He did everything with me, we got out of school together, we traveled and slept in the same bed, where I don't come he comes, it's like we are brothers”. The picture of a close-knit team is completed with Evi Polliotto, pastry chef, and a very well-orchestrated dining room by Davide Sterrantino, maître and sommelier (nice wine list with more than 350 preferences and a good selection of Champagne) and Mattia Dagnelli, vice maître.
The sequence of amuse bouche, the kind carefully designed to pave the way for the dishes, is remarkable and not at all predictable (as, alas, often happens elsewhere). The experience begins with the Piedmontese beef tartare topped with a sea urchin garum: at its base a tarragon puree and on the surface ginger caramel and tempura balls, beautiful bites.
It continues with voluptuous egg pasta ravioli filled with lacto-fermented potato, celeriac puree, cooked and raw vegetables, finishing with a green curry sauce. Tasty spaghetti cooked in red turnip extraction with smoked herring, herring in oil, its caviar and 30-month Parmigiano Reggiano fondue, what is now a signature dish of Scardina's cuisine.
Of enticing texture and flavor is the cod marinated in red miso and cooked on barbecue, supa de choclo and bitter lupine sprouts. Also very good is the kale (collard greens), also barbecued and served with tamarind and vegetable extract.
Tender and great-tasting oriental-glazed suckling pig ribs finished on the grill. Also worth mentioning is the fresh pre-dessert: sake sorbet and rose extract with candied Peruvian botija olives. It ends happily with fragrant fig leaf ice cream, red fruits, trehalose meringue and Balsamic Vinegar of Modena. For those passing through Turin La Pista is a stop not to be missed.
Contact
La Pista
Via Nizza, 262, 10126 Turin TO
Phone: 011 1917 3073
