The menu is very short, so short that if you arrived with three hungry friends you might as well say, “We'll take it all.” The team? A group of bright and passionate young people. But, above all, with Trattoria della Gloria, the revenge of the social role of typical Milanese insignia is fulfilled.
The Story
I would be lying if I told you that prejudices about Trattoria della Gloria stood at zero. Rocco Galasso I had framed him from the days of Enoteca Naturale and branded with the label of “innkeeper naturalist integer”, Tommaso Melilli, the writer-chef who thinks he's still in Paris and only cooks nostalgia. What about Luca Gennati? On Luca my hindsight was not enough data. Two out of three make the majority, though. To review a restaurant you can get away with little, risking the least. You stay on the surface, confirm the first impression and move on to the next one. Or you can get down to listening and observing. Letting yourself be satiated by the reality that you did not expect, that one more time presents the bill, that is absolutely worth paying. What ensues I hope is what is furthest from a review.
On the rive gauche of the Naviglio-in that part of the Naviglio where the movida fades and makes less of a racket-there is this new wave trattoria, which has restored the convivial splendor of the neighborhood trattoria. On Mario Pichi Street , the Gloria was a historic trattoria named after the owner who ran it with her husband. Those who guard its walls now and those who try to give it a new history are three disheveled, three literati, three friends. A new scapigliatura that breaks with the recent bourgeoisie of the modern trattoria, which doesn't give a damn about the rules and new regulations of the restaurant business. Tommaso, Rocco, and Luca are really three literati, and to be bastards on paper, it is not clear why they have not yet failed.
Rocco: "Tommaso and I studied Humanities but at some point we gave up, Luca on the other hand went all the way. Luca keeps the restaurant accounts. If it had been just me and Tommaso, we would have been shipwrecked soon. Luca did business letters (laughs), took the master's degree where you have to use as few letters as possible. He found himself in charge of administration and turned out to be very capable. Luca holds the strings. Tommaso and I have our own organization, which few people understand (both laugh).”
Luca: “The fact that we cultivate other things opens up so many perspectives and makes us keep our eyes open, not get stuck in the issues of catering. I hope it is felt in the dining room. During the service, being able to talk in the room about so many things and also about the dishes in a different way is something I believe in a lot. All three of us studied Humanities, we look like three chicks however about 15 years of restaurant experience on our shoulders we have them."
Tommaso has already written quite a bit about the history of this craft, perhaps risking his pen to cloud his pot. He has divulged the behind-the-scenes of the kitchen environment. Now he's gotten a bit fed up. The point is not just cooking, but rather the interpenetration of these 15-20 professions that coexist in a restaurant: mathematician, chemist, anthropologist, carpenter, psychologist, human resources, sociologist, plumber, electrician, surgeon. This is what his next book will be about. Meanwhile, he is alternating between very different readings. Nicholas Lander'sThe art of the restaurateur and On the menu, from a suggestion by a Finnish food critic, and Sally Rooney's Intermezzo, from a suggestion by Tik Tok, publishing case of the moment.
The three working partners are joined by three other partners, two of whom are nonoperating: Margherita Bacci, a pork butcher in Tuscany, and Pietro Biancardi, owner of the publishing house Iperborea. Helping on the accounts is Roberto Bellino.
What job is the cook today? What figure is the restaurateur?
I prop the statement from The Bear series “Every second counts” on the counter, expecting a rather sharp rejection. A denial of the mainstream by those who, again at first glance, present themselves as alternative, the kind you'd say they don't subscribe to streaming platforms on principle. The responses displace me, how nice.
Tommaso: “That sentence is true, it tells about this profession, the kitchen in particular and the anxiety phase that the room undergoes. It is presented as 'every second can allow you to do one more thing.' I will say something a little less motivational. I see it as every second we lose to a series of miscellaneous and eventualities ranging from the-goods-that-didn't-arrive-on-time, the flood-in-the-cellar, etc. Every second we lose in things we could have done. And that we plan to do tomorrow. This is definitely a less idyllic and more realistic view of things. I'm here now talking to you, and there are a couple of things I'm not going to do this afternoon, but that's normal."
Luca: “It's not something to chase after like we're the white rabbit, for us it's very important to be there in that second, it's the only way to be able to be even slow in this work and also to have fun and not to bullshit. Because if that “every second counts” is misinterpreted, which is that you don't care who's in front of you, who gets the dish, that's it, that's the worst thing that can happen in a restaurant. The fact that there is never a look toward who is sitting at the table. If you saw us yesterday 'wasting' so much time squatting at the tables talking, it's because really those seconds I'm giving to the customers count, because every second of mine can change that table's evening."
The restaurant and the experience
We need to remember to post the sign at Gloria with the phrase “Every table counts.” Easy ecumenism aside, actually that's what you notice when you go to eat at their place. Rocco and Luca stopping at tables and squatting at one point. A type of body language that brings with it sitting down to the level of those who are seated, to listen better and to be heard better. To paraphrase Pavese would come out “serving with slowness,” the most anti-Milanese thing there is. At Trattoria della Gloria there is no double or triple evening shift. When you sit down at the table it is yours until you get up. You don't choose the wine, you tend to desire it and express it. Rocco chooses for you, 90% gets it right.
The menu is very short, so short that if you arrived with three hungry friends you might as well say “we'll take it all.” The dishes change frequently. Tommaso cooks based on what he finds at the market and from his suppliers. He follows the seasons and doesn't throw anything away. He not infrequently proposes off the menu, “invented” precisely to give depth and zero waste to the groceries he makes. Luca and Rocco read it in your eyes, if an off-paper can be proposed. One counter and one bar counter are dedicated to leaner, faster service. A lot of people come into Gloria's this way; I was walking by and felt like a flicker of the senses. This allows guys to have two jobs and two entrances at the same time, increase the pace, get a little more adrenaline flowing, without messing things up. People at the table perceive that they can chat with Rocco and Luca without thinking of being a nuisance. At Gloria, serving becomes once again the most loving and humane act there is, one in which it is more important to make others happy than oneself. Like an assist in soccer.
Tommaso, who has an archive in his head and really sounds like a guy from another era talking to us, evokes the past and makes us “drip” the present. Tommaso: “In the early 1800s there began to be the first criticism and chronicling of restaurants. It was the new big thing. Someone whose name I can't remember, speaking of people living in the place where they worked, a rather degrading but evidently survival condition, wrote that 'le restaurant n'est la maison de personne,' the restaurant is nobody's home. That it is a home is incontrovertible, but not of customers who rent a table for a few hours. It is a semi-public and semi-private space, the table is yours and the room belongs to everyone. However, it is not even ours, we guard it, we are its custodians. When a person, a customer doesn't behave well, doesn't say hello, doesn't say thank you, etc., it is disrespectful to us but also to the rest of the whole environment. The other night there were 4 people of different nationalities who showed up to eat alone. After 20 minutes I look at them from the pass and they looked like a group of friends, they were exchanging wine, one took a bite from another's plate."
The revenge of the social role of the diner and bar. After all, this is why they were born, to respond to our primal impulse to get together, to take ourselves seriously when we need to laugh and know that the heaviness of life is felt a little less around a table. For Tommaso, Rocco, and Luca, the role of social, the new places of sociability, is certainly not obsessive compulsive and, counterintuitively, not even necessary. Everyone lives there differently but they all believe that the analog and thus the real reality is still better than the ethereal alternative. The followers are there, the fun shenanigans with instagram they have done, however word of mouth remains the media they are most fond of. The funny thing is that Rocco has the role of social media manager of the Trattoria profile and he doesn't even have instagram on his phone. “We are in here while life is happening, life is here". What is the need for another life is their way of saying that maybe they would like to enjoy the one they have even more. Every real life counts.
Young, cute and busy. So that you are not left with just this sugary image in your heads, let's talk about soccer. In between chats we discover that Rocco would have liked to be a sports journalist. When we ask for an explanation of that national team jersey bearing Materazzi's name hanging on the right as we enter, the boys smile. Trattoria della Gloria had recently opened, and in Milan landed Big Mamma Group, a French restaurant reality that is spreading restaurants with a declared and stereotypically Italian feel throughout Europe. The name of the restaurant? Gloria Osteria. Materazzi stands there, evoking the nice gesture served to Zidane as a sign of a bite that has not gone much already to our three maudits.
The kitchen, the dishes and the wines
When we made a note to Thomas about the cooking of the rabbit rollé, calling the bite a little too dry, he replied “good thing there is someone who still tells us the things that are wrong”. Accepting corrections is another position of strength; it does not mean being a black belt of turning the other cheek, but neither does it mean turning the other way, calling yourself untouchable. Are you okay when you feel the same way? Are you okay when you find your comfort zone again? Are you okay when you hear words you know, when you find ideas you have already digested? Glory to those who don't like everything already set, and to those who beam with gusto when they can have their say and then recognize that someone else's is better. Tommaso's dishes are not perfect, just the way his creator wants them. Who tattooed Minestrone on his arm because he didn't like it as a child and now his versions of minestrone, which are delicious, he never takes off the menu.
Ours was lukewarm and bitter; temperatures vary depending on the season and the type of vegetables used. Let's not get too radical chic or rebellious with e-cigarettes. Minestrone is a vegan dish, the vegan dish our mothers and grandmothers used to foist on us. Tommaso, as if caught in a Stockholm syndrome between the fires, fell in love with it and swam in it, finding his current but still serving a (bleep) minestrone. A dish for adult palates, in the sense of being able to go beyond remembering. The concept of a dish is the definition we give to a transformation performed by the chef, which takes into account the goodness of the initial material, along with the cost of that dish and the relationship between the people who contributed to the final result, the brigade in essence. Besides Tommaso, Rocco and Luca, the other “glorious” people are Roberto La Malfa, Giacomo Conte, Fernando Chakkrawarthige, in the kitchen and Giovanni Campana, in the dining room. Behind and within a dish is also the life of the community and conventions around the dish. Within these margins moves the Pumpkin Tarte tatin, concentration and layering of Delica Mantovana with and without the peel, served with Moscata pumpkin, diamond cedar and fig mustard, red cow Parmigiano fondue and crunchy armelline - the almonds of the very bitter apricot.
The bite is not “pureed,” thanks to the dry caramel. A dish with an old-fashioned flavor, reminiscent of tortello alla mantovana with more sweet-and-sour complexity, a highly appreciated representation of the autumn of sweetness, in which warmth and pungency coexist. Of a more veracious and tavern-like character is the Cuore alla brace, radicchio and purée. A triptych in which the muscle that resides midway between belly and brain becomes nourishment for the soul along with the angelic puree and the devilish red and disheveled, vinegar-sprayed radicchio. Tommaso prefers an open flame, letting things cook, here, however, he uses vacuum before embers, leaving the hearty steaks at 50°C for three hours. The chef said it's a dish we hardly eat anymore, it's good for us, and it costs very little. Someone had already done it with a diaphragm and then we know how it turned out. We, meanwhile, enjoyed it very much.
On wine, as we said, you have no choice. There is no such thing as the card, the card is Luca and Rocco. Especially Rocco. It works more or less like this. Rocco comes to the table and asks what wine you want to drink. He listens to the more or less opaque desires of the diners, eclipses a few minutes and then returns with two or three unopened bottles. He lays them on the table and briefly describes their main characteristics and differences, including price. At that point one or more index fingers are stretched and the wine is uncorked. Our choice was between the Cabernet Franc from Ampeleia, a winery I “hang around” a lot for their very simple Sangiovese Unlitro, and Manciaciumi's Tormenta, an Etnean blend of nerello mascalese and nerello cappuccio. The choice fell on both. Personally, despite a not totally defined nose between sulfurous echoes and slight oxidation, the Tormenta had such a soaring and pleasantly blood-orange-like drinkability that I preferred it to the in the long run too reduced and “spirited” sip of the cabernet franc.
Rocco and Luca more than the wines select the people who make them. They mostly categorize them as artisanal wines, evidently because they will find more interesting people there who are distant from political and brand dynamics. A Cotarella wine he has never had and says he will never drink. Mr. Cotarella at this point you have to make a stop at Trattoria della Gloria, Rocco chooses the wine anyway.
Contact
Trattoria della Gloria
Via Mario Pichi, 5, 20143 Milan MI
Phone: 02 4547 4710
