A boutique restaurant seating 20, where offal is turned into poetry and dialogue with customers becomes part of the recipe.
Small plates to share, honest recipes featuring offal, natural wines, and a chef's table that is the heart and soul of the restaurant. We are talking about Futura, the latest addition to Via Panisperna. To be clear, this is the iconic street in the Rione Monti district, with its cobblestones and ivy-covered walls. It was here that young Anastasia Paris opened her first restaurant last April, alongside two friends who are now her partners: Flavia Ercoli, who works with her in the kitchen, and Luigi Carofilis, who is in charge of wines.
From Celano to Rome, the story of the young chef from Abruzzo
Born and raised in Celano (in the province of L'Aquila) and the daughter of restaurateurs, as a teenager she would reply to anyone who asked her that she would never work in a kitchen. Yet her maternal grandmother felt that Anastasia's future could be that of a great chef. It was precisely with the death of her grandmother that something clicked in her. She began to be hungry for knowledge and learned everything there is to know about cooking: first the course at Gambero Rosso in Rome, then experiences in Umbria, Sardinia, and Liguria, and finally almost two years in Australia. In a short time, she learned to master raw ingredients with artisan techniques, starting with meat and fish cuts. Her return to Rome, marked by the Osteria della Trippa, brought her even closer to working with offal and, at the same time, she began to understand that she wanted more from her relationship with customers. A direct dialogue with those who sit at the table and want to get to know Anastasia.
Futura, an open window on authentic cuisine
“I came to Futura thanks to the dining room. I want to make myself known through my dishes but also with my voice,” she says. This is how the small restaurant in the Rione Monti district, in Via Panisperna, was born: only twenty seats, curved raised tables that follow the trajectory of the chef's table and the structural lines of the small restaurant. A real window without filters between the kitchen and the dining room, where the aim is clear: to bring everyone, even the most skeptical, closer to the fifth quarter. Yes, because in addition to “popular” dishes such as stuffed pasta or tartare, the menu features other more daring dishes: pork head, beef lung, sweetbread.
On closer inspection, these dishes are not at all pretentious. But this is thanks to Anastasia, who prepares them with grace and presents them to customers dressed in elegant flavors, accessible to everyone. Or rather, to everyone's palate.“Dinner should be fun, that's how I see it,” she says. In the Futura project (yes, the reference is to Lucio Dalla's song), there are two pillars for the young chef: Flavia Ercoli and Luigi Carofilis, friends and now partners of Anastasia, who work alongside her in the kitchen and dining room respectively. The concept is one of sharing: sharing a dish or a table. The stylish interior design is the work of StubeStudio, a Roman architecture firm that has turned the limitations of the original structure into opportunities for elegance, hospitality, and style. The completely open kitchen and the marble chef's table with its high chairs are complemented by a minimalist yet warm style, with light tones and touches of dark red and green provided by the marble.
Surprising dishes to share
The menu does not distinguish between appetizers, first courses, and second courses, but lists a series of suggestions, along with a daily menu. “Customers have also become fond of many of these extra dishes, so much so that I've had to promote some of them as regular items,” she says with satisfaction. Contemporary Italian cuisine that draws on tradition and makes the search for balance its hallmark. The dishes are accompanied by wines—around 60 labels—mainly biodynamic, organic, and natural, chosen by Luigi, who, like a tightrope walker, adapts the labels to the variations in the dishes of the day and the flavors.
Luca Pezzetta's excellent bread and the delicious oil produced in Trevi by Guidobaldi arrive promptly at the table. We start off gently with beef tartare, pear in syrup, wood sorrel and egg cream with anchovies. This is followed by creamed codfish balls flavored with chamomile, red turnip sauce and marinated red turnips. Elegant flavors and balanced textures, in a crossroads of crunchiness and creaminess, acidity and sweetness. It's time for the fifth quarter with the liver salad. “A fun dish in terms of texture that looks like pâté, but isn't!” Anastasia anticipates. The well-balanced flavor and quick cooking at low temperature give the sensation of a velvety bite accompanied by apricot, fennel, and caper leaves. We go a little further with the homemade pork head cheese, served with giardiniera and artisanal mayonnaise.
Then beef lung with onion and capers in tomato sauce, served on a tapioca wafer. In constant dialogue with the kitchen, explanations of the dishes are provided, but above all of how they are prepared. Such as the lung, treated as if it were roast beef and, for this reason, refined. The first courses are an expression of sincere and authentic taste with fresh pasta made to perfection and welcoming condiments.
There are bottoni stuffed with potatoes and thyme, sautéed with smoked butter, wild herbs and cooked must. A delightful swing between bitter and sweet. This is followed by gnocchi stuffed with Parmigiano and three types of tomato: piccadilly, yellow datterino and tomato confit with oil.
Then a special dish, sturgeon with marinated melon and beurre blanc, before returning to the sweetbread with Malvasia wine, sautéed rocket, and pine nuts. The desserts are “not sweet”: in fact, with the exception of the classic tiramisu, there is rosehip cream with red turnip and meringue and then the excellent panna cotta made with milk from Ciociaria with wild fennel pollen and Trevi oil.
“You often read menus and ingredients and are impressed, but then once you taste the dish, there's nothing left. I want to do the opposite,” says the chef. And that's what Futura seems to be, a surprising gastronomic space where preconceptions are broken down by peeking through the window of a kitchen that makes you feel at home.
CONTACTS
Futura
Via Panisperna, 222a - Roma
Phone 06 01903498
