Combining contemporary art, photography, and haute cuisine, Cracco in Galleria redefines the concept of the cookbook, transforming it into a collectible work of art.
Dreamt up by Carlo Cracco and Luca Sacchi, imagined by Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari, Alberto Zanetti, and Sebastiano Mastroeni, and written by Gabriele Zanatta. Cracco in Galleria, the highly anticipated new volume by Carlo Cracco & Co, is not a book but a work of contemporary art. You will read this in every review and see it for yourself if you ever get your hands on a copy.
It is Thursday, October 23, launch day, and Milan begins to show itself in its many shades of gray, even though the Sala Mengoni, on the fourth floor of what is the Cracco empire, always reflects an enveloping and overwhelming light. Adding color (lots of color) are the images from the book scrolling across the screen in a preview, and even the most distracted observer would attribute this bold, daring, and irreverent mood to the TOILETPAPER style. “It's a very technical book, but stripped of the classic structure of cookbooks,” is how Carlo Cracco describes this collector's volume, which brings together his thoughts and those of Luca Sacchi. You might think of it as an exclusive book, understandable and appreciated only by a select few who sing and play among themselves, but that's not the case.
"We wanted to focus not so much on the usual story surrounding the recipe, but on the real thought behind the creation of a dish. The technical side is certainly very present, because as a chef and lover of cookbooks, I need that too. But Cracco in Galleria is a book for everyone, from food lovers to young people who want to start this career, to Milanese who love the history of Milan and are fascinated by beauty and photography," says Luca Sacchi. Gastronomy, art, and Milan are the ingredients of this book, which is divided into four parts, the same number of floors that make up Carlo Cracco's world in the historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in the heart of Milan.
From the Café to the Sala Mengoni: Cracco's establishment in the Galleria
The Café
Level 0 can be reached by entering through the archway in Piazza Duomo, just before the famous Ottagono. A lounge in the city's Salotto, where the designers (Roberto Peregalli and Laura Sartori Rimini) aimed to create continuity between the inside and outside, with clear references to the style of Giuseppe Mengoni, who designed the Galleria in 1861. Here, a good morning is reserved indiscriminately for tourists and office workers, bankers and factory workers, shop assistants and artisans who start their hectic Milanese day with a coffee and a brioche. The Café is the most complex challenge in the Cracco universe because it is an all-day establishment and it is not easy to combine counter pastries with proper cuisine and after-dinner drinks. The recipes dedicated to this first level? The Italian cornetto, the Venetian cornetto, the apple delight, and then the symbol of breakfast, the offspring (or perhaps it would be better to say grandchild) of a centuries-old tradition that saw a piece of cheese and bits of fresh fruit placed on top of a piece of bread in the countryside. The rural tradition has given way to an updated version with good mountain butter, fragrant bread, and peach, cherry, or apricot jams harvested from the countryside of Santarcangelo. In short, bread, butter, and jam is haute cuisine for farmers in the early hours of the morning.
The Restaurant and the Fumoir
You have to go up one floor and reach the reception room to take your first steps on a creaking parquet floor recovered from the one that Mengoni laid on the floors of these rooms. You enter the heart of this story, the Cracco Restaurant, but first you have to make a quick stop at the Fumoir. An intimate setting, an island detached from the aesthetics of the entire project, a secluded space where guests begin to familiarize themselves with the place and put themselves at ease. An Art Deco room where you can enjoy a digestif after dinner or an aperitif before beginning your journey. This room is dedicated to, among other things, the tongue terrine in a brioche crust, the saffron mousse with gold and caviar, and her: the caramelized Russian salad.
You then enter the restaurant, which has three rooms and two small private dining areas, all divided by double doors that open onto bas-relief pilaster strips, arches, mirrors, and fabrics, all elements that clearly reproduce the intimacy of a home. The recipes in this section are the iconic dishes that have made the history of Carlo Cracco and, more recently, Cracco in Galleria, ça va sans dire. Marinated egg yolk (of which there is an extraordinary image on page 80 with the yolk placed in the center of the Octagon among the passers-by in the Galleria), Lombardy-style frog soup and fried frogs, Polenta bread and bruscitt, Garden sauce and its scarpetta, Snails alla marinara with mussels and salicornia, and then we'll stop there because there are over 70 recipes in the book.
The Mengoni Room
We go up one more floor and here we are in the Mangoni Room. From its balcony, you have access to a unique view of the Gallery, and it's fun to see how everyone, whether they've been there countless times or are visiting for the first time, contort themselves into unnatural positions (we'll call them Instagrammer poses) to photograph what is a truly stunning entrance to the city due to its enormous beauty. The Timballo in Galleria and the Cocktail of shellfish, marinated egg yolk sauce, and Crodino are just two of the seven recipes in this section, to which we feel we must add the Milanese Panettone.
The Wine Cellar
That's it, you might say. No, there's still one more floor to go, the -1 to be precise, below the most heavily trafficked point of the Gallery. Stone floors and fir wood display cases, glass skylights, brass, and blood-red painted walls. Here we are in one of the most fascinating underground spaces in the city, as Zanatta writes. The Cellar is primarily a space for tasting and selling two thousand labels of wines selected from Italy, France, and the rest of the world. Here, too, if you wish, you can dine on dishes inspired by classic Milanese cuisine. We are at the end of the book and a little melancholy sets in. But it quickly passes when you realize that this collector's item, in which haute cuisine is sublimated by exciting photography, is not one of the many passing trends on social media. A work of art remains forever.
Cracco in Galleria is a book by Carlo Cracco with Luca Sacchi, TOILETPAPER, and Gabriele Zanatta
Ed. L’Ippocampo
