At my BurgerMonday pop-up dinners the guest chefs usually prepare up to 20 burgers at a time, no more. Giorgio Locatelli is more demanding.
 
BurgerTuesdays at Locanda Locatelli require more hands and greater concentration: 55 burgers are first grilled to fuchsia-pink perfection (Italians don’t do anything north of medium-rare), then laid out at once and finally assembled with the greatest care by chefs working intently from both sides. The bun tops are imprinted in sesame seeds with the Locanda Locatelli LL logo.

What makes chefs at a Michelin-starred London Italian restaurant take their burgers so seriously? It might be because they’re cooking them for themselves.  All 55 burgers are for the staff meal. And at Locanda Locatelli BurgerTuesdays only come around once a week, sadly.

“Is Tuesday night now the most desirable shift for the kitchen and front-of-house staffs to work?” I asked Giorgio Locatelli.

“Tuesdays and then Saturdays”, he responded.

“What’s the Saturday staff meal?”

“PizzaSaturday”.

“Would you have any job openings? I’m free to work Tuesday and Saturday nights”.

SpagWednesday Week is my video mix of photos taken by Paul Winch-Furness at six SpagWednesday pop-ups organised in London by young&foodish.

The featured guest chefs are Arcangelo Dandini of L’Arcangelo in Rome, Rowley Leigh of Le Café Anglais in London, Giorgio Locatelli of Locanda Locatelli in London, Francesco Mazzei of L’Anima in London,  Tom Oldroyd of the Polpo Restaurant Group in London, Rachel O’Sullivan of Spuntino in London and Massimo Riccioli of La Rosetta in Rome.

Art direction is by the graphic design consultancy Irish Butcher.

Subscribe to young&foodish now and join the SpagWednesday community. As a member you’ll receive email alerts about upcoming events and early booking privileges.

I knew I could count on Melograno Alimentari in Holland Park for the very best Italian meats, cheeses and pasta and Andreas Fine Fruit & Vegetables in Chiswick for the highest quality Italian tomatoes, organic lemons and basil. It was reassuring to learn the chef had packed his own prized guanciale (cured pig’s jows), extra virgin olive oil, dry spices, two hard cheeses and home-grown herbs and tomatoes in his hand luggage.

What I failed to grasp is that “straightforward” is not an Italian word.

Just deciding upon the right spaghetti shape was a nightmare that quickly descended into Italian farce (read more). Much worse, Dandini’s shopping list overlooked one key ingredient:

A sous-chef.

The day before the dinner Dandini’s good friend and right-hand man Mahesh, a Bangladeshi national, was stopped at Gatwick passport control and, after hours of interrogation and delay, sent back to Rome. Dandini rode the airport minicab to Central London accompanied only by his salumeria-in-a-suitcase and growing anxieties. Within 28 hours he would be preparing a dinner, alone, in the unfamiliar kitchen of Andrew’s, an old Gray’s Inn greasy spoon, for 80 strangers.

I put out an urgent call for a replacement sous-chef and Giorgio Locatelli – a name so big even Dandini’s eyes widened when he heard it – saved the day. Ivan Icra Salicru, Locatelli’s secondo, emailed to say he’d spoken to Salvo and that the trusted “rock-and-roller” at Locanda Locatelli would be happy to fill in for Mahesh.

“Happy” is perhaps too strong a word. When, to use his full name, Salvatore Sardo showed up at Andrew’s 90 minutes before showtime he asked me two questions: ‘Where am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’ Apparently he had not volunteered for the assignment. No, Salvo was planning to spend his night off watching Italian football when he got a text from his boss to be at 160 Gray’s Inn Road at 5pm.

Salvo (above left) was a fitting name for a substitute secondo who saved all. He was an ace under pressure in the kitchen, picking up even the most subtle cues from Dandini and lifting the Roman’s spirits at moments of frustration and, yes, panic. Thanks to this rock-and-roller 80 Londoners got to know the spaghetti alla matriciana regarded by Katie Parla, the journalist/blogger behind the definitive Rome for Foodies dining app, as the best in Rome. Its superiority reflected the cooking philosophy of Rome’s Pope of Pasta as well as fourth-generation restaurateur (L’Arcangelo – via Giuseppe Giaocchinio Belli, 59, Rome) and author of the cookbook Memoria a Mozzichi – “Memory and Small Bites”:

For me food is connected to the memories and aromas of my territory. The quality of the outcome is completely linked to the quality of the raw ingredients. I use pasta extruded through bronze die and cooked al dente, a rather dry guanciale, Pecorino Romano of the highest quality, and, ideally, tomatoes from my mother’s garden. Cooking is about ingredients, not technique.

–  Arcangelo Dandini

From burgers on Mondays to spaghetti while seated in greasy spoons on Wednesdays, the latest foodie gatherings are all about eating a specific dish for each day of the week, cooked by a different chef….
Read the whole article>>

Much as you may love the retro snaz of the 1960s plaids and checks sported by those dashing Mad Men I propose to you an altogether different pattern for spring/summer 2012.

Behold the young&foodish beehive, created by the graphic design duo Irish Butcher as a placemat for everyday dining, except Sundays:

To prove to you there’s a lot more to young&foodish than burgers, spaghetti, pizza, sandwiches and coffee I decided to devote my newest top 10 to the Frieze Art Fair at London’s Regent’s Park.

Whenever I go to art shows, which is pretty much all the time except when I’m eating, I try to empathise with the artists by playing this little game: I examine each work and, without looking at the corresponding exhibition labels, try to guess its title. I’ve become rather good at it and come up with, if not the exact title, at least something very close to it a good third of the time.

Below is a slideshow featuring my top 10 from this year’s Frieze Art Fair. After each of the 10 chosen artworks I’ve inserted a white label identifying the artist, his or her title for the work and then my informed guess as to what the artist’s title would be.

[oqeygallery id=27]

The zebras in Ken Okiishi‘s Frame reminded me of the famous zebra print wallpaper at Gino, a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that closed last year. (If this observation has made you groan I’m sorry. Maybe there’s not that much more to me than my food obsessions).

In “Basta”, his eulogy to that legendary Italian restaurant, Gay Talese noted that Gino was “known primarily for its moderate prices, its tomato-red wallpaper printed with three hundred and fourteen leaping zebras, and its determinedly uncreative chefs”.

As it turns out Gino was the inspiration for Okiishi’s Frieze installation. The artist, who works primarily in video, performance, sculpture and photography, reproduced Gino’s famous zebra-print wallpaper upside-down on the installations walls.

“Most people under the age of 75 who actually live on the Upper East Side thought that Gino was disgusting,” writes the artist in his notes for Frame. “While I delighted as much as anyone in the dining room’s safari-in-ruins production of authenticity I always had indigestion afterward.”

Last week Giorgio Locatelli made or unmade, as it were, the same case for simplicity, only without the valise. Rather he cited these words of wisdom from his grandmother as fundamental to his cooking philosphy:

È meglio saper togliere un ingrediente che aggiungerlo.

“It’s better”, cautioned nonna Locatelli, “to know how to subtract an ingredient than to add it”.

What was the girlfriend of University of Leeds student Jack Locatelli thinking? During a recent visit to her boyfriend’s London home she criticised his eating habits, to his father: “He [Jack]”, she complained to Giorgio Locatelli, the chef at Locanda Locatelli, “can never have a normal meal”. By normal she apparently meant takeaway.

Jack protested. “Why should we have a takeaway when we can have a pasta”?, he interjected. The Michelin-starred expat from Lake Maggiore, Italy, beamed.

“I was so happy”, recalled Papa Locatelli, his eyes lit up from the telling.

I had a great time at this year’s Taste (18-21 June), if not for all the same reasons as the good people at Channel 4 sales.  They were enticed by an “upmarket, aspirational consumer event” with a “strong ABC1” audience. Fearing sensory overload I mostly ignored the high managerials and low cleavages, which you can find in abundance at any happy hour near Liverpool Street Station, and instead pursued body overload, with select noshes from amongst 40 of London’s better restaurants. This you cannot do – and should not attempt to do –  in the immediate vicinity of Liverpool Street Station.

Taste fulfills its promise of providing open-air access to a wide variety of dishes from acclaimed restaurants that only the A’s within Channel 4’s coveted ABC1 audience can afford to frequent with any regularity. Most impressively, the kitchen staffs perform at a high level while serving 100 covers per hour in claustrophobic conditions. The festival appears to be a big deal for the star chefs, which makes it a big deal for the public.

Glorious Regent’s Park is no level playing field for Michelin-starred cuisine. Perceptions of foods change when consumed in a standing or walking position from plastic tableware. Fussy foods lose out to finger foods. Hot soup is almost always a bad idea; chilled soup, invariably a good one (e.g. the elegant pea velouté from Jocelyn Herland, executive chef at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester). And flaunted luxury is in all instances a plus. Having endured endless queues, the festival foragers need to see they’ve waited for something rich.

This partly explains how chef Jean-Philippe Patruno of Quo Vadis stole the show with grilled rib of 48-day Hereford beef. This was steak and this was beautiful. Though many requested slices cut from the rib eye, Patruno preferred the portion nearer the bone, protected from the blazing heat by the rib eye’s rim of fat. “The meat slowly melts,” noted Patruno, using the sort of words that win food festivals. “It’s like a confit cooking in its own fat.” Who is going to say no to that?

The foie gras burger presented by L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon proved to be the perfect festival dish: a popular barbecue sandwich with a precious main ingredient and scrumptious accessories. Served on a brioche bun, the mini-burger was seared to a delectable crisp, with verjus-marinated roast peppers and ginger glaze providing saucy notes of condimental pungency.

Croque Gascon didn’t hide foie gras directly beneath the bun of its terrific duck burger; it shrewdly served slices of it (in terrine form) directly beside it. I may have been the only person in Regent’s Park who was less distracted by the foie than the “crazy salt” sprinkled over the duck-fat frites. If Croque doesn’t begin selling that mix of Fleur de Sel de Guérande and Piment d’Espelette in jars soon I promise that I will.

Playing the conspicuous luxury card, celebrity chef Giorgio Locatelli chose to charm his adoring audience at the Refettorio booth with a hand grater and summer truffles. Rising star Francesco Mazzei of L’Anima did the same, as if he were emulating his charismatic countryman. He scattered the truffle shavings rather generously over fettuccine with wild mushrooms.

Mazzei and I somehow got to talking about linguine vongole: instinctively he identified this as one of my weaknesses. He noted how the starch from the pasta water was required to transform the vongole sauce into an emulsione with emozione. That sounded good to me.

Mazzei and I parted with this wager: If, when I visit L’Anima, his linguine vongole is not the best in London, he pays. If I concede that it is the best, I pay double.