Only a fool tries to upstage Marcel Wanders by out-smiling, out-dressing, out-tanning, out-hairing or out-flirting the tall, dark and handsome Dutch designer. But were you to tie your hair in a bun, as Josh Pollen did, or hide your intense gaze behind protective goggles, as Mike Knowlden did, you might find it relatively easy to out-geek Wanders. These ingeniously inventive – and skinny – young chefs managed just that at the London launch for Flos of the beautiful Wanders Can-Can Lamp at the Galleria Illy pop-up this October.

Josh Pollen and Mike Knowlden

The co-founders, with Amy Houston, of Blanch & Shock Food Design managed this feat not with smoke and mirrors but rather with smoking styrofoam boxes of liquid nitrogen, iSi siphons loaded with CO2 cartridges and four ingeniously experimental ephemeral edibles flavoured with illy espresso:

• Pain au Chocolat Nitro Ice Cream with Illy espresso
• Nitro Cappuccino
• Malt Coffee ‘Grounds’ in Filters with Cobnut Milk
• Nitro-Aerated Coffee Microwave Sponge with Brown Butter Sauce and Powder

Possessing the taste if not mouth feel of a buttery croissant marbled with the finest dark chocolate and medium espresso, the pain au chocolat ice cream was as much the day’s design revelation as the Wanders lights. Even so, it was the cone-shaped paper filters filled with malt espresso nibs that stole the show. Knowlden and Pollen prominently displayed their filters on a table beside the staircase, near the gallery entrance, and no one could resist them. It appeared as though the fabulously fashionable folks who’d filled the Galleria space beyond capacity were pouring individual containers of cream over coarsely ground illy coffee and eating the stuff with a spoon. They were delighted to discover that the coffee grinds were actually snacky nibbles and the cream, cobnut milk. Blanch & Shock’s imaginative food pun was a big hit.

Message to Marcel Wanders: Never try to out-cobnut Mike Knowlden or Josh Pollen.

[oqeygallery id=32]

On the night of 28 November Knowlden, Pollen and Houston, three fast rising stars of the London food scene, made hay at my BurgerMonday pop-up. I mean that literally: They developed hay burger buns made with hay-infused roasted flour and reduced hay stock and slathered with smoked hay mayonnaise.

Admit it, London: There is no hope of any celebrity chef upstaging a geek in goggles, especially one whose sidekick has his hair in a bun, if smoked hay mayonnaise is part of the equation.

When Pino Cuttaia advises young, ambitious Sicilian chefs to follow his example and work abroad to experience new techniques and unfamiliar foods he is not necessarily pointing them towards London or New York. The overseas destinations he has in mind are on mainland Italy and in particular the north, where you find such curiosities as polenta and, stranger still, butter. Butter, for the uninitiated, is a dairy product made by churning milk or cream and is often used in place of olive oil.

But, as Cuttaia and Italian food journalist Roberta Corradin made clear to Londoners at his informal Galleria Illy talk and tasting  (see video), a chef with Michelin stars in his eyes no longer needs to leave his native Sicily for good to pursue them. With the island only recently gaining recognition for its culinary aspirations and new regionalism, Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Catania, Enna, Messina, Palermo, Ragusa, Siracusa and Trapani are no longer just the provinces of cucina di nonna – grandmother’s kitchen. Forget the trattoria image: One highly rated restaurant, for example, Cuttaia’s La Madia, can turn a small, nondescript seaside town, such as Licata, into a destination for diners and chefs travelling from abroad, this time meaning Tuscany AND London.

It might have been his wife’s homesickness, more than his own, that ultimately lured Cuttaia back south to Licata from Piedmont in 2000. But the two-Michelin-starred chef clearly missed the flavours of his youth. His is a cutting-edge cuisine focused, paradoxically, on the past, filtering cherished memories of childhood through modern techniques. At Galleria Illy it wasn’t merely the memory of melanzane alla parmigiana Cuttaia wished to evoke. It was the still sweeter recollection of del giorno dopo (“the day after”) aubergine Parmesan. On summer afternoons young Sicilian boys love to dig into the chilled leftovers when their mothers either aren’t looking – or, more likely, pretending not to notice.

For the Galleria audience Cuttaia cleverly presented his del giorno dopo in small tasting glasses as a layered parfait of fried baby aubergine topped with a purée of aubergine, egg yolk and ricotta, a foam of Parmigiano-Reggiano and the Sicilian cheese Caciocavallo Ragusano and a chopped tomato and olive oil garnish. This may not have resembled anyone’s grandmother’s aubergine Parmesan, but the flavours were true to memory – Cuttaia’s guiding principle – and the custard-smooth textures transformed an old standard in Sicily as well as other regions of Italy into a new and guilty pleasure. This was dessert to start a meal, a small boy stealing something cool and creamy from the fridge after his mother stepped out of the kitchen.

[oqeygallery id=24]

Cuttaia closed the show with bags of ricotta cream – the only thing that a Sicilian kid likes better in a cone than gelato. He piped this cannoli filling into pastry horns in the traditional manner, dipping them in crushed pistachios (Sicilian, naturally), adorning them with orange peel and powdering them with icing sugar. Then he took what was left of all the ingredients and improvised a deconstructed cannoli, crushing the pastry with his fingers and using the small pieces as the crunchy foundation for a cannoli parfait.

[oqeygallery id=26]

So how was Cuttaia’s deconstructed cannoli parfait? Let’s just say I waited for the moment when he was looking the other way – or pretending to do so – and stole a second serving.

By evoking Spain the two-star Michelin chef at ‘t Zilte in Antwerp was asserting his opposition less to the contemporary cuisine of an entire nation than that of its most famous chef, Ferran Adrià. And by aligning himself instead with “the Nordic kitchen” and its obsession with exceptional vegetables from local producers and small farms he had one particular Nordic kitchen in mind, Rene Redzepi’s Noma. For his 15 September pop-up audience Geunes espoused a more grounded modern gastronomy, much as he does for diners every night at his new restaurant up on the ninth floor of The MAS – Museum aan de Stroom, overlooking the docks of Antwerp’s newly fashionable Eilandje district.

Geunes’ Galleria talk was improvised within the loosely structured hour it took him and his assistant Cindy Cuypers to assemble some 50 tasting samples of a new dessert composition created for the occasion. Appropriately, each was plated on a coffee cup saucer.

About halfway through his show-and-tell Geunes began to piece together a full-sized version of his chocolat au café aérien, crème nantais et baies d’argousier, only not on a serving dish. He assembled it beside the saucers, directly on the white tabletop.

The elements of the dessert translate loosely as follows:

• chocolat au café aérien – aerated coffee chocolate
• crème nantaise  – drained farmer’s cheese and cream cheese with lemon, vanilla, egg yolks, sugar & cream
• coulis de baies d’argousier – a sauce of anise muscat syrup and sea-buckthorns
• parfait de café au sésame – a frozen parfait of Illy espresso and sesame paste with beaten egg whites and  whipped cream
• crumble of almond, sugar, coffee and egg yolk
• chocolate chips made with Xanthan gum, agar, glucose and sugar

Beyond those mysterious red dots composed of sea-bruckthorn coulis, the revelation of this dessert, with its delicate crunches and ethereal creams, was how the pronounced acidity of those exotic berries countered both the fattiness of the cheese and the nuttiness of the crumble, the sesame and even the coffee. For Geunes the self-taught chef coffee isn’t only a drink in a cup, or a specific flavour. It’s a set of perfumes that can infuse a dessert, a fine olive oil or, by extension, a marinade for langoustines with a particular nutty, toasty or lightly bitter character. At ‘t Zilte he’s advancing coffee as a cooking ingredient by moving it backwards in the timeframe of a meal, from after-dinner note to dessert flavour to main-course infusion.

Following the demo many attendees returned for seconds of Geunes’s astonishing dessert ensemble. After an hour’s seduction a saucer-sized portion was barely adequate. The chef himself eyed the larger table version of the dessert with wonder and longing. He too seemed mystified by the splendid result, a constellation in coffee, chocolate, cheese and sea-buckthorn on a white sky.

I asked him if he might be inspired to serve out desserts in a similar manner at ‘t Zilte, as the chef Grant Achatz had famously done at Alinea in Chicago. Turns out he was having exactly the same thought. But much as was intrigued by the idea Geunes reluctantly conceded he wouldn’t be trying it any time soon. Forward-thinking diners in Chicago or London might be ready to eat dessert directly off their Michelin-starred tables but not yet their counterparts in Antwerp.

It was a good line, infusing his tea talk in what, given the Illy marker, you would assume to be espresso territory with its first refreshing sip of reverse snobbism. Jumeau-Lafond may be one of the world’s great tea snobs, boasting, for example, that Dammann Frères has Chanel and Hermès as its immediate neighbours at Tokyo’s great Takashimaya department store. But the third-generation French tea merchant could not let 30 seconds pass without poking a mischievous thumb in the refined ribs of tea drinkers, notably Anglo-Saxon ones, who hold their noses – and pinkies – high. Far from being offended the Londoners drank it up.

“Green tea,” he told a half-astonished, half-amused group that included breakfast tea drinker Riccardo Illy, “is not good for the taste.” What made it trendy and popular, he suggested, were magazine and newspaper articles that reported its benefits to mind and body.

That view reflected Jumeau-Lafond’s preference for strong, spicy, full-bodied teas over smooth, subtle, lightly bitter ones. He loves black teas, none more so than the assam his father brought home to the family’s flat, a rare luxury in the deprived 1950s Paris of his youth.

He doesn’t much like the fashion for herbal teas and fruit teas – “they’re not teas, they’re infusions“, though he sells them, and winces at the thought of certain perfumed teas aromatized with fruits, flowers or tastes that don’t exist in nature. That stance seemed one of hypocrisy, if not of betrayal, coming from the president of a company famous for its Earl Grey, a black tea blend flavoured with the citrus fruit bergamot. Dammann Frères in fact claims to be the last tea company using pure bergamot oil (from Calabria) in its Earl Grey. Moreover, Dammann’s prestigious Goût Russe blend, created by Jumeau-Lafond’s grandmother, first brewed in his boyhood bedroom and copied, he says, by 5,000 tea companies, is perfumed with citrus oils.

You’re an anti-snob snob, aren’t you?!, I asked Jumeau-Lafond, with admiration, at the conclusion of his surprising Galleria Illy talk. He thought about it for a few seconds, then broke out in a wide smile.

“C’est vrai“, he responded. Guilty as charged.

Alternatively, if you’re buying an espresso machine for someone you actually still like – possibly yourself – you may be tempted by an idiot-proof apparatus that takes pre-measured pods or capsules filled with a precise dose of coffee grinds. Nespresso, with its selection of 16 Grand Cru coffees and irresistible George Clooney advertisements, dominates this sector. Now illycaffè, the most widely recognised name in premium Italian espresso coffee, has introduced the Francis Francis X7 (£199 in the UK, $395 from illy in the US). This machine employs iperEspresso capsules and a patented two-stage extraction process that ensures a flawless espresso every time. Better still, it doesn’t ask you to make difficult decisions at 6:30am in the morning, such as “which of these 16 magnificently mellow Grand Cru coffees am I in the mood for and will I be able to detect the subtle differences among them?” illycaffè’s selection of iperEspresso capsules is limited to classic (medium roast), dark roast, decaf and lungo (long or Americano-style). That’s manageable, even during the pre-caffeine hours of the morning when your body may be out of bed but your psyche is still suspended in dreamland .

I tried out a loaner of the Francis Francis X7, courtesy of illycaffè, and can vouch for the effectiveness and consistency of this beautiful object by Italian architect and product designer Lucca Trazzi. You warm up the machine, drop the capsule into the handle, press a button and 25 seconds later you have a lovely espresso with a thick head of golden crema. With a little practice using the steam wand  you can turn out thick, textured milk for creamy, microfoamy lattes and cappuccinos.

I may complain that the X7’s casing is made of crackable plastic rather than sturdy stainless steel, that the absurd angle of the frothing wand has you spraying scalding water all over the kitchen counter when you try to drain it, that you can’t make a full-strength double espresso (or two espressos at once) or that the capsules are not recyclable or refillable. I might find the price of the capsules somewhat high for a coffee at home, £41.20 for 6 tins of 21 capsules – about 33p per espresso – in the UK, $32 for 2 cans of 21 capsules – about 76 cents from illyusa! (Reminds me of HP printers: The price for the hardware is reasonable.  It’s the ransom paid on ink cartridges or, in this instance, coffee capsules, which bankrupt you). But the real reason I don’t like the Francis Franic X7 is that it works. You can count on it making you the same espresso every time.

Problem is I don’t want the same espresso every day, perfect or not. I wouldn’t restrict my wine cabinet and therefore home consumption to a single wine or even 4 wines. Why would I want to do that with coffee? I want to sample and compare superior coffees, single origins as well as custom blends, from outstanding UK roasters like Square Mile, Monmouth and Has Bean as well as from European and North American roasters and coffee shops I discover during my travels. Furthermore, I want to grind all my beans seconds before I brew them, filling my flat with the spellbinding, anticipatory aroma of coffee grinder gas. I want to calibrate the dose and tamping pressure so that, for better or worse, I know that I shaped the result.

If my week with the one-touch X7 is any guide, the verdict is clear: This great-looking machine is a satisfying, dependable, no-fuss espresso maker that won’t drive anyone mad, as most home espresso machines will. But coffee geeks in particular may find that perfection is limiting. Like me they may prefer something more DIY. They may sacrifice the comfort of consistency that illy offers in its machine as well as its coffee for the excitement of the unexpected.

The first Spianata & Co rolled out in 2004, so it is something of a stretch to term this Italian sandwich shop a discovery. Yet the thousands of City suits who walk by it every day, oblivious to its very existence, can make it seem like an esoteric find.

This pizza bianca is not the tomato-less “white pizza” featured at pizzerias but is instead the near-naked raft of classic flat bread from Rome. It’s one of the world’s great chews. Forget cheese: the only toppings are scant olive oil, salt and rosemary. Spianata’s version may not compare to Rome’s best –  Antico Forno Roscioli, Forno Campo de’ Fiori – but its golden, bronze-highlighted color looks right and its crisp-crusted air pockets and low density allow for chewy compression. My lone frustrations: that it’s baked with no rosemary to speak of and mostly in advance. If you want it warm, as you should, you usually have to ask for a reheat, which hardens the bread and doesn’t do it justice.

Spianata also prepares pizza rossa romana, which, as you’ve guessed, is painted with a coat of tomato sauce. It’s thinner and crisper than the bianca and altogether fabulous. Incredibly it’s only £1.60 cold, £1.85 reheated (due to VAT). I’ve otherwise tried and liked 3 toasted sandwiches assembled with pizza bianca, including the delightful Nutella breakfast panino, but won’t explore any further. From now on it’s either the bianca or the rossa for me. If I want a sandwich I’ll get 2 rossi and stick them together.

Spianiata has good espresso and cappuccino prepared with illy’s arabica blend. The illy red sign is hardly a reliable indicator of quality preparation, but here they have Italians who care about coffee on both sides of the counter and the results are positive. Spianiata didn’t make my list of top 10 coffee shops in London, nor did it qualify for my top 10 London pizzerias (which rated only Margheritas). Still, when stuck within the walls of London’s Square Mile, why not follow the Roman way?

Click here to view map

73A Watling Street, London EC4
41 Brushfield Street, London E1
20 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1
12 Moorfields, London EC2
29/30 Leadenhall Market, London EC3