This is a tale of two meals. Within two days earlier this year in northern Italy, I ate two very different and extraordinary meals. One was a formal dinner in a two-star Michelin hotel restaurant, and the other was lunch in a small-town restaurant. Both introduced me to near fictional-type dimensions of culinary experience.
The L'Albereta Relais & Chateaux Hotel, which is set within several hundred acres of its own Bellavista vineyards, is close to the village of Erbusco, and overlooks Lake Iseo; one of the smaller lakes that lie between their more famous brothers, Lakes Como, Garda, and Maggiore. The hotel, while comfortable and peaceful, is chiefly famous for its restaurant.
The incumbent chef, Gualtiero Marchesi, has two Michelin stars. You know you are in a country which takes its food very seriously when you see road signs with the name of a chef on them. Driving from Milan Airport, long before we came near Erbusco, or the L'Albereta, there were signs to tell us Marchesi lay ahead, as if he was a place.
We all dressed up for dinner, which I was really looking forward to, never having come within 50-asses'-roar distance of even one Michelin star. It was when we entered the restaurant that I understood the truism that great restaurants are as much theatres as eating houses: we were the protagonists and Marchesi was the director. When the chef came out of the kitchen, everyone craned to see him and whispered behind their champagne glasses.
When the anti-pasta was set before us, for one moment I wondered if I was supposed to laugh. In the middle of a cartwheel of a plate was a tiny teaspoon. In the bowl of the spoon was a quarter of a clove of glazed garlic, and three minute shreds of preserved meat. There was nothing else on the plate. We lifted the spoons in unison. In two seconds, it was over. Reverential murmuring rolled around the room. I felt foolish and uncomfortable - and controlled.
Out came another plate, with a small, small bowl on it. In this floated one little deep-fried spinach ravioli atop a few spoonfuls of artichoke soup. This was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten; delicate, light, and fresh, but it was food for fairies. And the waiters kept replacing our almost-full wine-glasses with another different wine at every course, something which perhaps we Irish are genetically programmed to resent - having a lovely wine literally whipped out of your hand before you've hardly touched it, or even want to try another.
Warily, I awaited the next course. Ten dishes with tureens emerged from the kitchen. Marchesi stepped out to watch our reaction. The other diners paused also. The dishes were set down. A waiter stepped between each of us, and at a signal from the chef, the lids were lifted simultaneously. A 1970s episode of Ripley's Believe It Or Not was my only other encounter with what lay before me on the plate: a large square of gold leaf on saffron risotto. In Ripley's, the gold leaf had been on top of some gateaux in one of Japan's most expensive restaurants. I could have folded up the gold leaf (yes, real gold leaf) and taken it home as a property deposit, but I didn't, I ate it. What did it taste like? Rich and weird is the best I can do. In all, the entire evening was food as surreal theatre. A day previously, we had gone to Bergamo: a small town a short distance from Erbusco. It was here that I had what turned out in retrospect to be the culinary experience of my life: a meal which turned into a fantastical epic. The facilitators for the trip steered us into the Ristorante da Vittorio on Bergamo's Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII, muttering something about "a light lunch".
We sat down to a table with pristine white linen, where red and yellow tulips leaned brazenly out of silver teapots. The gastronomic journey was already starting: also on the table were the prettiest anti-pasta these eyes have ever seen.
Gorgonzola mousse had been piped into half grapes, salty fresh anchovies coiled onto tiny discs of polenta, and wee dishes of roasted pumpkin seeds. Also, baskets containing 11 different kinds of bread. I stopped myself from having a third anchovy, thinking vaguely that there might be some distance yet to go on this particular edible road to Damascus.
Next out were portions of John Dory, cooked in a butter sauce with baby leeks. Then arrived Norwegian salted cod, on polenta. A light white wine was served all through the meal: even one glass of red would have turned the balance of the scales and made everything impossibly heavy.
The waiters brought out the next course, announcing that this was not on the menu, but that the chef had just taken delivery of same and wanted to serve them while they were so fresh. "They" were great big succulent langoustines, two apiece, bursting out of their shells and served in the simplest butter sauce.
I am an enthusiastic and experimental eater, but one who fills up quite early on and cannot manage large quantities. Not this time. Having eaten all of the previous courses (although admittedly the portions were not very large), I devoured my two gorgeous and enormous langoustines and eyed my neighbour's plate with furtive greed, where one langoustine still remained. To this day, I regret that I did not ask Valerie Singleton, erstwhile Blue Peter presenter, if I could finish her fourth course.
Next out was pea risotto, steaming with flavour and stock, which I ate with the speed of one who has not had a bite for days. When I thought about this meal afterwards, I realised the only other time in my life I had eaten so much so effortlessly was at the end of each day's trekking in the Himalayas. Pottering around the shops of Bergamo and buying fake Prada shoes couldn't compare in terms of physical effort.
The genius of this meal was how it worked together as a sublime jigsaw of tastes, textures, and smells. Every course made sense of the last, and all together, it created an unforgettable banquet. With the next course, at last we saw the chef: Enrico Cerea, a beaming man not yet 30, and who for some bizarre reason, has no Michelin stars.
He came out bearing an entire sea bass on a platter, surrounded by a necklace of little oil-glazed tomatoes and sliced potatoes. It was at this point everyone applauded, and for me at least, it was the first time I've ever put my hands together for a meal that wasn't prepared by family or friends. We ate the ragged chunky flesh of the sea bass, we ate the tiny intensely flavoured tomatoes, we ate the slivers of mealy potatoes.
I folded my serviette and fixed my eyes on the kitchen door, wild with expectancy to see what would emerge next. The desserts came out in a carnival blur: endless plates of exquisite petit fours; a skyscraper Pannatone; chocolate ice-cream; coffee mousse; fairy-tale trays of chocolates, marzipan, nuts, candies, sugared eggs, crystallised fruit, bon bons, nougat, sorbets, and other things I simply could not keep track of in my crazed notebook, including a different individual dessert for each one of us.
A mysterious unmarked dessert wine was served with all this; apparently so rare the restaurant do not like to let people know what it is, or where it has come from. The most extraordinary thing of all was that I rose from the table after some 2 1/2 hours and did not feel as if I had had too much to eat. We were there as guests, but I was told our meal would have cost about £110 a head.
While normally I would think this an obscene figure to pay for any meal, I can say that this one was worth every penny, for all kinds of reasons. That meal was far more than food: it was a unique cultural experience, of the kind, that in a perfect world, everyone should have at least once in their lives. It was the best food I'd ever had. And it demonstrated another truism; that some of the best chefs have no Michelin stars at all, just their invaluable word-of-mouth reputations.
L'Albereta: 00-39-30-7760550 or www.terramoretti.it Ristorante da Vittorio: 00-39-35-213266
