Alba's Meltin' Wok

The province of Alba and Langa is living a really important gastronomic moment that brings it on the first line of the national and international gastronomic scene. Alba had never offered such a good cuisine before. This doesn’t mean that people didn’t use to eat well before –far from that–, because this region has always been very rich: fertile and fecund hills; beef, pig, sheep and poultry farms; vegetables, great wines, mushrooms, truffles, etc.
All this is reflected through a cuisine that has always pleased all the visitors, with its antipasti, its egg pasta, its grilled and stewed meats, its chocolate... Good restaurants and good cooks have never been lacking here. In the mid nineties, a young, brave and daring cook from the province of Torino arrived to Langa. He was called Maurilio Garola and opened La Ciau del Tornavento. A small gastronomic revolution had started in the quiet city. The restaurant didn’t take long to become a gourmets’ reference. Apart from the classical local recipes, Maurilio brought his inspiration and his innovative ideas to that gastronomically speaking conservative atmosphere. Fish, reinvented traditional dishes, irony, new products. Ten years later, the new generation of cooks from Langa was formed. In addition to the natives, the level of the people from abroad who arrived to open their restaurant or lead the stoves of some important places is amazing. We are talking about the Mexican Guillermo Field, who launched Il Profumo di Vino, in Treiso, after a stay in La Ciau; the Japanese Masayuki Kondo, in Locanda del Pilone (Alba), who proposes a live cuisine under the supervision of the Campanian Tonino Cannavacciuolo; Damiano Nigro (born in Puglia and trained in the big palaces from Paris) in Villa d'Amelia (Benevello); Pier Bussetti, in the Castello di Govone (the most creative cook in Turin, who arrived to Langa in mid 2010); Bruno Cingolani, from the Marches, who works at the excellent restaurant Dulcis Vitis, in Alba; the Lombard Enrico Crippa, who reached the top of the national cuisine with his Piazza Duomo (also located in Alba); Savino Mongelli, another citizen from the province of Torino, in Castello Santa Vittoria (Alba); and the rising star of this group of young talents, the Chinese Chen Shiquin, in La Rei, located in the Boscareto resort. When you touch their cuisine and see how perfectly they elaborate traditional recipes, you realize how much they love and respect the territory they are hosted in. They sometimes perform the existing recipes and go one step beyond. The most courageous even dare reinvent local cuisine. The diversity of their cultural backgrounds and technical skills leads to new ideas, to a plural cuisine that escapes from conventions and –even– from the typical dishes from Langa, yet delicious: raw meat, Russian salad, lamb with tuna, Plin raviolis, etc. Their presence in Langa, very positive, is a real need for the development and the future of this wonderful region, which will go on growing thanks to the professional and cultural contribution of these cooks who came from so many remote places. With the support of several visionary institutions and employers who believed in these chef’s virtues, the results were swift to come: the brave local cooks have been able to create a concentration of high quality restaurants that is almost unique in Italy and to give a really good image on an international scale. Alba has abandoned provincialism. This is the best way to ennoble a territory! Not uprooting the seventy-year-old central part of Vigna Rionda vineyard in Serralunga d'Alba, which a is real nonsense. If we look at the past and the future, we can see that quality is essential to succeed. What will they replant there? Just simple clones, I guess… How many decades will be necessary before this mythical vineyard gets back to maturity? People like me, who have just been forty, won’t have the opportunity to see it. A unique genetic heritage has been rooted out in a few days, here. Let’s hope that some Nebbiolo de Barolo will be replanted ...
In the current global world of gastronomy, Alba has been able to reinvent a solid future thanks to the arrival of those cooks who, together with their great local fellow chefs from Alba (Camia, Palluda, Vivalda, Giaccone, Alciati, Felicin, Cordero, etc.), have been performing the gastronomy of this land and making it one of a kind.
P.S.: La Vigna Rionda is one of the most exclusive “grands crus” in all the Barolo region, such as Bussia, Cannubi and Brunate.