Inside an Italian chef’s heart

Watching an Italian chef stir up a hearty meal for you while you sip on Pinot Grigio: your evening can’t get any better than this. The recently-appointed chef at Fratelli Fresh, Vincenzo Zizza (or Chef Tony as his team likes to call him) gives Shirin Mehrotra a sneak peek of his new menu.

The Chef at work

Come 9/11 and Fratelli Fresh, located at Renaissance Mumbai Convention Centre Hotel, Powai will have a brand new menu created by the new chef. With the restaurant since July-end, Chef Tony has been busy re-hauling the food landscape here.

The difference between the new menu and the previous one is that the diners will have a wider choice of pasta, and meat and fish dishes. The restaurant will also be more generous in certain cases “and a little bit more authentic,” asserts Chef Tony.

Sneak peek

For starters, the chef cooked mozzarella and ham in carrozza. The cheese was soft and fresh and so was the bread. The tangy sauce made from tomatoes and onion was a perfect accompaniment. For the main course came per carlo (chicken stuffed with artichokes and seasoned with wine and herbs) served with asparagus, porcini mushrooms and baby potatoes. The chicken was tender and artichokes gave the dish a nice sour flavour.

The new dessert menu goes beyond the regular tiramisu. I had Passione (meaning passion) which is red berries and raspberries cooked in wine and topped with cream blended with brandy. Sweet!

Over this scrumptious meal, the warm and huggable chef shared his love for food and…some secrets.

What are your recommendations?
Everything on the menu. Actually, asking me my favourite in my menu is like asking a mother who her favorite child is among all her kids.

Where do you get your ingredients from since most of the products are not available in India?
We import 70% of our ingredients. However, few suppliers have become smarter in Mumbai and are producing good quality items. I am planning to test them and use whatever I can, like there is a dairy farm not very far from here which produces good quality cheese. In terms of meat India is still not there yet, but I definitely don’t have to import seafood.

Have you tasted Indian wines?
I have tried a couple of Indian wines and I like them, although I wouldn’t use them for a big dinner but only for a small function.

How do you select your wine?
Every wine has its own particular characteristic and I think that wine should be had according to the mood. There is no specific rule for drinking wine because if you go by the rules there will be too many. There are 2,000-3,000 kinds of wine listed in Italy and many that aren’t listed. Everyone claims that their wine goes well with a particular food but there is someone else saying the same thing for his wine but the food is same anyhow.

What’s the perfect wine when the mood is romantic?
When I am with my wife I usually prefer a glass of white wine and if it is sparkling, even better. Italians like to drink Champagne a lot. The only problem is that we can’t call it Champagne!

One dish that you could cook blindfolded

Every dish on my menu! But I wouldn’t want to or I might burn my fingers.

Any bizarre request by a customer that you remember?
Once a customer asked me to bring him vegetable soup but without any vegetables. So I boiled the vegetables in water and served him the drained water.

Are you in favour of Indianising Italian cuisine?
I think Indian cuisine has some great ingredients. It’s a spice heaven and I am looking forward to using some of those spices in my dishes. I am planning to make pizza with Indian curries. I won’t call it Indianisation – it’s more like taking the best of Indian flavours and introducing them to Italian food.

What is the one dish you love and remember from your mom’s kitchen?
My mom wasn’t much of a cook. She was a tailor. Once she made a dish which didn’t turn out very well and she tried hard to make it better. It was meat balls without meat but I loved it.

What was the first dish you cooked for your wife?
My wife is a Chinese and she wasn’t too fond of Italian food initially. Once I cooked a dish for her: I took some olives, threw them in a pan with olive oil, added some onions and garlics, veggies like carrots, zucchini, cabbage, etc, some boiled pasta, salt, pepper and basil and served her. Since then she loves Italian food.

Some general ideas that people have about Italian food which aren’t true.
People believe that wine is used extensively in Italian cooking which is not true. Only white wine is used in pasta to get the sour flavour. Generally it is used to cure the meat. Tiramisu wasn’t a very popular Italian dessert before the 80s but now there is not one Italian restaurant that doesn’t serve it.
Also, bruschetta which is served as a starter in Indian restaurants is not actually a starter. Traditionally, it is served as an aperitif. But this is something I am not going to change here. If people like it that way, I’ll keep it as a starter in my menu.

Would you like to give any tips for Italian cooking at home?
Italian cooking is very simple. Just few basic ingredients like olive oil, mushrooms, and basil and you are sorted. All you need to do is put a lot of love and passion in cooking it.