As the world’s leading dining capitals continue to expand their horizons, a new crop of restaurants leverages fine-grained narratives to establish stronger synergy with their clientele. One does so by deconstructing Piedmont into multiple culinary touchpoints in Hong Kong.
Italian food has always been one of the country’s richest sources of soft power. It has so successfully piqued the interests of cosmopolitan epicures that over the last decade, they have begun to see past the stereotypes of Italian cuisine as a singular unit, and instead embrace the patchwork of gastronomic practices rooted in highly localised environments and customs. That, in turn, has become a lens for foreigners to adopt a more nuanced view of the country at large.
Thousands of kilometres away from the Mediterranean, Hong Kong arguably boasts Asia’s most diverse F&B scene and, resultingly, most discerning diners. Where catch-all Italian restaurants will not suffice, specialists of Neapolitan pizza, Florentine lampredotto have popped up across the city, feeding into locals’ cravings for a deeper connection with the country.
A native of Saluzzo, Piedmont, Matteo Morello opened Castellana in 2019 to promote the cuisine of his homeland. For a region that lacks touristic hotspots like Venice or Rome, Piedmont has been squarely in Hongkongers’ culinary consciousness for quite a while. Alba’s annual white truffle fair is routinely headlined by Hong Kong bidders taking home the costliest harvests, and Barolo wine from the Langhe is sought after there. As Morello came to find out, the locals are ready to venture deeper into the region’s agricultural canon.
“People love vitello tonnato, but I didn’t expect fassona [a breed of cow native to Piedmont] to be so popular.
Many diners like the meat very much because it’s not so fatty. They are happy to finally not eat wagyu, not because it’s not good, but it’s everywhere in Hong Kong. You only find fassona in some Italian restaurants, and it’s also not so easy to cook lean meat, because with a small mistake, it becomes very chewy,” he said.
The restaurant owner has reasons to be confident. Executive chef Fabiano Palombini, with 35 years of experience, commands the open kitchen with such ease that guests at chef’s table are set to enjoy some stellar theatre of cookery. Access to quality ingredients from Northern Italy gives him a leg up in crafting a menu strong enough to compete in Hong Kong’s cutthroat dining industry. Palombini went so far to say Hong Kong is Italian chefs’ “Alice in the Wonderland”, with plenty of suppliers helping secure what they needed. Morello’s connection back home also allows the chef to obtain hyper-local produce that are crucial for translating an Alpine-influenced cuisine in a highly urbanised setting.
And “translate” is the keyword here
Not every foreign diner has an extensive vocabulary of Italy’s regional cuisines to be able to contextualise every regional foodstuff, but most is eager to discover. A shrewd culinary storyteller knows what and for whom they cook so well that they turn the former into something which makes sense to the latter. “When you open an Italian restaurant abroad, you need to understand what the expectation of the non-Italian clientele is,” Morello explained. Both he and Palombini having Hong Kong-born spouses means they are keenly attuned to the locals’ palate. “Our idea is to take these signatures of Italy and give them a Piedmontese twist, and Fabrizio is very skilled at that”.
Alongside canonical dishes one can find from Piedmont’s traditional piolas, another part of Castellana’s offerings taps into the likes of cacio e pepe and aglio, olio e pepperoncino. Palombini substitutes certain components with typical Piedmontese finds and makes them the stars, in doing so giving his patrons reference points to latch onto the region’s bounties.
“The pecorino used in cacio e pepe is very salty, and can be too pungent for Asian diners. A few years ago, when Matteo got married in Piedmont, I tried the region’s mascarpa cheese for the first time. It has the same colour as pecorino but is very mild. And I thought, if my wife can eat it, all Hongkongers can, and they’re going to like it. So, I warm the marscarpa in the pan gently and emulsify it to make this smooth cream for the spaghettoni,” Palombini said.
Morello’s effort to tell the story of his birthplace does not stop at Castellana. Diners compelled by the snippets on their plates can experience it in the flesh through a tour he organises around the slopes of Saluzzo and Alba. A rotation of activities takes them around the region’s agri- and viti-cultural heartland and reflects its seasonality, something less distinct in the subtropics and thus an eye-opener to Hongkongers.
The restaurateur, who hosts the guests in his fifteenth-century convent in Saluzzo, admitted that they are the happiest when given the chance to get their hands dirty. Digging up black truffles and stomping grapes during the vendemmia are tactile indicators to show them what life is like in this part of the world. “It’s enjoyable, because Piemonte is down to earth,” he noted, adding that the salient moment of the quest to learn about the local cuisine might occur far away from the well-trodden gastronomic path – at where everything starts, literally.
“On the last day, we usually go hiking towards the source of Po River, just about half an hour from Saluzzo. Hong Kong people get obsessed about it because they see what comes out of the mountain and creates the longest river in Italy. At one point in our latest tour, we reached a small rifugio, about 250 metres down a small road from the source. They went in and bought bottles of the water, gulped them down and refilled them with the water from the river!”
