Your restaurant "Paolo Teverini," located inside the Hotel Tosco Romagnolo in Bagno di Romagna in the province of Forlì-Cesena, thanks to your management, has received many awards and recognitions over the years. Is it difficult to keep the level acquired and the expectations constant ?
My restaurant, Paolo Teverini, is really the expression of what I have inside me, of the desire for life, emotions, pleasures, desires and dreams. Of course, I represent all this through iil food, through my dishes and through my concept of hospitality. Maintaining the acquired level is not difficult, I just have to do what I like and what I think is right. Of course if we think it is difficult to maintain a high level because we have to devote our whole day to our work/pleasure then it is difficult. But this is my life, this is the life I want. there are no difficulties if things are done with pleasure. I do cooking with great pleasure.
Your cooking, is undoubtedly refined, and in this term I don't mean complicated cooking, but reasoned, where the tradition of the territory and its specialties are continuously studied by your creative flair and I assume safeguarded by your technique. How is a new recipe of yours born ? When a recipe is defined in all its aspects and enters the menu offered by the restaurant what happens? Does it more frequently go in addition to others or does it go to replace other recipes ?
A new recipe is not born because I wake up one morning and want to make a new dish, but because behind it there is work, study, research, knowledge, and the emotions of days and days of application. The new recipe is born when inside me there is something I want to say; if I were a poet I would write poetry, I am a cook and I make dishes. This is my way of expressing myself. When a recipe enters the menu it means that I have achieved what I thought, I have to bend it to my collaborators because without them I can do little and tell the customer the reasons and whys. At that point the new dish goes on the menu and another dish is eliminated.
Itgoes without saying that for you the quality of the raw material is fundamental as certainly the seasonality and freshness of the ingredients, but as far as kitchen equipment is concerned what is your opinion and orientation? Do you place a lot of importance on cookware and accessories? Do you rely on big brands? Do you use technologies such as vacuum, blast chillers, etc... Do you personally research tools and utensils?
I am fully convinced that the greatest event in the history of cooking was the discovery of fire. At that moment man began to cook and eat for pleasure not just hunger. So for me all discoveries, inventions, creation of new equipment fascinates me and leads me to experiment with them. Then I decide whether they work for me and whether to adopt them. My kitchen is equipped in an ultramodern way if you can call it that. Just induction plates, blast chillers, vacuum, pacojets, smart ovens, etc. etc. everything that modern technology can give to improve my work and give more room for my ideas. However, I often find myself personally building small tools, small molds that I can't find commercially but that at that moment allow me to achieve my intended goal.
How do you source? Do you personally do the shopping or do you rely on collaborators? How do you shop? Do you prefer to go in person to farms, fishermen and growers, or do you choose products that are brought to you? Or what else?
Grocery shopping is something I personally follow for several reasons. The most trivial and obvious reason is the economic side because if you make a mistake in grocery shopping the farm goes bad. The second reason, but second in chronological order not in importance is the search for the raw material that excites you. If a product doesn't appeal to you because of its freshness, its appearance, it doesn't intrigue you, it doesn't stimulate you you certainly won't make a great dish. Conversely if u n product creates emotions for you in seeing it, in touching it then more easily it will turn into great dish. I look at products in person but I also have trusted suppliers who look for me. I give an example when I want a great Chianina meat I have a great piece of pork I call Simone Fracassi my butcher and he chooses for me. I rest assured that his choice will be superior to mine because he understands more about meat than I do. This is my way of buying.
What is the Prèt a Portèr ? Does it have a separate operation from the restaurant ? How does it operate ? What kind of audience does itcaterto ?
When I decided to open another space dedicated to catering I called it Pret a Porter thinking of the big fashion houses that in addition to the big maison had decided to offer the market a simpler and cheaper line, but still of quality and signed by a big name. My Pret a Porter is a restaurant that wants to use in the best possible way all the knowledge and all the experience gained and built up over time by Paolo Teverini's restaurant.
I give only two examples:
The first consists in the opportunity that the union of two restaurants has a greater strength than two unrelated restaurants. This allows me to buy, for example, a lamb of which I will use the most valuable part, the loin, for the Paolo Teverini restaurant, and all the rest for Pret a Porter. In this way I can buy a lamb of great quality, buying it whole will cost me less than buying just a cut for either restaurant. Also I can optimize the work of the kitchen brigade. The quality of the meat will be excellent for each restaurant even if the cuts of different commercial value. The second is to offer my customer quality catering but offering dishes that are cheaper because they are stripped of all those costs that I call overheads or pins that are used to make the whole thing look better but which at certain times you can do without.
After so many years in the business, of satisfaction and recognition, do you still have a dream in your drawer?
Definitely forty years of living in the hospitality world but it has given so many satisfactions to which I am fully grateful. It has allowed me to live happily and with great satisfaction. But I am aware that to achieve all this I needed the fundamental help of my wife and now also my daughters. Without a big family I would not have achieved what I have. My dream in the drawer is to reach the goal, but of which I always push the bar higher and higher.
If frequenters of this blog would like to learn more about you, are you contactable through any site, blog or social network?
Through my site www.paoloteverini.it
Interview by Monica Palla
