A starry menu of six courses for only 25 euros? It happens to the Malga Panna, in Val di Fassa

There Panna hut Before a restaurant is first of all a place, and a mountain place. Just above Moena, in Val di Fassa, a road that goes up the pastures and that, given the slopes and width, is climbed, it is definitely better to travel in summer than in winter. Crosses the small fraction of Fatea handful of houses far from the crowd, and finally reaches the limit of the forest where there is a single isolated hut – the Panna hut – a wooden building of the last century at 1400 meters above sea level.

Born as an animal hospitalization has been transformed into a restaurant in the first post -war period. Paolo Doneiborn in 1973, is the direct heir of the first owner of those walls and the heir of his recipes. He was the youngest star chef ever at just 19 years olda record still unbeaten today: «And instead the real star chefs are those who came before me, My mother and grandmother who were able to produce a menu with very few poor ingredients and who managed to put a lot of love in those wonderful dishes“, tells.

Ethical cuisine exists, and it is very good

And for this reason the chef wanted to celebrate his origins by remembering those dishes and those atmospheres, demonstrating for once concretely what “ethical cuisine” could be: “I think the end dining is separating a lot from people. The advent of the media created a world where chefs are superstar».

As if to say: it will be for the status, it will be for the prices on the account, but a distance between the kitchen has inevitably created and those who occupy the dining room: «As a chef I think my work is to approach guests, not to move away. PEnsheus only with the label that is associated with the end of Dining: you have to dress well and be elegant to go to the restaurant. Formalities. I would like to open myself to everything. If I think of our history of restaurateurs, I see that it has always been characterized from welcome. For us, out of rhetoric, it has always been offered a smile and a hot dish. After all, it doesn’t matter. And then I said to myself: now we open the restaurant so that we can tell all this ».

The experience of the menu for 25 euros

In the days we have established, I would like to take my guests a small walk in the woods – even just 10 minutes – before lunch to explain why Malga Panna is born, I would like to accompany them in front of the restaurant to offer an aperitif mounting a little butter in front of their eyes with fresh cream, to be served on rye bread, and offer a drink not a bottle of sparkling wine but one but one cup of meat brothas it was done on great occasions when people came out of the Church. I will make a menu with six courses, with great poor ingredients. It makes me especially to think that for a sandwich on the highway it can cost 8-10 euros and I can offer here You are taken to 20-25 euros. I like to have the opportunity to tell my story and that of the place and thank my family and who worked before me. And above all I like to demonstrate that every starry restaurant is not born already starry but was born from a story of great love ».

The label to which Paolo Donei refers is also in a mountain restaurant and not only in the center of a metropolis: “I am not interested in me and my collaborators if one shows up in short pants and boots. The only thing we want to have a polite: if he behaves badly he is thrown out even if he has arrived with a Bugatti ». These special days were scheduled at the end of each month in the summer for lunch and therefore exactly the June 25, July 24, August 28 and September 25th.

The farmer to eat: cheap, nutritious, good, and without waste

«Everything was used in the farmer world and nothing was thrown away. The mountain land offered little: buckwheat to make polenta, potatoes, turnips, onions, butter, cream, rye ... After the aperitif, therefore, I would like to make a menu six courses that starts with an ancient local dish, a savory pie with flour, eggs, seed oil and lacticellothat is, the milk of a cow that has just given birth with the colostrum, salt and pepper, to be served with a salami of ours. To follow Roast potatoes with Moena’s puzzone: I would like to show people who can eat a fantastic dish made only with Two poor ingredients. Flour gnocchi made only with the spoon and thrown into the water, served with fresh mushrooms since the season of the collection is about to begin. I’d like to do ours luganegatherefore the boiled sausage and served with a Peretto tomato sauce made by us. And finally one Apple pie or a strudel As my grandmother did with spontaneous herbs, putting a little fresh cream close to him. “

The wine of the Pinot barrel

«In the times they were, while my mom cooked EMI Father – who managed the restaurant for 50 years in low season – worked from Franz Haasthe South Tyrolean cellar a few kilometers from here in the Adige valley where one of the best Italian Pinot Nero is produced. He did not get paid but he could bring home a barrel of their best pinot black to resell to the restaurant in the carafe as a wine from the house. We will do this too. Maybe with dessert we will combine a non -alcoholic cocktail based on flowers, herbs or berries for dessert. Whoever comes, will have the immediate feeling that this initiative has been carried out with the heart and that marketing and communication has nothing to do with it ».