In the most luxurious Puglia: dinner at Borgo Egnazia at the social table “Orto”

Cooking outdoors, with the help of a lit embers, some frying pans and products from the garden, means for a starred chef to put himself to the test. Leaving one’s comfort zone, abandoning technology in favor of technique, rediscovering the slightly primordial taste of country cooking. But also have fun. It is what is perceived by the new experience set up by Domingo Schingaro, chef of the Due Camini restaurant, one Michelin star in Borgo Egnazia, in Puglia.

Schingaro’s has always been one local cuisine, strongly rooted in the flavors and aromas of Pugliaa region that in a place like Borgo Egnazia becomes an immersive experience to be offered to tourists to consolidate the imagination of Italy from Sweet life. His Due Camini, one of the six restaurants of this gigantic and marvelous structure, earned a Michelin star in 2019 with this approach. of free and improvised cooking, mainly vegetable raw materials, freshness and convivial summer evenings.

In fact, it was born in the space outside the Due Camini L’Orto, a twelve-seater social table surrounded by aromatic herbs and white mulberry trees: this is where the new «Roots» menu is served, which offers what nature offers, in a declaration of love for Puglia and the products of its land and seas. In the large wooden table of the Garden, among the very red tomatoes that act as centerpieces, bunches of red onions falling from above, lighted candles and oregano scents, it is not only the chef who gets involved: here you come to do a collective experience, eating seated side by side with other customers, toasting all together and choosing to immerse yourself in the warm and colorful Apulian welcome.

The menu of the Garden costs 160 euros (250 with the pairing of wines, highly recommended) but it will be a surprise: nature cannot be predicted, and so the eight-course itinerary varies evening after evening depending on what you have chosen to give the sea, or the land. What is constant is a different approach to raw materials: meat, comes out and eggs, although present in the dishes, become a side dishthat is an element that completes the dish, enhancing the taste and peculiarities of the vegetable.

Another constant of the tasting itinerary is the beautiful «Raviolo courgette and saffron», a dish with summer flavors created by Domingo Schingaro for Maison Veuve Clicquot, which has chosen the chef as the Italian spokesperson for the Garden Gastronomy project, a new concept of green-oriented author gastronomy: a prestigious and sustainable cuisine that puts vegetables at the center. The ravioli, in which the courgette becomes a treasure chest of itself by enclosing the filling in a weave reminiscent of that of the wicker baskets of the past, are in fact combined in the path to La Grande Dame, Cuvée de Prestige and emblem of the Maison’s excellence .