Pino Cuttaia opens his bistro in Milan: “I’ll do my mother’s and memory’s kitchen”

This is great news for Italian cuisine. Pino Cuttaia has landed in Milan and is an enrichment for the Italian food capital: obviously won’t leave The Sideboard, the Michelin two-starred in his Licata, from where – with courage and effort – he built a second (successful) life after the first one that saw him as a worker on the assembly line in Turin. The place is called Double egg, exactly like his most iconic dish and like the pantry-laboratory not far from the restaurant in Sicily. But under the Madonnina, it goes much further: from breakfast to dinner, every moment of the day will be good to taste the proposals studied by Cuttaia. “Once upon a time people used to come to Milan to look for work. Today a Sicilian like me comes to communicate his own culture, to tell the roots of a people rich in values, traditions and contradictions. As an ambassador. Starting from seasonality, from a domestic gesture of the mother »explains Cuttaia.

Where

To do so, he chose a decidedly particular place such as theAriosto Social Club, at 22 of a beautiful Milanese street, four metro stops from the Duomo, with twenty luxury apartments for short-term rentals plus an avant-garde gym and a boutique with original clothes, objects and accessories by Italian artisans, personally selected by the writer and owner of the store Valeria Benatti. The property is owned by Emanuele Vitrano Catania, an entrepreneur of Palermo origins for years operating in the world ofhotellerie Milan with the Brera Hotels Group. For those who stay at the Ariosto Social Club an extra pampering: the possibility of having the dishes served by the kitchen team directly in the privacy of your own apartment. Not bad, really.

What are we eating

Let’s go back to Cuttaia. In the bistro which is open all week (from 12 to 14 and dinner from 19 to 23.30) will serve a menu with its classics, starting with Macco di fave with cuttlefish gnocchi, visible in the photo at the beginning. But he also thought of two new dishes, in homage to the city that awaits him curiously. The first is it Spaghetti “Milanese style” with onion mollication: few people know that it is part of the Sicilian tradition, that is a spaghetti based on wild fennel that goes back to pasta with sardines. «When there was no fish, we used to ask“ how do you make pasta today? And the answer was “Milanese style” to evoke the fact that there is no sea in Milan. In this dish I added anchovies and a little masculino, a smaller anchovy, referring to the Catania variant. There is also the atturrato bread, which is toasted and represents the cheese of the poor »explains the Licata chef.

The second is theEgg cutlet, a daily food that dresses up as a party. «The cutlet is the most typical and well-known dish of the Milanese tradition and I could not neglect it. In the mother’s kitchen, the egg, a daily ingredient, dressed up for a party when it was breaded like a cutlet with breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley. In this way, the same aromas of meat were released from cooking, even if it is not, making you feel the atmosphere of Sunday »says Cuttaia. Two recipes in which there is the essence of the two-star chef, made up of poetry and simple ingredients, often basic but that he knows how to interpret like few in Italy. “There is only one ingredient that I cannot do without and that is memory, innovation is the recovery of the gesture” he says for the umpteenth time. This is why, while enjoying the dishes (re) tasted in Milan, we must once again thank – in addition to the author of the same – the mother and grandmother of Pino Cuttaia.