Cuisine focus: Italian
For years, restaurateurs have relied on Italian eateries as low-risk, low-cost options. But consumer education and a new wave of Italian chefs are forcing them to rethink strategies
In the eyes of the Middle East F&B industry an Italian restaurant has always been a safe bet – almost a prerequisite in a new hotel. With high demand, low ingredient cost and a low amount of technical training needed for a chef.
But with supply chains and customer education improving, and an increasing presence of high-end Italian chefs in the region, the offering is becoming increasingly authentic.
Taste the difference
Talking on the penultimate day of Gulfood 2012, Maurizio Roberti, head chef at new restaurant RIVA on the The Shoreline, Palm Jumeirah Dubai, said: “There is a lot of fine produce here that I want for my restaurant, but most of the suppliers do not have distributors. It’s a shame because it’s better to have lots of distributors, rather than one supplier controlling all of it.”
It was a similar story all across the Italian pavilion, with a lot of companies searching for their first distributor in the region.
Pino Cipolla, director of export and freight for olive oil brands Pietro Coricelli and Cirio, thinks it’s because the Middle East market has yet to reach its full maturity, and buyers at the trade show do not fully appreciate the products.
“The Middle East is not yet ready to understand the quality of extra virgin olive oil,” he said. “Their tastes have not been trained for years and years by generations of their family. They will of course become more educated, but at the moment chefs are selecting lower quality oils from places like Syria.
“Currently we export 100 tonnes of oil a month using Emirates Snack Foods as a distributor,” he continued. “Roughly €3 million (US $4 million) worth a year to the Middle East – to Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. It is increasing year on year, and we think it will keep growing and growing.”
Educating consumers
If there’s one man who is on a mission to educate Dubai diners, it’s executive chef Francesco Guarracino. He joined BiCE Mare in Souk Al Bahar Dubai at the end of 2011 and immediately set up cooking masterclasses for the general public.
“The masterclasses are an opportunity for people to see BiCE Mare in a different way, from a different point of view – more like a family,” he says. “I want to make it comfortable for them to come here and be interested and learn how to make fresh pasta from 12 Italian chefs. They can have fun, have a joke, I want them to start to trust us.
“[During my career] I started to come out more and more from the kitchen, trying to get closer and closer to the customers, because my belief is I’m not cooking for myself, I’m cooking for other people and I want to know if they like it.”
It’s this customer interaction that Guarracino believes will take BiCE Mare from strength to strength.
“Sometimes we have a lot of interaction with customers, me and my sous chef. We spend a lot of time in the room talking with them, chatting to them, cooking for them on the table, and sometimes even to say: ‘madam, this is too much for you, you are asking too much’, or ‘don’t take this, it is very expensive today’.
“It’s kind of a relationship with my customers,” he continues. “They need to start to trust me, they close the menu and they put the faith in my hand and I give better food than they would get reading that menu.”
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The all-Italian way
Guarracino has made a huge commitment to authenticity in the region, which he thinks was lacking before he arrived: “At Bice Mare Dubai we are the only kitchen with an all-Italian team,” he explains.
“When I thought to come here to Dubai I thought, if I go I have to do something different, and I asked myself, what is missing? What is not there? I did a little research and I found there is no Italian restaurant with a full Italian team, so I want to be the first one do the real Italian food.”
He brought over 11 chefs from different regions, and is now putting on special monthly regional dishes from the most famous gastronomic regions of Italy including Tuscany, Lazio, Calabria, Sicily and Puglia. And for each month, the chef from that specific region will have the chance to shine, which Guarracino says helps keep them motivated.
Changing trends
Even though traditional fare and home cooking methods will always be at the top of an Italian restaurant’s priorities, Tito Piazza, executive chef at Cipriani Yas Island Abu Dhabi, has seen a new trend.
“The demand is high for raw food and a more healthy nutrition for diet watchers,” he says. “Nevertheless, we keep on preparing our all-time classic Cipriani dishes such as homemade baked tagliolini with turkey-ham and liver alla Veneziana, which continue to be super popular with the Cipriani clientele.”
The menu’s fusion of traditional and modern is not only present in the cuisine, but also in the restaurant and kitchen design, as Piazza explains: “I have been designing Cipriani kitchens for the past five years. They need to be neither one or the other.
A combination of traditional and modern is truly important for the best results. And it’s important that the chefs work in a kitchen environment that they feel comfortable in. It’s fundamental that in any kitchen it’s the chefs that prepare and cook the food, and not the various equipment or accessories.”
In Bahrain, the standard of Italian produce is increasingly on the up too, according to executive chef Kim Gates from Fiamma restaurant, Sofitel Bahrain Thalassa Sea & Spa.
“We’ve been open since April 2011, for around 10 months,” he explains. “Fiamma is doing very well, we have a very good name in the market for quality of food and we recently won the grand award for best new restaurant from Time Out Bahrain magazine.
“We’ve noticed that people are looking for healthy and organic options. We are starting to work with a local farm who is producing great quality organic vegetables. Our menus will reflect this more in 2012, with the recently opened Thalassa spa which offers healthy cuisine developed in conjunction with a dietician.”
The future looks sweet
An improved quality of meal from start to finish is what Gianluca De Luca believes Middle East diners are calling for. He is general manager at Giolitti – a high quality ice cream manufacturer that has been in production since 1900.
“We have six outlets in Istanbul and are opening our first in Dubai in Boulevard Plaza soon. We have also had lots of interest from Qatar and Bahrain. The ice creams are a luxury product and people can taste the fresh ingredients.
“I’m sorry to say that most people in Dubai eat Baskin-Robbins” he continues. “It’s a 100% artificial taste, and when they taste my ice cream they look shocked. But this will change.”
Borraccino is confident that his high end ice creameries will do well. “In Dubai, people like Italian products – they want luxury. When you say it is an Italian product, you automatically are given one point.”
Daria Illy, international key accounts department manager for coffee firm Illy, is comfident in the Middle East’s new commitment to quality.
“It’s a similar market to the US here – people are dedicated to their brands, and to quality,” she says.
“Europe is not having an easy moment, but as far as our key accounts are concerned, this [with Shura Trading] is in the top five in the world.”
“We are doing very well in Saudi, Oman, Qatar. The whole of the Middle East is growing, apart from the countries that are experiencing political and social problems – mainly Egypt and Bahrain. But even there it’s not so much of a slowing down – just more of a consistency with last year. On the whole we are experiencing a double-digit growth.”
In 2012, the firm is focusing on its new ‘Live Happy’ campaign.
“We have had beautiful espresso cups created by an Italian artist, Francesco Clemente, that some restaurants are choosing to stock. And we have a new, beautifully designed Point One coffee machine,” she says.
So with demand for quality on the rise, and an increase of more authentic flavours in the region, hopefully next year the Italian Gulfood traders will be happy too.