People appreciate Italian cuisine for its use of fresh ingredients and pronounced flavours, our experts say.
Do you rely on importing ingredients or are there local products on the menu?
Locatelli: We really try to work on creating a local menu with local ingredients where possible and it’s been an amazing journey doing this, visiting farms and seeing the produce that they create here. When we first opened Ronda, there was a minimal amount that we could use locally — it’s amazing how far we’ve come.
Mugavero: We rely mostly on Italian ingredients to get the traditional flavour of the cuisine. Many of our ingredients are imported from Europe. We rely on the local market for some of the fresh vegetables, like lemons and chillies.
Polin: The weather here does limit the availability of ingredients, especially vegetables. JRG Dubai places emphasis on using products that are locally cultivated, and some of these include zucchini, carrots, lettuce and micro leaves. We enjoy a good supply of high-quality seasonal ingredients in the UAE. It’s only fair to take advantage of this and also support the local economy.
Giannini: We have to use high-quality produce and, for example, the best olive oil in the world is from Italy, so we import it. The same goes for the tomatoes. If you have these basic ingredients from Italy with excellent quality, you can make really good food, combining it with organic produce from local farmers.
Lazzaro: It is sad, because we care for the environment, but we import all of our raw ingredients. We import the rocket salad from Venice, mozzarella DOP from Campania, burrata from Puglia, and so on. Each region has its speciality and we import the best from every region of Italy.
Ibrahim: While most of our products are imported from Italy, our main focus is on using fresh organic ingredients sourced from UAE farmers.
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