Italian Cuisine Takes a New Twist at the Marco Polo

Chef de cuisine Fabio Strammiello has been traveling the arena, studying from the masters, and offers Italian meals with a twist on the Marco Polo Restaurant at the 38th floor of the Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel.

Italian Cuisine

Hailing from Italy’s Amalfi Coast place, the religious domestic of Mediterranean cooking, Chef Fabio’s first process after cooking college was an eye fixed-opener. His cousin helped him secure chef de partie answerable for making pasta, risotto, and soups on the Heinz Beck-helmed restaurant Café Les Paillotes in Pescara. The restaurant has had a Michelin big name when you consider that 2009.

Beck, a founder of The Order of the Knights of Italian Cuisine, is a notorious perfectionist. Fabio turned into now delivered to the needs of being a pinnacle chef – lengthy hours and a demanding work environment – however also to the super stories that meals can offer.

Fabio calls Beck’s signature eating place in Rome, La Pergola, the “temple of delicacies,” due to its excessive-tech kitchen, awesome standards, and provider degree. “I learned that overall performance is essential and consistency is crucial,” he says.

Fabio left Italy’s beaches for some other Beck restaurant, the Venetian-styled, Michelin-starred Apsleys inside The Lanesborough’s elegant lodge setting in London. In addition to making garniture for meat and fish dishes, he learned that food must also be revel in. “I will constantly take into account Beck’s advice to me: `Make the guest take into account the flavor.’” It’s advice that set him on the road to success in his very own right.

Sitting in the Marco Polo Restaurant’s fashionable environs, with Taipei dreamily stretching out into space far underneath, Fabio admits that notwithstanding a decade of culinary experiences, he is a relatively younger chef de cuisine at 29 years old. This is the first time he has been in the price of the kitchen and menu at a major established order, or as he bluntly places it, “Telling humans what to do in place of being informed what to do.”

His philosophy is straightforward and powerful. “I need to make precise food and make people glad. The awards will comply with later.” Naturally based totally on conventional Italian delicacies, Fabio’s approach is innovative and specific, fresh and balanced. “I don’t like to use too many ingredients due to the fact desirable and clean always tastes higher” and doesn’t overpower the palette, he says.

A fan of organic substances and biodynamic sourcing, Fabio found out to push the envelope of conventional French and Italian gourmet cooking after working in Denmark at two of the arena’s maximum famous “new cuisine” restaurants. He first labored as a stager at the three-star Geranium before joining the high-idea cooking status quo Noma, additionally in Copenhagen. The latter’s 20-path food based on seasonal produce has revolutionized gastronomy, and the status quo is regularly mentioned as the arena’s excellent eating place.

“It modified my way of thinking about cooking,” Fabio says, recalling one event while the pinnacle chef told all of us they could not be running within the kitchen that day. Instead, they went foraging within the woodland and found out a way to cook dinner moss. “There are quite a few policies in French and Italian kitchens, but here they stripped it proper back. In a way, it’s superb to follow lifestyle; however, in every other manner, it restricts creativity.”

Another was getting to know the curve for Fabio changed into operating as sous chef at the Emirates One&Only in Australia’s New South Wales. He calls it a “lovely experience,” cultivating and sourcing substances on the beautiful 7,800-acre property and generating interesting new food combos.

Moss isn’t always on the menu at Marco Polo, but quite a few care and interest have long gone into the dishes that Fabio is now imparting. For instance, his agnolotti filled with smoked eggplant, blended with creamy burrata cheese and golden Osetra caviar, is wonderfully balanced. The components supplement one another wonderfully, and the usage of the charcoal Josper, a mixture grill, and oven bring out the quality within the dish.

His amuse-bouche changed into an egg yolk confit with seasonal green asparagus, Italian desserts, and lemon zest for a little acidity. “I come from Amalfi, so I use a whole lot of lemons,” Fabio says.

A lot of interest to detail goes into this ostensibly easy dish, together with slivers of French bread which might be frozen and sliced, before being baked within the oven. Or the red sorrel and edible plant life garnish, with the sparkling parmesan mattress. The result certainly impresses with its freshness and piquancy.

Another of the lessons discovered on Fabio’s decade-long culinary excursion of the sector’s greatest eating places is the significance of the personalized touch, interacting with guests, and going the extra yard to create happiness.

He recounts the story of 1 vegetarian visitor who wasn’t eager on eggplant. “We spoke for a little while [about other options], and she or he simply said, `I believe you.’ So I made zucchini with muffins and parsley oil. She became happy and stated she could be again. This made me very satisfied. As I say, that is my philosophy for proper food.”

Food can be so much more than calories and nutrition, and it can be a celebration of people, places, things, and experiences. It can be the story of someone’s life or the simple delight of sharing a moment with family and friends. At Feed the Food, we love food. And we want to share it. So we create beautiful and creative photo shoots, write engaging stories, and create recipes that make food fun.