Roland Trettl meets top chef Stefano Baiocco

Roland Trettl meets Stefano Baiocco

Italian for advanced connoisseurs

Even hard-boiled professionals like Roland Trettl succumb to the subtle charms of the bouquet of flavours arranged skilfully by master chef Stefano Baiocco at Lake Garda.

Believe me, when someone tells you that he enjoys having a little talk with his plants in the morning, well, that just isn’t me. I am structured more like a simple man and believe that the most beautiful creatures are those sitting on plates. In fact, I only talk to green things when I am telling them to get into the pot.

At least, that’s how things were before I visited Stefano Baiocco in his incredible Villa Feltrinelli at Lake Garda. Just after I arrived at what was once the summer residence of a large Italian publishing family, I was almost overcome by sensory overload. More than three hectares of breathtakingly beautiful grounds and a magnificent building from the late 19th century are situated just along the edge of Lago di Garda. Clearly, every stone there is a witness to history.
And then, in the middle of this scenario, Stefano suddenly appears – young, lively, friendly and a buddy through and through. He shows me his kitchen garden first thing, complete with more than 120 different herbs and their corresponding flowers. With a mellow voice, he tells me how he harvests the herbs with great care every morning, speaking to and caressing each one personally. Even someone like me refrains from making a caustic comment, because the whole garden offers testimony that there just might be something to Stefano Baiocco’s ways. And once he composes a flower salad with sea salt and the finest olive oil, his culinary creations become the undisputed proof of this fact. A great many chefs use flowers as stylish good-for-nothings, but here, everything is different. Every bite of this “salad” is a taste orgasm. I have never eaten anything like it before!

Just to be sure that no one gets the wrong idea, Stefano’s flower dreams have nothing to do with the flower power of the 1960s; this is no Woodstock on a plate, no spiritual marijuana laissez-faire. Quite the contrary: Stefano’s herb and flower arrangements are precisely and painstakingly arranged for taste and flavour, and he bundles them into an extremely compact and fragrant experience. Every herb and flower makes perfect culinary sense. It is only logical that visual fireworks emerge easily and immediately from his efforts.

Since the “herb whisperer” only uses his flowers sensibly, he can just as easily let go of them, which he always does when they don’t seem to make sense, such as in his crabmeat on lukewarm marinated spaghetti served with a fresh gazpacho. Time to dig in! The same is true about his almost classically prepared risotto with pieces of rabbit. The finest orange zest – the climax – is grated over the risotto.

Stefano has a unique training and professional background to his credit. After working for “Enoteca Pinchiorri” (3 stars from the Michelin restaurant guide) in Florence, he worked in Paris with Alain Ducasse (3 stars) and Pierre Gagnaire (3 stars.) In the following years, Raymond Blanc’s “Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons” (2 stars) followed. Then came Pascal Barbot’s “L’Astrance” (3 stars), Joan Roca’s “El Celler de Can Roca” (2 stars), Andoni Luis Aduriz’s “Mugaritz” (2 stars) and Ferran Adrià’s “elBulli” (3 stars), until he became the sous-chef at the two-star restaurant “Rosellinis”. You couldn’t ask for more. Thanks to Stefano Baiocco, 2010 will start with an absolute Hangar-7 highlight. The “Ikarus” brigade can’t wait for him to arrive. And to prepare for that experience, I am now on a first-name basis with my yucca plant and have been chatting with it for weeks.

Recorded by Christoph Schulte • Photos: Helge Kirchberger / Red Bull Photofiles