Mamma gli Italiani!

AYLİN ÖNEY TAN - aylinoneytan@yahoo.com

As I stepped into the newly revamped restaurant Fiamma, I could not help but utter to myself: “Mamma gli Italiani!” In history it was the Italians that feared the Turks and frightened children with the phrase “Mamma gli Turchi.” Now it is our turn to fear the Italians. This was the moment I realized that Turkish chefs should start to panic, if they haven’t done already so. Many of the well-known establishments in Istanbul recruit Italian chefs now, and this was a gathering of Italian chefs all living in Istanbul to cook a special dinner together.

The event was organized by chef Vittorio Sindoni, who invited his compatriots to cook together at the restaurant Fiamma. The concept was “good fellas” and among fellow Italians were Andrea Minguzzi, the executive chef of the French consulate; Claudio Chinali, the executive sous chef of Eataly; Erdal Kılıç, the executive chef of Fiamma; Gigi Mariconda, the executive chef of La Scarpetta (to be opened soon); Giovanni Terracciano, the executive chef of Mövenpick Hotel; Giuseppe Pressani, the executive chef of Paper Moon; and lastly Salvatore Bruni, the executive chef of Carluccio’s.

There is a saying in Italian: “Troppi cuochi guastano la minestra;” the exact equivalent is in English, too: Too many cooks spoil the soup! Well the ricotta-pumpkin soup prepared by Claudio of Eataly was not spoilt at all – actually it was very tasty – but little could be understood of the individual styles of the chefs. Maybe it was not the soup, but the whole coherence of the menu that was a bit undermined by too many chefs, but it was still an exciting occasion to get to know all the Italian folks who have made Istanbul their home. When I asked about their hometown, I discovered that many were from the south, either from Sicily or Naples, feeling very much at home in the chaos of Istanbul. They seem to enjoy being in an internationally rising mega-city, and don’t feel even a tiny bit homesick for the notorious traffic in Naples or Palermo. Actually Vittorio knows it all. He first came to Istanbul in the mid-1990s as a chef, worked in a variety of Italian restaurants like Papermoon, Bice and the W Hotel before going back to Italy and then to New York, but he finally decided that he felt perfectly at home in Istanbul, and opened his own place, Da Vittorio, about five years ago.

There is another saying in Italian: “Chi ha la mestola in mano, si fa la minestra a suo modo,” meaning who has the ladle in hand, rules the flavor. Those Italians are definitely good fellas, each worthy of following in their individual restaurants, with their own ladles and flavors. One big congratulation goes to the owners of Fiamma, one of the very few places that dares to open its kitchen to the chefs of rival institutions and makes their own restaurant a battleground of competition. Their good intentions were taken by the good fellas, and for one night, Fiamma turned into a ground of “amicizia,” a table of friendship!