Don Alfonso 1890 tells a long family history: over a century and four generations of lives devoted to hospitality and catering.
We are at Saint Agatha sui Due Golfi, in a 19th-century Neapolitan palace. In the background is the picturesque scenery of the Sorrento Peninsulawith its citrus scents, enchanting bays and warm, clear colours. A unique land of age-old food traditions.
It is precisely on respect for theMediterranean identity that the Iaccarino family founded their lifestyle and business mission. A family capable of transforming the privileged view enjoyed from these lands into a tale of love for their roots and a successful challenge: to make a great restaurant using the excellent local raw materials.
Today the Don Alfonso 1890 è hotel, restaurant from the deserved two Michelin starswith a well-stocked, thousand-year-old winery and farm. And then there is the "Don Alfonso Consulting & Distribution'for the distribution of products of excellence e consultancy in the field of haute cuisine.
That's not all, but let's stop for the moment and step back in time, to when the story began. We are led on the journey by Ernesto Iaccarinowho, while accompanying us into his kingdom, the cookinghe tells us a little about himself, about his childhood. It is precisely amidst the scents of childhood that memories reveal a vocation 'of the blood', that attitude handed down from one generation to the next, ever stronger. And it is here that the deep-rooted respect for the secular precepts of the Don Alfonso's gastronomic proposal.
'The Don Alfonso 1890 - tells - is the name my father Alfonso wanted to give the family restaurant-pizzeria in 1973. He dedicated it to my great-grandfather, Alfonso Costanzo Iaccarino, who opened a pensione here in Sant'Agata in 1890. Dad and mum Livia decided to give up running the hotel and dedicate themselves completely to catering. I was three years old at the time and since childhood I have breathed restaurant life. I liked to study, I was good at school, but then on weekends I helped my parents. On Saturdays I enjoyed working in the restaurant much more than going to the disco. I always did a lot of sport, studied a lot and was always a hard worker. I may not know how to dance,' he laughs, 'but I can say that I learnt not to waste time! I went to university and graduated in Economics in Naples. When I finished my studies, however, I said I wanted to be in the kitchen. The incredible thing is that my brother Mario instead has hotel school in Switzerland and then many internships in even important kitchens in Europe. But he preferred to stay in the dining room. And so, almost by chance, we agreed on our respective roles'.
So today Ernesto is the last strong link in a chain of Iaccarino's in the kitchen, Mario is the maître d'hôtel, and Alfonso and Livia are back in charge of one of Italy's most renowned relais.
Quality, starting with the raw material, of course, has always been the watchword of the restaurant project of Alfonso Iaccarino since the 1970s, but it was in 1980 that history took a new and decisive turn. 'We decided,' Ernesto continues, 'to take a further leap. We bet on the challenge of high-level catering. But not by looking to Northern Europe and French cuisine, which was very much in vogue in Italy at the time. We wanted to bring out our identity, to look at the Mediterranean diet model and gravitate towards the 3000 years of gastronomic history of southern Italy'.
One would soon recounting the cuisine of Don Alfonso 1890 saying that since then, since the 1980s, he has respected the culture and historical food traditions of the Sorrento Peninsulawithout forgetting innovation. But talking about contemporary cuisine that keeps the roots of the gastronomic culture of the Mezzogiorno would be reductive to say the least.
A dish like the famous Vesuvius of Rigatoni is not just an example of the transformation of a traditional Neapolitan dish (pasta al forno) into a haute cuisine course, but the story of an identity essence (and a knowledge of the techniques and history of gastronomy) more unique than rare.
"The kitchen - explains Ernesto - has always been evolution, it has always been a journey. Ours is a cuisine that contaminates itself. You go abroad and discover a new culture, new products. You discover an ingredient and you fall in love with it, then you take it home and go on a journey with that ingredient. On the menu for example I have the black suckling pig from Caserta. I serve it with crispy rind, on a celery cream, a red onion chutney and turmeric mashed potatoes. This dish is a journey. And you only realise it after you have made it, not before, while you are thinking about it and preparing it. I took the technique of cooking the piglet in China, then went through the African Maghreb for the use of spices, went to India for the chutney and came back home landing in the red onion that comes from our farm. Here's what I mean: when you reread the dish, you realise that it is the fruit of a layering of experiences that you have had over the years and that you bring into your cooking. Obviously the same journey of contaminations would have a different result if made by a Frenchman or an Englishman rather than a Neapolitan guy
who has lived on the Amalfi Coast for 50 years. Because you contaminate yourself but maintain your identity and culture. Contamination in cooking is a fundamental thing; without contamination there would be no evolution. But equally fundamental is to contaminate yourself while keeping your culture solid and strong'.
The dishes of Ernesto Iaccarino all arise from an encounter with an extraordinary product. Quality and organic products, local gastronomic culture and memories, then, put together, make the seal of Don Alfonso 1890. That quid of identity, in fact, is also revealed in the story of one of the first dishes Ernesto brings to the menu. 'I made an egg cooked at low temperature,' he recalls, 'with a mousse of mozzarella, white truffle and green beans. It was born out of a memory and love for white truffles. When I was a child, my parents would buy white truffles from Alba for the restaurant and keep them in the fridge at home. In the mornings I would drink milk, which was in the same fridge, and it was impregnated with the potent and invading scent of truffles. I interpreted this memory and made the egg with a very ethereal truffle mozzarella mousse, which reminded me of that milk when I was 10 years old...'.
It is with this identifiable contamination and focus of the products of excellence that Don Alfonso has landed abroad. And so, in addition to hôtellerie, restaurant, farm, distribution and consulting, Don Alfonso 1890 is also "Don Alfonso in the world". Toronto, New Zealand, Macao and now Saint Louis, in the United States: Don Alfonso's cuisine changes yet remains identical. 'Our idea of cooking,' explains Ernesto, 'always remains the same. The starting point is always the product. When we opened in Toronto for example, the first thing we did was to go and discover the exceptional local products. We spent a whole month in markets and farms. Because it is useless to make a cuisine abroad with materials Italian raw materials that don't have the same quality there or maybe you struggle to find. In each country there are incredible products, like bison or mushrooms in Canada, or steers in New Zealand. Our gastronomic projects in each country come from studying local products. Then you interpret them with that Mediterranean sensitivity and culture that you have always carried within you. And so, in every part of the world a completely new project is born'.
In Toronto or New Zealand exactly as in Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi: from the land and market to the plate. Products of excellence interpreted in a Mediterranean concept. And so, wherever it goes, the Iaccarino family will always remain 'Casa Don Alfonso'!
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