Under the supervision of the great Alain Ducasse, the luxurious Alain Ducasse Restaurant was born in Rome with the less demanding Il Cortile Food Court attached. Luciano Lombardi tells us about it.
In Rome, for the past few weeks, in the central Via Ripetta, near Piazza del Popolo, has opened the very luxurious Hotel Romeo (5*L). That joins The Romeo Collection, along with the Naples location and the soon-to-open one in Massa Lubrense, on the Sorrento Coast.
This Roman hotel is located in a sixteenth-century palace, completely redesigned by the very talented Archistar Zaha Hadid, which due to his untimely death did not see completion. It is a hotel where everything is made to amaze, including through the dozens of valuable original works of art it houses. Only the exterior façade has remained untouched, and as soon as you cross its threshold, you will be amazed, not to say stunned, by so much modernity of form, color, ideas, and achievement.
I am writing this piece a few days after the visit and only now beginning to digest its many suggestions. Paraphrasing Dante, without wanting to approach the meaning in the slightest, I would be inclined to exclaim, “Lose all certainty, O you who enter!”
But on DoctorWine we do not talk about architecture. This long preamble served to introduce the topic that is closest to our hearts: la catering and wine. Because here, overseeing all these activities is the greatest of them all: monsieur Alain Ducasse. In the various interviews Ducasse gave in the run-up to the opening, he repeatedly emphasized that they would use only the best Italian raw materials, certainly with their own touch of French creativity.
“The Courtyard,” luxury food court
On this my first visit, I tried “the Courtyard,” which they call an upscale food court. A large beautiful area of about 1,000 square meters, suggested for lunch, dinner or any other time of day, perhaps poolside. While by not offering a challenging gastronomic proposal like the collateral “Restaurant Alain Ducasse.” it allows us to partially try his ideas and style.
And so, in our lunch we tried a fantastic Culatello di Zibello dell’Antica Corte Pallavicina, accompanied by a bruschetta with exquisite crispy broccoletti; Carciofo alla romana and alla Fornacella; a phantasmagorical Chicken Club Sandwich, accompanied by crispy fried potato sticks; and finally a not-perfect plate of Tubettone di Gragnano with an incisive lobster ragout. We concluded with an exceptional Selection of Madeleines and Chocolate from Manufacture Alain Ducasse in Paris and a traditional Baba, which I would have preferred with a more assertive sauce.
We dined drinking a Franciacorta 2019 branded Romeo, but if you want, you have available to you a nice list with about fifty wines, a dozen cocktails, many liqueurs and all the champagnes from the Krug maison, which is also a partner in “La Terrazza Krug,” the hotel’s Rooftop Bar, reserved, however, for in-house guests only.
In short, sooner or later we will also go and try the main restaurant, which currently offers 2 tasting menus (6 and 8 courses), 8 a la carte dishes and 4 desserts. But in light of today’s experience, I can end this piece with a classic: good first!!!
