QUALITALY_134

May/June 2023 X MAGAZINE Provençal chromaticity. And in the room that once housed the villa’s stables, the large Murano glass chandeliers, the round winery longue table that democratically places no one at the centre, and the wine libraries are not out of place. The cues of light are large windows opening onto the park, a romantic garden of many hectares that acts as jealous guardian of the property and its guests. The buffet is not opulent, yet it is rich. Chef Lavezzini’s hand operates lightly according to a philosophy that leads to taste in its credible essence, devoid of artful cover-ups of ingredients. Oyster, shrimp, tuna, salmon, cuttlefish declaim savoury planes in purity of taste in raw or lightly cooked service. The vegetable of the artichoke possesses a minerality of its own. The umami of the pappa al pomodoro is round. The crispy bacon of the Caesar salad is a garnish that gives structure. Chopsticks reminiscent of my childhood rules, worked from the heart of multi-coloured vegetables, are displayed in glasses of crudités in the simplest interpretation of finger food. Vegetable cheesecake yields to taleggio cheese. Mushroom cream is in simple cups. The quinoa salad in the large soup tureen. The island of Cured meats neatly displays on butcher paper the capocollo and salame gentile, the finocchiona ruffiana, the cubes of mortadella di Prato with its hints of alchermes. A versatile matrix in its ability to take on colour and lose it along a palette that includes the chromatic extremes of food, rice shows us that nothing is ‘only white or only black’ in defiance of the Florentines who have always been divided without middle ground into Ghibellines and Guelphs. We play with the versatility of Acquerello rice and the red of arancino with tomato and mozzarella, the yellow of saffron rice with courtyard ragout. The white is of the omelette with Parmesan fondue, the black of the seafood salad, the brown of the sambuca cake. Green is from the cream of spinach, gorgonzola and walnuts, and purple from the beetroot and bay leaf flan. The hot dishes anticipate the cooking. Pastas are fusilli with shellfish sauce or have breadcrumbs and anchovies. The arancina is with sauce, the rice ripassato is crispy, the thick potato soup is enlivened by bitter chicory. Then we enter the operating heart of the Four Seasons, the kitchen, where we find the breakfast foods, which should never be missing from a brunch, and the meats: the stuffed rooster and lamb, the saltimbocca alla romana, the rabbit stew and the steak tasting. The piglet is certainly greedy and does not hide its pistachio stuffing. The brigade is young and cheerful, ready to smile, light-hearted as I would expect in a Florence where the mockery and goliardia of Monicelli ’s Amici Miei is a must if you want to express the essence of a city that, even in the kitchen, knows how to be shrewd, that is true, just enough. Dulcis in fundo: the linear straightforwardness of thought of the Four Seasons’ cuisine finds its place in the geometric layout of the dessert table. There is no shortage of ice cream, for me vanilla is king, and beautiful chocolate in its somewhat rustic tables decorated with cocoa beans arranged in tall vases. It is a ‘mignotterie’, as I hilariously call the small pastry mignon that entices one to taste it, the single-portion morsel that indulges in the essentials, the small spoonful of cream and pudding. Then it is the traditional carnival sweets that complete the offering, with very Florentine stracci and very American donuts. VILLA CORA, THE LEADING HOTELS OF THE WORLD Villa Cora is a 19th-century mansion. One comes across it along the avenues that dominate the city as one descends to Porta Romana, in its beautiful quadrangular plan that lends an elegance all its own to this charming villa commissioned by Baron Gustavo Oppenheim at the time of Florence as the capital. Gioja’s interiors amaze with the Sala Moresca with its large dome and intense black fireplace, the elegance of the Sala Bianca with its Carrara marble, the fragility of the Sala delle Ceramiche, the silent privacy of the Sala delle Carte, used for games, and the regal Sala degli Specchi, all well apart from the luminous foyer. It is in these rooms that Chef Liberatore and his brigade prepare an elegant and sumptuous brunch in the abundance, never redundant, of sweet and savoury, vegetable and animal buffets, where crudités and hot dishes are left to the foyer islands. The Sala delle Ceramiche houses the hors d’oeuvres and the bread rack. The more intimate Sala delle Carte is for desserts, almost as if one wanted to indulge in somewhat sinful amusement in total secrecy. A brunch that presents a cuisine that knows how to be elegant without taking too gourmet a turn, capable of keeping its feet on the ground, linked to the territory, retracing the themes of family cooking, sometimes even rustic, but with precise execution and good technique. It is Christmas when Villa Cora hosts us. We are lucky enough to have a table in the hall of mirrors that is the heart of this City Hotel’s hospitality. The panettone is in its glass dome, one per table, arranged before the guests arrive. There are those who play the piano, those who arrange the wines in ice, and those who arrange the last flowers, roses and hydrangeas, in large vases. The hors d’oeuvres are an overture that mark more than Verdi’s opening of La Forza del Destino. They have soul, they understand the array and express it. Be it the good traditional Tuscan chopping board, to be arranged freehand, be it the dairy products where pasta filata triumphs and pecorino, Parmigiano, mature but not too much, creamy zola and little mozzarellas find their rightful place. There is no shortage of salads, la Russa and la Capricciosa and raw vegetables, boiled prawns, smoked salmon, cuttlefish and muscles, sarde a beccafico. Savoury pies are versatile: vegetarians may or may not indulge in cheese, or, in the most omnivorous of forms, when they include meat. Hot dishes include pastas, rice, meats and fish: fillet Wellington, gran pezzo, shank, porchetta, fried squid and prawns nicely browned, and simply baked amberjack. Sara prepares raclette by heating the cheese which is served on bacon and potatoes. The island of first courses has tasty parmigiana, tortelloni, a soup and pasta with seafood. Among the raw dishes, tuna and salmon tartare accompany amberjack sashimi. The oyster is fleshy and succulent, fatty, almost opulent, sweet and savoury without overpowering, and a Gillardeau, the Dom Perignon of oysters, signed one by one with a laser so as not to be counterfeit, refined in Marennes Oleron and grown between Utah Beach in Normandy and County Cork, could not be otherwise. The desserts have popcorn and candyfloss that bring children back, ginger biscuits that are a tradition halfway around the world at Christmas, meringues. Then, the light millefeuille, the caprese without yeast and almond flour and fondant, the pastiera that makes Easter but is used all year round, the low and crispy tarte tatin, the majestic and elegant Saint Honoré, the dense and creamy cheesecake, the tiramisu that is eaten by the spoonful, the strudel, the full-flavoured sacher, are the few - or many - possible tastes of a dessert trolley that at Villa Cora is a long table from which to choose carefully. Because at Villa Cora you arrive as a guest; you leave as a friend.