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Hyatt Centric Murano Venice reopens its Osteriva in March with a new culinary project led by Executive Chef Alessandro Cocco and his T³ cuisine.
“The concept of this menu, and more generally the collaboration with Hyatt Centric Murano Venice, derives from an idea of cuisine deeply rooted in the territory that aims to use produce from the lagoon and, when it is not possible, to draw them from the valleys and the countryside of the Veneto region which are often undervalued”.
With these words, Executive Chef Alessandro Cocco describes the soul of the new menu of the Osteriva restaurant, which aims to add an important culinary element to dishes indigenous of the island by offering the opportunity to taste ingredients from the lagoon from a new point of view.
“During my professional experience, I have identified time, technique and temperature as the fundamental elements in building a quality menu, and these are the pillars on which my cuisine is based. We could define it as the cuisine of the three Ts, or rather, four if we add that of Territory,” he said.
Cocco’s cuisine is, in fact, a mix of French techniques, learned and refined during his ten years of experience abroad. From Ducasse culinary school to his own sensitivity to a territorial cuisine, he has developed, over time, a culinary vision that represents the future of the Italian cuisine, not unlike that of many young chefs.
“In contemporary cooking, the need to highlight the root of each ingredient, its history and uniqueness, is as important as the techniques in which they are used; even the most complex ingredient must not end in virtuosity for its own sake, but must contribute to the enhancement of the overall product,” explains Alessandro Cocco.
The dishes created for Osteriva are based on this philosophy. An example? Potato gnocchi with Venetian porcini mushrooms and calamint, for which the chef uses five different varieties of mushrooms: pioppini, porcini, pleus, morels and ovules. The potato used is that of Rotzo, typical of the Asiago plateau; it’s very small and has been cultivated since 1700.
Based on fish, the Chef proposes cod in lagoon stew with maruzzelle, “bibaresse” clams, herbs, cherry tomatoes and black Venetian olives. This dish is a mixture between a crazy water and a fish stew, made from the juice of different shellfish cooked with tomatoes at low temperature.
The dish is the result of several combined textures: the galantine broth, obtained by cooking veal scraps, is cooked for over eight hours, filtered and left to solidify in a gelatin cylinder and then inserted into a disk of Montello veal tartare.
Finally, the dish is completed with raw lagoon fish (pink and red shrimp, scallops, seppia, mullet and liza aurata) presented on a glass ice ingot, to which flowers are added and combine with the aromas from the nearby island of Sant’Erasmo.
The idea is to reproduce the ice on which the fish is laid in the local markets − a bold proposal that will undoubtedly make the purists talk, as they probably will not like the “cooking” effect the ice has on the fish, but the Chef is sure that the wow effect will be forthcoming without altering the properties of the ingredients.
A new culinary destination has been added to the Venetian lagoon, right in front of Venice. Osteriva, the restaurant at Hyatt Centric Murano Venice on Murano Island, with all the tranquillity and authenticity of a place far from the hustle and bustle of the big city; a new bastion of territorial cuisine that looks to the future, between technique and territory, thanks to Chef Alessandro Cocco.
