As someone who loves the challenge of setting up new restaurants, chef Andrea Cattalini has been involved in some of the country’s top venues, including Ahi, this year’s Cuisine Good Food Awards restaurant of the year. But he has returned to his Italian roots in Arrowtown, he tells Rebecca Fox.
As a young man Andrea Cattalini wanted to get as far away as possible from Italy and all things Italian.
‘‘I left as soon as I could, to be honest.’’
Future prospects for him in Italy as an engineer were limited and like many young people he found life in his hometown outside of Milan, in northern Italy, to be boring.
‘‘Everything was the same, nothing was changing. We are very stuck in our old ways, especially when it comes to food. If Nonna didn’t cook it, we would not even try.
‘‘For me, that didn't cut it. It was not enough. That's why I decided to go as far away as possible.’’
So he chose Australia. Arriving down under, he needed to get a job quickly and for a foreigner in Melbourne, the easiest job option was hospitality.
‘‘I want to say it was almost about necessity in a way. There's always different nationalities in the kitchen, so it was sort of easy to fit in. And again, being Italian, everybody sort of wanted the Italian chef.’’
While it might sound like a big step from engineering to working in kitchens, Cattalini was no stranger to the hospitality industry, having grown up in it.
His father, from the Chianti region of Tuscany, was a maitre d’ and ran restaurants. His mother’s side was from Calabria in southern Italy. His parents wanted a better career for him — hence engineering — so tried to keep him out of the restaurants growing up.
But Cattalini was always trying to sneak in and see what the chefs were doing or watch the waiters.
‘‘One of the oldest memories, the oldest pictures that we have of me is underneath the till of the restaurant having a nap. Which would not be very legal nowadays.’’
So it was not surprising that he discovered he loved working in kitchens.
‘‘Some people don't like the pressure, the heat, the noise. For me it's amazing, I thrive in that. I feed off that.’’
Despite his heritage, he sought out restaurant work that did not involve Italian cuisine — ‘‘I always considered it a bit boring’’. Instead he trained in classical French style.
He worked in top establishments such as Melbourne’s Punch Lane, Highline and Mister Jennings.
But when his visa began to run out after five years, Cattalini began to re-evaluate. He decided he did not want to go back to Italy and looked to see where else he could travel to.
‘‘New Zealand was the closest good option. And I was like, it looks like a really interesting country, so why not? And it was easy to get here. I came to travel and eight years later I'm still here.’’
He puts that down to the hospitality shown to him in New Zealand that never was in Australia.
‘‘When I was in Australia, I knew a few Australians, but none of them ever invited me for dinner. Here in New Zealand, within the first week, I was already invited to a Kiwi dinner.’’
He landed in Auckland and soon had a job at the award-winning The Grove , where he met Ben Bayly.
‘‘Eight years later, we're still putting up with each other. You know, we always say that we don't work for one another, because it's different. We're brothers, you know. We're brothers from different sides of the world. I think that's like the beauty of it, is that it's not a job any more, it's who we are and what we do.’’
Since then he has followed Bayly as he has developed eight different restaurants including Ahi, which received three ‘‘hats’’ at the Cuisine Good Food Awards this year and was named top restaurant, the French-inspired bistro Origine (two hats) and Arrowtown’s Aosta (one hat) and Little Aosta.
Cattalini loves the challenge of opening a new restaurant and the unknowns that come with that.
‘‘It's always like you never really know what you're doing, right? At the start, you have that concept in your mind, and it's all about giving it shape. Because it's always an idea in your head, and then you're like, how am I going to execute that?
‘‘And the thing is, you always have to adapt. Because at the end of the day, we open the doors, we are a business for people.’’
Even if their ideas for a restaurant are the best, if it is not well received by the public, it is not going to work.
‘‘So for me, it was interesting to see how every single restaurant that we opened, every single restaurant that we worked in, it was never still, we were always changing.’’
Changing that way while keeping to the philosophy behind the venue is really difficult.
‘‘It's hard work, yes, absolutely. But at the end of the week, when you get people coming and thanking you, that's the best part of the job.’’
It was while working on opening Ahi that Cattalini had an epiphany about Italian cooking.
In developing Ahi, they tried to define what New Zealand food was.
‘‘We didn’t really know. None of us.’’
In searching for the answer they focused on the ingredients they were using.
‘‘That moment I clicked. I was like, ‘OK, Italian cuisine, it's all about the ingredients’. Because if you think about it, at the core you take something that is already amazing, you take a beautiful ingredient, you do almost nothing to it, and you serve it in a particular way, and that's it, the ingredients shine, and that's what Italian, basic Italian, is.
‘‘And you think about the classics, the tomatoes, the cheese, you know, all of that kind of stuff. Everything is very simple, but it's all about finding the right ingredients.’’
It made him think of going to the markets with his Nonna and watching her choose a nectarine.
‘‘There was hundreds of nectarines at the market, and she was just choosing them one by one. It was all about that specific aroma, that specific flavour that she wanted out of that nectarine.’’
He realised working in an Italian restaurant was not the end of the world. So he returned to Aosta and Little Aosta, travelling between Arrowtown and his home in Auckland.
More recently he has taken on the role of executive chef at both the restaurants and relocated to Arrowtown, where he is enjoying a different, more ‘‘normal’’ lifestyle, including taking advantage of the abundant nature on his doorstep.
‘‘You know, they always say about the chef's life being always full-on.We can manage to have a little bit of downtime as well, which is really hard to find.
‘‘Any time I can, I like to be outdoors. And that's a perfect place, you know.’’
Cattalini has also found the region resembles Italy a lot, but in a ‘‘better way’’.
‘‘Because it's not overly farmed, it's not overly fished. To be honest, the ingredients here are better, it’s just a matter of finding them.’’
He does miss the Italian salad favourite of chicory, finding bitter salad leaves not very popular with the New Zealand palate or growers.
‘‘We sort of found our way now, whatever ingredient we can't find from our main suppliers, we rely on our growers to grow it for us. So we’ve got a couple of small growers around our town, probably not even five kilometres away from the restaurant. And whatever we can't source, we just ask them if they can grow it for us.’’
However, he says his team is from all over the world and they all bring their own influences and ideas to the restaurants.
Hospitality is important to Cattalini and begins way before a customer steps in the door.
‘‘That's the last step of the process. For me it's about who we are as people first. We can take this as a job or we can take this as a lifestyle. And it's up to us to live our best lifestyle.’’
He is working with a new manager, Marika Greco, who is also Italian and also grew up in hospitality. She moved to New Zealand 10 years ago and also worked at The Grove and Baduzzi.
‘‘She's a weapon. We can see already the change, you know it's the small things.’’
After a hard winter, they are looking forward to the busy summer season but know it is not going to be easy. So they are constantly looking for new ideas and recently began opening for brunch — an Italian twist on New Zealand’s favourite brunch foods.
‘‘We just realised that all of the main ingredients for brunch, we have them in an Italian version. We have pancetta as bacon. We are using carbonara sauce as a hollandaise-based sauce ... So all of these kinds of things we were able to use to make an Italian version of a classic brunch.’’
Admittedly, it is different from the coffee and pastry of a traditional Italian breakfast.
‘‘It was kind of interesting for me as we were looking at it, I was like, ‘Oh, eating pancetta for breakfast? I don't know’. But it actually works.’’
Andrea’s kale pesto gnocchi
Ingredients
10 large garlic cloves, peeled
200ml good extra virgin olive oil
480g mashed potato
3 egg yolks
30g parmesan
100g tapioca flour or potato starch
Kale
1 chilli, sliced
Pinenuts, toasted (about a handful)
Pecorino, to plate
Lemon wedges
Method
First, confit the garlic cloves. To do this, place the garlic cloves into a small saucepan with the olive oil and slowly heat it up until they start to fry. Let this cook for a further 5 minutes and set aside.
While the garlic is cooking, boil the potatoes in salted water until they’re soft. Pass them through a sieve to get a nice and smooth mash (or use your potato masher if you don't have a fine sieve, but you want them really smooth). While the potato mash is still hot, combine with eggs, parmesan and tapioca flour (add in this order). This will give you a smooth dough. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare the pesto. Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Blanch the kale for 3 to 4 minutes until soft then blend in a food processor along with the confit garlic, reserving some of the garlic for plating. Adjust seasoning if required or add water if the pesto is too thick. Let cool in the fridge to keep a bright green colour.
Start making the gnocchi by rolling short sausages of dough about the thickness of a thumb. Cut into smaller pieces and set aside.
Just before cooking your gnocchi prepare all of your ingredients to finish the dish, pinenuts, kale, the reserved confit garlic and chilli. Your gnocchi will cook very quickly!
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. In a saucepan, saute a couple of cloves of confit garlic and sliced chilli then add the kale and quickly saute for 1-2 minutes. Drop your gnocchi into the boiling water and let cook until they start to float, around 2-3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, carefully remove them from the water and transfer to the pan with the kale. Toss them together then transfer to a bowl with the pesto and mix well.
Finish with a generous squeeze of lemon juice then plate, topping with a bit of grated pecorino and the toasted pinenuts. \
Buon appetito!
