Tom Doorley hears from some of those who have brought authentic Italian cooking to Ireland
BRUNO CINELLI OF IL FORNAIO, IFSC AND KILBARRACK, DUBLIN
Bruno Cinelli came to Ireland from Rome when he was 15, and he has lived in Dublin for 37 years. His Il Fornaio outlets - the first opened in Kilbarrack in 1997, the second in the IFSC last year, are part of an international franchise which started in Milan.
The Il Fornaio concept is essentially a bakery with an informal restaurant attached. In Italy there are some 3000 members and in the United States there are more than 60. "I was attracted to Il Fornaio," says Cinelli, "because I wanted reassurance for customers. It provides a really good model for the business and it means that standards are very high. Fresh food is prepared every day and microwaves are completely banned." The Il Fornaio idea has a further appeal for Cinelli in that it provides a completely authentic Italian experience. "When someone walks in they feel like they have been transported to Italy. Everything is Italian. It looks Italian, it sounds Italian, it even smells Italian.
"When we opened at the IFSC, the Italians who work there couldn't believe that they could get real Italian coffee made properly. And the produce from the bakery gave them a real taste of home. I don't think anyone else is doing that in Ireland at the moment."
Bruno Cinelli has plans to expand. "I want to have more outlets in Dublin, maybe four or five, and I would love to have one in Galway and maybe one in Kilkenny. But it's early. We will have to see. Il Fornaio came at the right time for Dublin and it has a real strength because it's different."
And why do Irish people respond so positively to Italian food? "I'm not sure," he says. "Traditional Irish food is bland. Everything was boiled. Maybe this is why Irish people are now so adventurous. They are always willing to have a taste and try new things."
BETTINA RABBITTE OF LITTLE ITALY, NORTH KING STREET, DUBLIN 7
The Rabbitte family have run a wholesale and retail Italian food business in Dublin's north inner city since 1978. It was originally called Continental Foods, and is now known as Little Italy. Sylvester Rabbitte and his late wife Anna, who was born in Cervaro, near Monte Cassino, originally ran a potato merchants, which is still going. But during the 1960s and early 1970s they were bringing back food for family and friends from their regular trips to Anna's homeland. By 1978, it had turned into a business and their first manager was Joe Cervi.
Joe's grandfather was possibly the first man in Ireland to sell fish and chips. Giuseppe Cervi left an American-bound ship at Cobh in the early 1880s and walked to Dublin. There he worked as a labourer until he saved enough to buy a hand-cart and a coal-fired cooker. He sold chips to Dubliners as they left the pubs.
By 1900 he and his wife Palma had a fish and chip shop in Brunswick Street, now Pearse Street. Palma had very little English and would point to the fish and the chips saying uno di questo, uno di quello?, meaning "one of this and one of the other". This eventually passed into Dublin parlance as a "one and one".
The late Anna Rabbitte's father, Attilio Senezio, was an ice cream maker whose produce cooled the crowds at the Eucharistic Congress in the Phoenix Park in 1932. He later went on to run The Pillar Ice Cream Parlour in O'Connell Street.
Sylvester and Anna Rabbitte's daughter, Bettina, now runs Little Italy, and the retail outlet in North King Street has been managed for many years by Molly Maguire, who is legendary among Italian food enthusiasts in Dublin.
"When we started," says Bettina, "Italian food was quite limited in Ireland but with people travelling so much more, the Irish have discovered just how wide-ranging it is. Television has helped, too. Jamie's Italy, for example, has had a big impact, and lots of people are looking for authentic ingredients."
MICK WALLACE, DEVELOPER OF QUARTIERE BLOOM, DUBLIN 1
Everyone in Dublin knows Wallace Construction by their vans. They have a picture of a football on the side, and the slogan "work hard, play hard". The man behind the business, Wexford-born Mick Wallace, is football crazy, and it was the beautiful game that gave him his other passion: Italian food and wine.
He had visited Italy several times before Italia '90, but a stay with his sister in Turin during the World Cup brought about his complete conversion to the Italian way of eating. "It was a revelation," he says. "The passion is unbelievable. The Italians are more interested in food than sex, and they like their sex too."
So enchanted was he by the food and wine of Piemonte in the north-west of Italy, that he bought an apartment in Turin and a small vineyard in Alba. "I'll never make wine as good as my neighbours," he says. "They have 200 years' start on me. But I'm aiming for a nice, juicy red house wine made from the Dolcetto grape." He also grows some Arneis, the Piedmontese white variety that produces wonderfully fresh, easy-drinking wines.
He is now building a house beside the vineyard, and marvels at how such a remote place, with virtually no tourists, can support many superb restaurants. "There are six of them, within walking distance," he says.
Wallace believes that Piemonte, the home of truffles, is exceptional, even by Italian standards. "I import prosciutto, salami and all sorts of stuff from Piemonte and it's in a different league because they take it so seriously. If you meet someone in the street in Turin at 11 o'clock in the morning they'll wish you buon appetito because they know that you'll be having lunch soon. The whole day is organised around meals.
"Turin is about the size of Dublin," he adds. "And do you know how many McDonald's they have? Three." When Wallace opened Enoteca della Langhe in the Quartiere Bloom on Dublin's north quays a couple of years ago, he was determined to bring excellent, no-nonsense Italian wine and food to Ireland.
Serving platters of salami, prosciutto and cheese, with very keenly priced wine, Enoteca della Langhe was a new departure for the capital. A new branch, called Enoteca Torino, opened in Inchicore just before Christmas as did a more elaborate restaurant, Il Taverna di Bacco, just beside Bar Italia on the quays. "I was very lucky to get a great chef from Treviso, Giorgio Borzacchiello, to run the kitchen there," he says.
"I reckon we're bringing Italian food of a very high order to Dublin, but at decent prices. That's the thing about Italian food. The French have to have meat and plenty of it. The Italians use meat sparingly and there are lots of pasta and vegetables. Even the best pasta and vegetables are cheap by comparison with meat."
The secret of Italian food and its new appeal for the Irish? "I think it's because it's basically quite simple and very, very tasty," says Wallace. "And Italian restaurants, even the ones you wouldn't go to for the food, are all friendly and welcoming and not pretentious at all. We react to that."
ROBERTO PONS OF LA DOLCE VITA, WEXFORD
Roberto Pons came to Ireland by a round-about route. Born in Bordighera in Liguria, he trained at the Lausanne Palace Hotel in Switzerland, did a stint at Freddy Girardet's, moved to London, met his Irish wife, Celine, and started Il Ristorante in Kinsale in the mid-1980s. The restaurant then moved to Dalkey. "It was very different then," he says. "Very grand cuisine and my formal training was useful. I could bone a duck at the table. But the recession bit hard and I ended up managing the restaurant in The Shelbourne. In the end, we moved to Wexford town and we haven't looked back."
His small restaurant, La Dolce Vita, opens only for lunch. "We just do the kind of food I like cooking," says Pons. "It's simple; it's rustic, it's not too rich and it seems to suit people at lunchtime. Not all of it is Ligurian; I take a little from here, a little from there; that's the thing about Italian food, it's so regional, so varied. Try giving a Sicilian polenta! And yet the Sicilians eat couscous."
Generally speaking, Pons believes that few Irish people really understand that Italian food goes well beyond pasta and pizza. "And a lot of Italian restaurants here use lots of cream; they don't do that in Italy much. I would love to do things like bollito misto with a fabulous sauce, but I wonder if people would think it was just boiled meat, like old-fashioned Irish food. Maybe it would be worth a try if enough people are prepared to taste."
Although he has no favourite dish, he believes that pasta is under-rated. "Good pasta is such a wonderful base for a whole range of sauces. You can express yourself with it. Pasta is like a canvas. And I think there must be very few Italians who don't really relish a dish of pasta, whatever shape it might be, tossed with real pesto."
TIERNAN MAGUIRE OF IL BACCARO, TEMPLE BAR, DUBLIN 2
Tiernan Maguire's Il Baccaro opened in Temple Bar in Dublin in 1996, bringing with it a real sense of the authentic Italy. Based on the traditional osterias which he had enjoyed during his six years living in Rome, Il Baccaro, from the start, was packed with young Italians living in Dublin.
"There aren't many osterias left in Rome," according to Maguire. "They aren't exactly restaurants, more the kind of place where people - mainly old men - get together to drink wine, play chess and have a simple bite to eat.
"Unfortunately, the real osteria seems to be dying out. I adored them. To me, they were the real Rome, beyond the tourist trail. They were essentially Italian tapas bars. No menu, just good food and wine and no rush."
The site on which Il Baccaro stands was a derelict cellar when Maguire came across the premises on his return from Rome. "It just seemed really appropriate," he says. "At first, it was all about wine and a bit of food. Now we're a kind of informal trattoria based on various places that I've enjoyed. We try to demonstrate that Italian food is not all about red sauce and we do things that are hard to find in Ireland, like vitello tonnato and bagna cauda."
Good Italian chefs are hard to find in Ireland, according to Maguire. "But there are lots of young Italian students in Dublin who are willing to wait on table and that means you get a proper Italian buzz and atmosphere."