Leonello -- who owns a luxury hotel in Sorrento -- insists we go to his friend Gennaro’s restaurant.
“He is a master, he has a gift,” he says enthusiastically, advising us away from his own dining room which had, the previous night, offered food that redefined the word sublime.
“But is he fat?” I joke. “I don’t trust a thin chef.”
Leonello laughs: “Oh yes, Gennaro is a big man.”
And so the following night a taxi takes us on a winding half hour drive from the balcony seat of Sorrento overlooking the Bay of Naples, through impossibly narrow lanes, over the hill and down to the port village of Vico Equense and Gennaro’s small restaurant on the harbour‘s edge.
Here in an old Saracen tower is his intimate and beautiful Torre del Saracino Ristorante, where the cellar stocks over 1200 wines and has a kitchen which, as we would learn, produces culinary magic as if it is commonplace.
From Naples south, seafood is the thing to eat. Fat octopi, huge prawns, tasty cockles and white, full-bodied fish such as dentice (like sea bream) are pulled from the Mediterranean, some more salty than New Zealand palates are familiar with.
In the hands of Gennaro they are rendered into small and perfectly formed miracles.
He emerges from his kitchen to greet us. Even without the white apron we would have recognised him. He is portly, beaming and effortlessly charming. And young.
Gennaro is a member of the Jeunes Restauranteurs d’Europe, an organisation dedicated to bringing young restaurateurs to greater attention. Their motto is “talent and passion”, and their website (www.jre.net) offers travellers a route planner and booking system to allow for a gourmet tour of Europe.
The defining features of these restaurants, we are told by our sommelier Luciano, is they offer fine dining, an extensive wine list to compliment the food, a convivial atmosphere, and chefs who care.
Gennaro cares so much he disappears quickly back into his kitchen, Luciano chooses an introductory local rose, and within a minute a taster arrives: a coil of raw swordfish in tomato water.
Our waiter has recommended some special dishes from the menu and so we sit back, let Luciano do his work, and savour what comes. It is astonishing.
Thin, ribbon-like lasagne pasta wrapped around squid, red prawns and sea bass; ravioli of swordfish with spring onions, capers and olives served with herbs and lemon; dentice with courgettes; and unusual pasta of different thicknesses from nearby Gragnano in the mountains with a white grouper ragout in a sweet and sour lemon sauce . . .
Luciano compliments all these with glasses of wine which include a soft white from the ancient Greco-Roman city of Paestum further south near Palermo, and an especially full bodied local red to accompany the truffle and porcini salad.
The food is absurdly good and beautifully presented, and we are about to admit defeat when dessert arrives: a selection of mini tartlets, chocolate truffles and jelly with thin twigs of bitter dark chocolate and mini meringues. It is arranged on a long white platter in a minimalist Japanese design.
When we have finished Gennaro invites us to join him outside and so on a breezy night in the shadow of an ancient tower with the fishing boats bobbing before us we sit, feeling like characters in someone else’s dream.
Gennaro is jovial as he sucks down cigarettes, and we ask him about the odd pasta of different thicknesses.
“They are each one handmade by two old ladies so no two pieces are the same. They only make 10 kilos a day -- and they only sell them to friends.”
Compliments on the meal seem shallow, no matter how effusive, so I buy him and his sous-chef a bottle of wine of his choosing. He thanks me, and diplomatically picks a New Zealand chardonnay from his cellar.
In the taxi on the way home we are lost for words, and no better the next day when Leonello asks me if we enjoyed our meal.
The words don’t come out right, but I tell him that in all honesty it had been one of the finest -- if not the finest -- meals I have ever had. It was a concordance of tastes and textures in an atmosphere which was refined but relaxed, historic yet contemporary.
I tell Leonello that it had been prepared by a young and gifted chef whose physique suggests he enjoyed good food.
“No,” Leonello laughs. “He loves Pringles, he eats them all the time. That is why he is big like he is. It is the Pringles!“