Spotlight on: Michele Sorrentino

epicure: Your one Michelin-starred restaurant, Antica Trattoria Botteganova in Siena was voted by Frommer’s as one of Italy’s Top Ten Restaurants. What has been your secret for maintaining your Michelin star for over 10 years?
Michele Sorrentino: Working hard and always seeking to improve. I seldom wonder about what others are doing, because I feel if you try and emulate others, you will always be a few steps behind. To be a leader in your field, it’s better to stick to what you personally believe in and follow your instincts.

What is the culinary philosophy you believe in?
To innovate and change, but to always stay true to the tradition of Italian cuisine. I draw my inspirations from the rustic simplicity of Tuscan cuisine and reinvent it for the modern palate with more of a technical finesse.

What was the defining moment for you to leave it all behind and move to Singapore to start La Barca with your former apprentice, Christopher Tung?
It was not an easy decision and I thought about it for a long time, but Antica Trattoria Botteganova was something I created with my ex-wife and when we separated, I felt it was time for a new chapter in life. Christopher was a student I formed an instant connection with, he is hardworking, focused and full of ideas and we have remained good friends ever since he left Tuscany.

What elements of Antica Trattoria Botteganova are you replicating at La Barca and what will you do differently?
I hope to replicate my cuisine at Antica Trattoria Botteganova with some changes dictated by the availability of ingredients. The selection of meat and fish available in Singapore is excellent and these are regular air shipments from Australia, France and the U.S., but fresh vegetables pose more of a challenge. In Tuscany, they arrive ripe and full of flavour from the farm without ever having been refrigerated. The fresh produce here has travelled a certain distance and I find myself having to use a slightly different approach to preserve their integrity. I am still learning.

What do you think it will take to stand out from the score of Italian restaurants here?
I define my cooking as auteur: cooking with a point of view. What I serve is my vision of what modern Italian cuisine should be, and not based on what’s hot on the market. Hopefully that just means that my food will never taste contrived.

How regularly are you planning to change the menu or introduce new dishes?
The menu will change every two months but I always keep a couple of signatures: tortelli filled with Pecorino Cheese, served with a Parmesan sauce and truffles, and the Fiorentina T-Bone Steak. We are currently on our second menu now.

Tell us more about the dehydrated salted egg yolks on your menu.
Dehydrating eggs with salt was a method invented by Milanese chef Carlo Cracco, but he used the dehydrated egg yolks to make a pasta dish. I have, of course, borrowed his process but I flatten the yolks into a thin gelatinous sheet and serve it with a truffle-infused, milk-fed veal tartare.

Do you use a fair amount of local ingredients?
I prefer for ingredients to have travelled as little as possible, but at the end of the day, it is the quality that determines whether I use local or imported produce. Right now, I’d probably say it's about 50 percent. The local herbs are great, as well as the eggplants, onions and garlic.

What is the one dish on the menu that best defines Tuscany for you:
La Ribollita, which is a quintessentially Tuscan dish. Every farmer has a vegetable plot that he harvests from for his family’s consumption. During the spring and summer months, the mother of the family will boil a vegetable soup with everything that is ripe and ready to be picked. On the first day, everyone drinks this soup, on the second, she will re-boil (ribollita) the broth and add some stale bread and cannellini beans.

3 things you didn’t know about Michele Sorrentino:

The best compliment someone could ever pay you:
Simple. Just tell me you liked my food!

The three ingredients that you will never find me without:
Tuscan extra virgin olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and truffles

When I miss home, I:
reminisce and focus my energy on creating new dishes.