Bergamo or Bust!

So with all the buzz about John Besh’s newest venture in reviving New Orleans’ culinary heritage, you may be wondering “what possible claim can a hometown boy from Slidell, Louisiana have on la cucina rustica??” And that’s a fair question. His classical culinary education, his German roots, and his intensive training in Bavaria and Provence – not to mention his own fond memories of the old Franco-German brasseries that used to anchor many New Orleans’ neighborhoods – gave him all the authority necessary to create Lüke, his most recent revival of a local staple. But Italian? I asked him point-blank.

JB: “I’ve always loved Italian food. But what’s important to me is not that it’s my personal heritage, but that it belongs to the city and needs to be celebrated as such. I want to raise the profile of Italian food here. There’s so much our Italian immigrants have brought to New Orleans – remember, the French Quarter was also rightly known as ‘Little Italy’ – and there ought to be a restaurant that reflects that contribution, that culture.”

SR: Got it. But how exactly did you become an instant expert in all things Italian?

JB: I didn’t -- I created one! His name is Alon. No, but seriously, Alon Shaya has worked with me for years – he was Chef de Cuisine at Besh Steak – and we’ve been kicking this idea around for about as long as we’ve known each other. Italian food has always been his first love. His family emigrated here from Israel when he was little, and the first restaurants he worked in as a kid in Philadelphia were Italian. His dream has always been to get back to that cuisine. And look at a map – Israel is just across the Mediterranean from Italy, right? Maybe it’s not such a stretch. When the moment was right, I finally said to him, “Alon, if we’re going to do this, you’re going to go to Italy and learn it. Learn it all. Immerse yourself in the culture, the whole culture of food that exists there beyond the world of Michelin stars.” And then I gave him a plane ticket, pocket money, and the name of a friend of a friend with a restaurant in a little town outside Bergamo. He was a great sport, considering he didn’t speak Italian and the chef he teamed up with didn’t actually allow him to touch the food. Turns out you can learn an awful lot just washing dishes for three months. And peeling shrimp.

Yikes! Stay tuned for the adventures of Alon in Italy, or, how he went from peeling shrimp to mastering rustic Italian cuisine…