Celebrity Life

As Chaumet's CEO Jean-Marc Mansvelt tells us, bringing the house's 240-year heritage into the modern era is an immense task that amounts to a "daily obsession". But if the new pieces in the Chaumet Joséphine collection are anything to go by, the Place Vendôme stalwart is heading in the right direction.

What kind of woman today does the Joséphine collection appeal to?

First, it’s about a woman with a certain character. Because when you choose to wear a tiara on your finger, you’re making a choice of distinction, a choice of character. You’re sending a message to say you’re not like everyone else and you have a certain strength and a certain personality. But also a sense of virtuosity, grace and beauty, because it’s not for women who want to be too provocative.

It’s a way to set your personality. And then of course, there are two major reasons to become a client of Joséphine. On one side, it remains one of the favourite pieces chosen for a bridal purpose. It’s connected to the initial history of Chaumet, the history of the power and love between Napoleon and Joséphine. And Napoleon is known everywhere, that’s incredible. There’s another type of client on the other side of the connection with the pearls, the coloured stones, something a bit easier and more accessible.

This year, Chaumet's creations have also incorporated sleeker, more modern takes on the tiara. Can you tell us a bit about the new high jewellery?

After many creations that were a bit more tiara-like, a bit more decorative, more visible, more baroque in a certain way, we wanted to enrich the collection with new ways to mix and match, and to go for designs that were slicker, with a more minimalist approach, because that’s also the style of today. We have a feeling that clients today are a little more understated, and we have the capacity to create beauty through a fine line, rather than an accumulation. So one of our high- jewellery pieces, which is sort of a V with a stone in suspension, doesn’t shout about its design. It’s all about balance.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the Joséphine collection...

But we don’t mark it that way for two reasons. I always feel that if you start doing anniversaries for everything, then at the end, what’s the meaning in it? Last year, when we did the 240 years of Chaumet, that was slightly different. For Chaumet, our heritage is much longer than a decade, it’s about centuries. Instead, this year, we’re celebrating our connection with the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon, which is significant in Europe and in France. We’ve done an exhibition at 12 Place Vendôme that was open to the public which tells the love story of Napoleon and Josephine through 150 different objects, beautiful loans from museums and private owners.

Which piece proved to be the most challenging piece in the collection?

The most discussed and the most debated one was the watch. Because we’re clearly a jeweller, and we’ve focused all our efforts and attention on jewellery. But since a few years ago, we’ve reassessed and repositioned what watches mean for Chaumet. It’s true that with the business of watches within Chaumet, we’ve really tried to be coherent with what the story of watchmaking for Chaumet is as a jeweller. One of our challenges was to look at the market – in the market, 90 percent of watches are round – and nobody’s waiting for Chaumet to create a round watch, because we already have thousands of beautiful options on the market.

We decided on a shaped watch, and it wasn’t very difficult to settle on the pear shape, like an illusion of a diamond. We also faceted the watch’s dial.

How do you balance 240 years of heritage behind a brand and stay relevant at the same time?

That’s really the obsession every single day. How do we continue the narrative, the link to the story? Since the pandemic, we’ve seen clients choose Chaumet because there’s longevity. And so it becomes a daily obsession of ours to convey this message to our clients through different means, including the digital approach, so we can speak to the needs of our audience today. We also go through the traditional channels and have books and exhibitions. I regularly write down on paper in two columns: on one side, how much do we tell the story of Chaumet, and on the other, how do we take a contemporary approach, either through the narrative or through using different tools? I take a step back and ask myself is there a balance? If we’re going too much in one direction, maybe it’s time to rebalance. It’s in everything we do.

The post This Season’s Most Anticipated Food Books Have a Sense of History appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Taking the occasion that Swiss hotels reopened in March 21, I decided to defy this frustrating COVID period and enjoy Easter time in the mountains of Gstaad. Many hotels were still closed though, and remaining ones were full booked. But I was lucky to find a room in the gorgeous Le Grand Bellevue Hotel and Spa, which gave me a…

The post A Memorable Experience At Le Grand Bellevue In Gstaad appeared first on The Luxe Insider.

Chef Angelo Agliano hits his stride with the bright flavours of Italy's Mezzogiorno and other worldly influences, at Tosca Di Angelo.

Operating in fits and starts during Hong Kong’s lengthy pandemic restrictions and navigating diner-number fluctuations during 2019 were just some of the challenges for Angelo Agliano, director of Tosca di Angelo, who took the helm of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong’s Italian restaurant last January.

“I brought six of my previous team to work with me,” recalls the Sicilian. “I knew I was going to make a lot of changes and for those staff who are already there, it’s always hard when a new chef comes in and does things differently. I wanted to have the support of those who knew my way of cooking.” Challenges were duly met, according to the Michelin inspectors: the restaurant was awarded one star for the 2020 guide for Hong Kong and Macau.

[caption id="attachment_211209" align="aligncenter" width="766"] Chef Angelo Agliano. (Image: Tosca di Angelo)[/caption]

Adding Agliano’s name to that of the restaurant makes it quite clear to diners that the restaurant has morphed into something significantly different from previous incarnations under other chefs. The menu’s transformation was inevitable: Not only does Agliano have Mediterranean culinary experience that started at the age of 14 but, for more than two decades, he’s also worked in top-tier restaurant kitchens across Europe, and – in recent years – in Hong Kong and Taiwan, developing a deep understanding of local preferences in the world of elevated dining.

Agliano’s skillset includes pointers from Japanese sushi chefs for preparing seafood. “My parents and grandparents went fishing in Sicily and cooked with seafood, but when I studied how Japanese chefs use their knives to slice tuna, I knew I had start again.”

[caption id="attachment_211214" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Tosca di Angelo's interior. (Image: Tosca di Angelo)[/caption]

Working for the late Joël Robuchon in France, Agliano helped lead the launch of L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon dining rooms in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In 2016, after seven years with Robuchon, Agliano deemed it time to launch his own restaurants, first in Taipei then here in Happy Valley. The local dining room Locanda dell’Angelo was, he says, “cosy, with my original Sicilian recipes that were quite traditional in style. When I started at Ritz-Carlton, I was still going there once a week for a while before friends of mine took it over.”

One bright lunchtime this September, the day before Hong Kong’s Covid dining restrictions were relaxed from two diners per table to four, the amuse-bouche of ricotta mousse, topped with Sicilian tomato gazpacho, paired beautifully with a deep gold-hued, bone-dry Vigne Olcru Veuve 2014 pinot noir blanc de noirs. This wine also holds up well against two of this restaurant’s starters with some robust elements: blue lobster – slightly poached with Sicilian peach, cherry-tomato confit and Kaluga Caviar; and the chef’s signature lean delicately-flavoured Fassona beef carpaccio with light mustard, 24-month-aged Parmesan cheese, artichoke and arugula.

[caption id="attachment_211208" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Risotto with sea urchin. (Image: Tosca di Angelo)[/caption]

One of Agliano’s most-talked-about signatures is his risotto with Hokkaido sea urchin. Although the Mediterranean species of this shellfish is occasionally used in pasta dishes, Tosca di Angelo’s version is something completely different. For a start, the Japanese variety is far plumper, sweeter and creamier, with less zinging minerality than its European cousins.

“This dish, for me, is the best that I have made from a combination of ingredients from Italy and Asia,” he enthuses. Agliano concocted its first prototype in Hong Kong while at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. “When Robuchon tasted it, he told me that we must have this on the menu.”

Agliano uses a touch of fresh wasabi, and a garnish of either local choy sum or gai lan green vegetables for some bitterness in the flavour balance. “Rice, though, must be from Italy,” he adds, with a smile. “I’ve tried Japanese rice and all other kinds, but it’s just not the same – what can I say? I’m Italian.”

The most unadulterated Sicilian dish on the menu is Mediterranean red-star grouper in Matalotta fish soup with olives, capers and cherry tomatoes. “It comes from memories of my grandmother making this on Sundays for our family,” says Agliano. “But first, I cook it in a Japanese way – with a bamboo steamer over jasmine tea and spices like cloves, star anise and cardamom. In the soup, my ingredients are all from Sicily: Green olives, capers, the tomatoes; the stock comes from the head and bones of the fish.”

[caption id="attachment_211210" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Matalotta fish soup with Mediterranean red-star grouper, olives, capers and cherry tomatoes. (Image: Tosca di Angelo)[/caption]

Dessert-minded folk: If you’re not excited by the prospect of tiramisu, challenge yourselves – you’ll be rewarded. The contrast of texture within the layered glass bowl is enjoyable, as crunchy biscuit plays against decadent creaminess. And instead of a big kick of fortified Marsala wine, the alcohol content is subtle. The biscuit crunch and a super-light mascarpone top layer, dusted with hand-grated chocolate (rather than powder) are all down to this being an à-la-minute dessert, rather than pre-made. It’s served with an espresso granita. For a much lighter sweet finish, consider the mixed fruit salad with yuzu sorbet and blood-orange coulis.

The cheese trolley also deserves a mention, laden with both cow’s- and sheep’s-milk varieties; from creamy to hard and blue, at least half are Italian and the rest are French.

So how does Agliano sum up his cuisine now and in the future? “I always see French cuisine as ‘square’ – Japanese cooking is like that, too: very ordered and careful,” he reflects. “Italian chefs are more like a circle – we don’t like to measure quantities or look at timings too much. I’ve worked in French and Italian restaurants and in Asia, so I have a mixed way of thinking in my kitchen. I don’t want people I work with to feel like machines; I want them to be creative and feel part of the team – and make everything as if they’re serving it for their family. That’s one of the things I took from my time with Robouchon.

[caption id="attachment_211212" align="aligncenter" width="783"] To-die-for tiramisu. (Image: Tosca di Angelo)[/caption]

“I want people to have a dynamic experience here,” he says. “It took us a year to really find our way with our menu. We had to open and close a few times since the beginning of the year. But from April when we re-opened we’ve been full and had very positive feedback from customers who hadn’t been here for a few years.”

Other pandemic responses included re-jigging a substantial take-away menu as demand increased; and launching a Cook at Home programme – to send chefs from the restaurant to prepare and serve a Tosca di Angelo-level meal at a requested residence – which has proved so popular it’s set to continue.

“I really want to transmit something exciting to those who eat my food,” says Chef Angelo of his wider aspirations for this restaurant, “and also to the chefs in my kitchen.”

The post Chef Angelo Agliano Serves Up Bold, Beautiful Italian Flavours at Tosca Di Angelo appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Chef-restaurateur Beppe de Vito banks on a slow proof for great pizza at Italian restaurant Amo.

The post Amo Restaurant: Meet a five-year old sourdough starter appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

Chef-restaurateur Beppe de Vito banks on a slow proof for great pizza at Italian restaurant Amo.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

Italians are deeply proud of their relationship with cuisine and in Italy good food is fundamental. It differs from region to region, but one commonality that is evident from coast to coast of this boot-shaped country is that the preparation of food is just as important as its consumption. The Aman Venice pays homage to […]

The post Arva at the Aman Venice Embraces Italy’s Rich Culinary History appeared first on Upscale Living Magazine.

Of prosciutto, the beloved ham, and culatello, probably the most sought-after artisanal product in Italy.

The post The Delicious Secrets of Italy’s highly-prized Black Pig Prosciutto appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

Of prosciutto, the beloved ham, and culatello, probably the most sought-after artisanal product in Italy.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.