Ep. 1934 Chiara Pavan | Wine, Food & Travel With Marc Millon

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at italian wine podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pods. Welcome to wine food and travel. With me, Mark Billen, on Italian wine podcast. Listen in as we journey to some of Italy's most beautiful places in the company of those who know them best. The families who grow grapes and make fabulous wines. Through their stories, we all learn not just about their wines, but also about their ways of life. The local and regional foods and specialities appear naturally with their wines and the most beautiful places to visit. We have a wonderful journey of discovery ahead of us, and I hope you will join me. Welcome to wine food and travel with me, Mark Millen, on Italian wine podcast. Today, we travel to an absolutely magical place, the small island of Marzorbo in the midst of the Venetian lagoon. To meet my guest Kiara Pavan, who is head chef at the acclaimed Michelin Star, Vanessa restaurant and wine resort. Buongiorno Kiara. How are you today? I'm very fine. It's the real first spring day. Okay. So the sun's shining. The sun is shining. Oh, that's very nice. It's shining here in England too. We've had a miserable winter. Kiada, did you travel to work this morning by boat? No. Because I actually live on the island. Oh, okay. I think I saw that you're learning to drive a boat. Or is that right? Yeah. I have a boat to go out of this island sometimes. Yeah. I saw some pictures of you driving the boat. So That's an amazing. It's such an amazing place to live and work. I visited Madsorbaal and Vanessa many times, and I can say it's truly one of my most favorite places in Italy. Now that's a big statement because Italy has so many wonderful places, but it's a very special world. I visited you for work, and I visited you for pleasure. In fact, I brought my wife to Vanessa to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary in and I believe you cooked for us a very special tasting menu with paired wines. So for me, Kiara, it's a real pleasure to meet you here this morning. Thank you so much. Kiara, for our listeners who perhaps Haven't been too much or but haven't visited this special place. Can you describe it? Can you tell us why it's such a special place to live and to work and to visit? Yeah. So, Matzorbo is an island, as I said, on the, north lagoon of Venice. And it's a special place because, it's very unusual to live on an island, in the middle of the lagoon. It can be difficult, but it can be also very nice, very inspiring for working as a chef or for other maybe artistic work. Matzorbo is connected by a bridge to another island, Burano, which is the colored house island, very beautiful and very visited as well in this recent years. It can be also be difficult to live here because there are few connection with the mainland and few connections with the main island. But as I said, it's a very quiet place, and it's very beautiful and in aspiring because even if it's in Venice, it's full of trees. It's very green, and we have space to grow our vegetable gardens. And as you know very well, there's a vineyard just in front of the restaurant. Okay. Well, that's given a a really good visual image, I think, of this very special place. And also, I think emphasizing that Matzorba is a world away from the island of Venice itself. It's actually if you take the vaporetto from, fundamentally, I think, to Burano, there's a stop at Mazzorba beforehand, but it's quite a long journey. It takes Oh, I don't know. How long would that journey take? It's not so long. It's, thirty five minutes. It depends if you come in the night, so maybe it's, a little bit less or, more in mourning because of many tourists who visit this island. You're right. It's not so far, and it brings people out of the hecticness of Venice to another world of peace and quiet and and real beauty. And I guess as a chef, it's a very special place to work. It's a challenging place to work on the one hand. Tell us about, first of all, there are two restaurants at Venice. Is that right? Exactly. We have the main restaurant. We can say, the Michelin Star restaurant because, yes, we were awarded by a Michelin Star and the Green Michelin Star, and the Osteria contemporary just in front. So it's, two different kitchens with two different, teams, but it's always me and Francesco. We are the two chefs who take care of the menu of both restaurants. Okay. Now, Kiara, tell us a little bit about the benefits and the challenges of working on a small island in the middle of the lagoon in terms of how you approach cooking. We've been in inspired by this island for years proposing the the fish coming from the lagoon itself and by the vegetables grown by ourselves in our gardens. So this is such inspiring for, cook, but the difficulties are a lot because, we can say that the lagoon is climate change hotspot. And so in this recent years, we've seen climate change more than in other places, in Italy. That means that when I arrived here in twenty seventeen, sixteen seventeen. I used to cook fish fishes that are no longer present. For example, eels or cattle fish or many others. And it's only eight years ago, so it's scary. Wow. That really, really is scary. Yeah. And the same times, we are facing a loss of biodiversity. And at the same time, we can say that we faced, severe events, like the major floods in twenty nineteen or a severe drought in twenty twenty two, we lost in that year, like, one third of the vineyard and many fruit trees, like, plant trees, like, twenty, something like that. That happened because of the severe drought, the amount of salt in the soil increased a lot. And that's why trees died. It can be very difficult to work in here if you want to use all the ingredients of the place coming from this place or all local ingredients because as I said, we lost many fish species. And so we decided to focus only on few species. At the same time, in these recent years, we face also an invasion of blue crabs coming from US coast, but via ballast of boats and arrived here, and it found here proper condition to reproduce itself endlessly. And it's now at the top of the food chain. And last year, it was the peak of the invasion for real during the summer, you could only catch blue crabs. There was nothing else. So we put blue crabs. Of course, in the menu, actually, we've been working with blue crabs for three, four years because, yes, last year it was the pig, but the fisherman brought me the first blue crabs in two thousand nineteen. So it it was a gradual invasion. We can say. And so we decided to focus our menu only on invasive species of the lagoon and of the Adriatic sea following the philosophy that we want to cook what we have more and give, like, a market to those ingredients and those species that are unknown and not very sold in the market now. Italian wine podcast. If you think you love wine as much as we do, then give us a like and a follow anywhere you get your pods. That's an incredible story. It's incredible to hear how, you know, we're all very worried about climate change wherever we live, where I live in Southwest England. And we've had extremes of weather here, but also we've had some benefits because mind growing is is now possible when twenty years ago. It wasn't. But to think of Mazzorbo, as this microcosm and the intensification of the effects of climate change on your environment is really striking. I'm amazed to hear of the The increase in the water temperature, meaning that different fish are no longer in the lagoon, the eels, which have been such a feature of the lagoon, but also the story of the invasive blue crab. I've heard of the blue crab But I've not encountered it myself. Is it a good crab for eating? Yeah. It's this. It's very sweet. We are not used to this kind of sweetness in seafood, but still it's very good. I can say it without that. Okay. So that's on the menu now. Yeah. Of course, sir. It's on the menu. It has been on the menu for three years now. Okay. Now, Tiara, I I think it's really interesting that your ethos and philosophy is so based around sustainability and the importance of sustainability. The Green Michelin award as well as testimony to that. Just for our listeners, I want to give them an idea of the Vanessa project with the vineyard, and this emphasis on growing your own food and everything coming from the lagoon. It's such a beautiful project because this is a, I think, an absolutely unique wine resort. Born out of this passion of John Luca Bizal to create and bring Viticulture back to the Venetian lagoon, and then that philosophy following through and what you're doing in the restaurant. So tell us some of the foods you're growing. I know you're using some special herbs and wild vegetables. Tell us a little bit about this unique larder from this unique foods that you have on the island? Yeah. We have five hundred square meter of vegetable gardens and, more, like, fifty. Meters of herbs garden. We grow very special salads, very special charts, and we have many alified herbs, like, sea porcelain, like, white, the sea fennel, like, salsa, soda, and we grow more leaf vegetables because we saw that they need less water and they grow more salty. We have also c asparagos. It's very good. We grow a lot of vegetables. It's very interesting because the space here is shared with the people from Burano and Mazorbo who want to have their own vegetable gardens. So it's like a project of social gardens. And so a large amount of soil is cultivated by the restaurant, but Another part is shared with these people. Actually, I've seen, some of the local people tending their gardens, like what we would call in England in allotment garden, a sort of communal gardening. That's really, really interesting. Kiara, you know, when one is in Venice and goes around the market, maybe at the rialto, you see the sign for Nostrán or for Rich for indicating produce from the lagoon. Now do the vegetables and the sea vegetables and the other things that you're growing the herbs, do they have a particular flavor of the lagoon that is unlike anywhere else or real? This is cuisine that really is linked to terroir, and you taste it in every bite. Yeah. I think so. I think that growing vegetables here gave a special touch to our dishes. Yes. In the same way that the Dorona grape in this unique environment gives this particularity to a really fascinating wine. You're very much seasonal cooking because you're you're cooking with what is available at that moment. It's springtime. Now as you say, the start of maybe the start of summer on this sunny day that you have today. What are some of the things that you're growing that are in the restaurant right now? We have a lot of salads, like, a lot. I love that freshness of your cuisine. I think that I think that's what strikes me at most when I visit Vanessa. Is that one is eating really vivid flavors, fresh flavors, not overly complicated, beautifully presented and combined, but it's that freshness of the lagoon that I love the most. Ketera, what would you say is cucina Ambientale? What does that mean to you? Ambiente means environment. In Italian has two meanings. On one hand, it means, like, of cuisine, I would like to describe the place, where we are. And on second hand, ambient Talimes, to take care of the environment where we live. It's like, more an artistic way, and the other is the sustainable way of cooking. Okay. How does that sustainability reflect in the cooking in the kitchen? Yeah. As I said, it's, out of production, vegetables. And we focused our menu on vegetables and, invasive species. So we don't cook fish, which are no longer present, which are suffering now. And we focus on species, which are instead very present in the lagoon and in the Adriatic sea. And we cut down on animal proteins, overall, focusing on vegetables. That's what I mean, sustainability in the kitchen. Then Of course, we cook with a lot of leftovers. So we have a special dish in the menu right now focusing on the leftovers of, vegetables and fish. What is that dish called? And can you describe it? So the invasive species menu is in the restaurant. In the bistro, in the study of contemporary, we use, sustainably cut fish, but we serve normally like the fillet and all the leftover parts. We have created, special dish in the restaurant. So with, I don't know, with eyes, or, fish, heads, and in trails. We use all those parts for a dish. Oh, amazing. That's incredible. Now you are a wine resort. How important is wine and food and the linking and pairing of wine and food in the restaurant. Of course, it's very important. Can we talk about this extraordinary wine then, Vanessa. That's a unique wine. And A very interesting wine to pair with food. The project's a beautiful project. When was the first release of Vanessa, the first vented? The first release of, Vanessa White is two thousand ten. Two thousand ten. I think I have a empty bottle of that with the single gold leaf label. I think the Vanessa bottle is probably the most beautiful bottle of wine as a bottle as an object of any wine that I've ever seen. With the hand beaten gold to form the label, the fired on in the furnaces of Murano and the hand etching of every numbered bottle. So it's a very precious wine. What would be a food that pairs very well with this very distinctive wine, wine that has a slightly, strong salinity to it and a slightly oxidized style of wine making that gives a real rich full flavor in the mouth. What foods would you pair with Vanessa? Of course, we are pairing Vanessa with the spaghetti, I drank your blue. Okay. Blue crab spaghetti. Okay. And how do you cook the crab? So because, you know, the crab is so sweet, it needs a lot of salinity. A lot of salinity. That sounds amazing. Yeah. If the wine gives the salinity to the dish. Okay. How do you prepare that crab then? We cut the crab. We prepare a sauce, and then we cook the spaghetti inside. Okay. That sounds like a dish that anybody visiting Mazzorbo must try. Would that be available in the Of course. Okay. Well, Kiara, it's been a real pleasure talking to you this morning. You've taken our listeners on a visit to a magical place. As you say, it feels a world away but it's only thirty five minutes from the Vaporetto. And indeed, it can be much quicker on a water taxi, which is a very splendid way to arrive in Montezorbo. I look forward to returning again one day soon. But in the meantime, thank you for taking some time of your busy day and being my guest today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of wine, food, and travel with me, Mark Millen, on Italian wine podcast. Please remember to like, share, and subscribe right here. Or wherever you get your pods. 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