Uliassi restaurant in Senigallia: RIVIEW of Lab 2020

The Uliassi restaurant in Senigallia reopens with the new Lab 2020. Our review of the menu, dish by dish, prices, photos, our opinions.

We had left ourselves at the (splendid) Lab 2019. We are also returning this year to the Uliassi Restaurant in Senigallia, to discover the new Lab 2020 - not yet definitive -, between news and old glories. The most awaited tasting menu of the Marche coast - and also of the other coasts - in this review.

Out there, the world of author cuisine is going through a sort of abrupt existential awakening in this uncertain and doubtful post-pandemic phase. However Mauro Uliassi reopens his three-star chalet on the beach of Senigallia with relative nonchalance and without having to reset particular narratives, reformulated for these times of downsizing and new awareness.

The contradictions hidden in plain sight of those who stood as flagship of biodiversity and the "local", a pinnacle of the network of small artisans around them, in the name of the mantra "convivial, authentic, intimate", but lived an exclusive and daily life elitist made of impossible reservations, almost only international jet-armed customers, more staff members (underpaid) than covered; these contradictions do not concern him much since in his thirty years of activity he has never really fallen.

While the face-slapping crown has generated sensational cases such as Noma (Copenhagen) reinventing itself as a temporary low-profile hamburgheria, Mauro Uliassi did not need to retreat, to rethink much of his work in view of the reopening on 13 June after the lock down. He did not have to return to particular original intentions, since these have never been abandoned. Research cuisine of the highest inventiveness, but immediate and understandable. Of its territory and for its people, it could be trivialized. Between sea and land, since no real culinary tradition is ever only fish. Anchored to the simple and daily charm of the Marche tradition, without however the "local" becoming an obsessive cage.

The purity and elegance of the furnishings and environments, as well as the kitchen, are often mentioned. But in the Uliassi universe, additional, symbolic, second access aesthetic qualities appear. Starting from the silent whiteness and the almost metaphysical serenity that originates from the view of the terrace, clear and free towards the sea, leaving only the brackish and light colors of blue and white as a frame. A sparse and complex aesthetic at the same time, which permeates the kitchen from the environment, where the materiality of the dishes always leaves room for the subjective self that completes it with its own symbols and places of memory.

Pasta in white

So here is the pasta in white, the highly anticipated dish of the 2020 tasting path (waiting for which we have even retraced the hagiography of the pasta in bianco gourmet) whose approach to the "return to simple and intimate" would be a listless and partial interpretation. There is more: there is the symbol of the food of memory par excellence, interpreted more than with technical virtuosity, with imagination and the search for potential new ingredients. In a reworking of fish - non - fish, butter and cheese take shape from milk and herring, by infusion the first and by the curdling effect of natural juices and salts of fish the second, to create a dish that only has an indirect evocation of fish.

To the detriment of the generalized emphasis on downsizing and post-pandemic anti-grandeur, the Lab 2020 menu has nothing after Covid, or if for this reason not even the celebrations of the restaurant's 30th anniversary.

A suitable subtitle would be a pragmatic and effective "just start again". On the evening of my visit, the day after reopening, Lab 2020 is not yet officially out (it will go through a few weeks of running in before being offered to all guests) and customers are offered a tasting route made up essentially of old glories.

Foreseeing this, I asked when booking to try the new Lab, which will still be a mix of new and previous successful creations. Don't expect it to be the definitive one: we are sure that there will be changes from here to late summer; meanwhile, there is the certainty that it will cost 200 euros, 10 more than last year.