The Italian home of pesto and pandolce is turning a corner when it comes to food, with modern dishes sharing the culinary spotlight with old favourites. The aroma of hazelnuts hangs heavy in the air as Eugenio Boccardo scatters chopped nuts into a drum, where two large granite wheels pound away.
With rubber belts rolling above him and wheels turning beside him, Eugenio takes a chocolate scraper and scoops up what has now become a liquidy puree. This paste will then be refined in another machine, along with sugar, over the course of two days. The little factory at Romeo Viganotti, a classic Genoese chocolatier and confectioner, sits across five floors, in what was once a brothel.
People still queue to pick their chocolates at this year-old local institution. At another of these wonderful places, Antica Polleria Aresu a shop selling chicken and eggs , an exuberant Matteo Timossi demonstrates his antiquated device for determining the freshness of an egg. Assistants run back and forth to the walk-in fridge, bringing whole birds or thwacking breast fillets onto the marble counter. The botteghe storici are the cornerstonesof life in the medieval streets of Genoa โ not only a relic of the past, but a testament that life in this city is still lived vibrantly.
Maurizio Profumo โ who runs the family business with his brother Marco โ leads me out of the shop and down a narrow alleyway to another of their shops, Gelateria Profumo, home of award-winning gelato. We make the gelato fresh every morning, with no additives. Down by the port, I seek out Antica Friggitoria Carega. Friggitorie are shops that sell fried fish and vegetables, and here, black cauldrons of oil are being heated over wood.
Squeezed between the sea and the mountains, Liguria has very little fertile land, so hardy crops such as chickpeas and chestnuts are mainstays. But many are returning with the belief that their hometown is on the cusp of great things. I left at 18 because my city gave me nothing from my point of view. I use local ingredients, but different techniques. Pesto is uncommon with rice, so I make rice with basil pesto, one with pecorino, one with balsamic. Matteo Caruso and his stepbrother, Andrea Cremone, also feel certain that Genoa is at a turning point, and so, two years ago they turned their family latteria milk shop into Tazze Pazze, a gourmet coffee house.
