Salvi's Goes Home

Confidentials 16 December 2015

“EAT it like an apple,” said Maurizio and took a bite out of his mozzarella di bufala, water buffalo mozarella.

“You don’t so much cook the ingredients as work with them.”

We did the same. It was freshness defined. It was wonderful. The bite took me through the rich shell of the cheese to the cream in the middle. I ate two complete 'apples' and listened to the farmer and producer, Giovanni Capezzuto, of Caseificio Salicella in Campania, an hour north of Naples, explain the processes involved in production.

In late autumn in this usually sun-drenched part of Italy it was raining creating a curiously British lowland farming impression of green fields and distant green hills. Our host on the trip was Maurizio Cecco the owner of one of Confidential’s favourite Manchester restaurants, Salvi's, visiting his suppliers.

Giovanni Capezzuto and the mozarella vats

The mozarella man

Let them hang

Maurizio Cecco in his hometown of Pompeii on the bell tower of the Cathedral

I reviewed the second of his ventures, Salvi’s Cucina, back in 2014 and I stand by these words.

‘Maurizio Cecchi has a passionate belief in doing things right. His restaurants are rooted in Campania, the region centred on Naples, as is the owner. In some respects when we think of classic Italian food - its freshness, its lightness, its quicksilver character - it's this region we're thinking of the pizzas, seafood, perfect burrata, fruit bursting with flavour. The key is the way all that southern Italian Mezzogiornoness is packaged, parcelled and delivered to the table. When the kitchen and Maurizio are on form you put your fork in the food, the food in your mouth and you're out on a terrace in Capri, sea twinkling below, Vesuvius in the distance - in four seconds flat.’

We got a lot of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples on our visit. Everywhere we went the 4,200 ft sleeping volcano closed off views and brooded in splendid isolation separate from the nearby mountains. It might have murdered Pompeii and Herculaneum back in 79AD (in the same year Manchester was founded by the Romans) but in many respects it’s been a benevolent monster. The minerals from the various eruptions have led to the remarkable fecundity of the surrounding landscape.

Vesuvius on the right, the ancient ruins in the middle distance, the bay of Naples behind

We sampled this at the vineyard of Sorrentino Vini with the sturdy but refined Lacryma Christi and Passita wines and a classic dish of perfectly al dente pasta, just-picked basil and piennolo tomatoes popping with ebullient sunshine. Capri was in the distance and the world was good. Lacryma Christi ‘the tears of Christ’ derives its name from the story that Christ, crying over Satan’s fall from Heaven, shed tears on the land here, lending divine inspiration and spiritual flavour to the vines.

Sorrentino Vini's gorgeous terrace where we ate the pasta at the top of this page

Close by we visited and sampled the fabulous cakes of the Dolce Capri - another Salvi's supplier - down amongst the accidental towns that curve from Naples under the shadow of Vesuvius. Amongst the narrow concrete streets here there seems to have been little in the way of planning. Scruffy suburbs these, the antithesis of the classic medieval Italian town.

There is much in the way of life though.

That particularly Italian zest for la vita manifesting itself in shouts and calls and cars and horns. Somewhere amongst a tangle of streets we dined at Vialdo where a celebrated and celebrity pizza chef Gianfranco Iervolini weaves magic out of these ostensibly simple classics. His reputation is so high he’s even listed in the Michelin guides, people recognise him from TV. The standout pizza was the red prawn with pumpkin. Go to Vialdo and enjoy.

Red prawn and pumpkin pizza

More Iervolino magic

Gianfranco Iervolino

More sophisticated was a visit into the hills and a restaurant with its own take on fine dining and its own kitchen garden and livestock. This was Villa Chiara and it did a turn with cunning meat and fish dishes liberally spiced and elevated with truffles and other fruit of the earth. To demonstrate the generosity of the landscape Maurizio’s right hand man Roberto scaled the trees bringing gifts of fruit and nuts. "Very good flavour, very strong," he said handing out bunches of grapes. Later that evening Maurizio revealed a sweet tooth with a trip to quite the most overpowering temple of Nutella yet created. Here pastries were filled with several inches of Nutella and covered in sweets.

We took coffee before every trip and beers after in the square at Pompeii. The town of Pompeii wasn't a scruffy suburb in the slightest. It turned out to a very attractive modern town tagged onto one side of the ancient ruins of Pompeii. At the bar we frequently met Maurizio’s incredibly generous family including his mum, Teresa.

'The local'

Sweetest of sweetest in the Nutella bar

The main church of Pompeii is the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii. As its name indicates it's elaborate to the point of excess. A visit inside revealed a packed service taking place. The church is a shrine famous for miracles and people pilgrim from all over the world.

Down a side corridor the walls were festooned with images of gruesome car crashes, accidents, violence, and stories of miracles following visits to the Blessed Mary of the Rosary. The air was thick with Roman Catholicism. The view from the bell tower is exceptional, you get to wave at a volcano, it's fun.

Pompeii Cathedral

Siobhan, Maurizio, Roberto and the ever-present volcano

The unbounded beauty of Campania can’t mask this skull beneath the skin. Litter is not collected it appears in Naples and the concrete sprawl that surrounds it. There are power cuts. In Mondragone, en route to the mozarella producer, African and East European prostitutes lined the roads. On field gates more prostitutes lolled armed with mobile phones. It was so open it was shocking.

Back in town Maurizio showed us a whole city block in Torre del Greco that had been effectively a fortress for the Camorra to sell drugs. Nearby he pointed out a bar where as a boy he’d been in the back seat as his father drove past. A bus coming the other way suddenly stopped and gunmen rose from hiding places between the seats and sprayed men of a rival gang in the bar opposite with machine guns. Kids coming from the adjacent church were killed. Bullets flew over Maurizio’s car. For two hours each evening as he grew up the only people allowed on the streets were the people doing deals with the gangs.

The story was told nationally by Roberto Saviano in Gomorrah and subsequently in the acclaimed TV series of the same name. Saviano is now under police protection.

But as we drove away from what had been a scene of horror the buildings parted and there was the glorious sweep of the Bay of Naples.

“Look how beautiful it is here,” said Maurizio, almost in the same breath as the terrible story he’d just told.

That contradiction is part of the appeal of Campania and Naples.

The life is vivid on all sides, nothing is smudged or blurred, the startlingly limpid light seems to crystallise the beauty and ugliness, making both possible, an inevitable part of the equation.

The food is also part of the equation. “The raw materials, the ingredients are so good here, you often need to do very little with them,” said Maurizio who is proud to use the people he grew up with as suppliers spreading wealth around his former community.

“You don’t so much cook the ingredients as work with them,” he said.

My mouth waters in anticipation of re-acquainting myself with those ingredients in the just re-opened Salvi’s in the Corn Exchange, as well as the other outlets in John Dalton Street. Ciao.

Salvi's has three outlets in Manchester city centre, the Mozzarella Bar and Restaurant at the Corn Exchange (opening 17/12/2015), Salvi's Cucina on John Dalton Street and Salvi's Rosticceria on John Dalton Street. www.salvismanchester.co.uk