Wine and Dine at Pelagos, Athens: Luca Piscazzi’s precision

Luca Piscazzi builds his summer menu around courgette, line-caught dentex and red prawn from Koilada. Dinner brought one unforgettable sashimi, alongside mature bottles from de Villaine and Jamet.

By Yiannis Karakasis MW

Pelagos occupies an extraordinary position at the tip of the Astir Peninsula, with the sea opening directly beyond the dining room. It may well be one of the finest restaurant settings in Athens. Pelagos has charmed me more than once, yet I return mostly for Luca Piscazzi’s cooking. This latest dinner may have been his most complete so far.

Piscazzi diligently seeks out local ingredients and builds relationships with the producers behind them. Every year, he selects a few key products that influence the menu's direction. This summer, the focus is on courgette, line-caught dentex, and red prawn from Koilada (a full-flavoured delicacy from the Argolic Gulf in the Peloponnese). You see these ingredients multiple times, each time introduced from a different perspective.

I often find Luca's cooking very detailed, almost Doric in approach, which is an unusual description for an Italian chef. It is disciplined, restrained and extremely precise. He can place six or seven flavours around a fish and still make you taste the fish first. That is the aspect of his cooking that speaks most strongly to me.

The dentex sashimi was probably my highlight of the evening. Kaffir lime, lemon, Madras curry, almond, fish roe, Lorenzini melon (had to Google that), and basil sounded like too many things at once. The first mouthful brought everything together, with the curry adding warmth and the citrus and melon bringing freshness. Through it all, the flavour and texture of the dentex remained beautifully clear and pure. A poem of a dish.

[caption id="attachment_27853" align="aligncenter" width="1500"] Dentex sashimi[/caption]

Another dish that caught my attention was the courgette tagliatelle, one of the most beautiful plates of the evening. It tasted every bit as good as it looked. Wild garlic, yellow peach, almond, kefir (again), yuzu, smoked paprika and mint formed a long cast, yet what I remember was the courgette itself. Sweet, fresh and full of flavour.