La Grappa, one of Hua Hin’s finest and most favorite restaurants is open once again for business after closing for several weeks to upgrade the premises. Guests won’t notice too much of a difference in the dining room but the building was brought up to grade with new electrical, restroom facilities and a kitchen expansion.
The Chef Patron of La Grappa is Eraldo Colazzo, a trained Chef de Cuisine with a wealth of experience from top rated Michelin star restaurants in Italy and around the globe. Eraldo has a Diploma in Haute Cuisine from the Cordon Bleu Culinary Academy in Florence and has trained in the world’s best restaurants. He has held the position of Executive Italian Chef of the 5 star hotel named The Imperial, New Delhi, a kitchen was awarded the best Italian restaurant in India. He has also worked at Gualtiero Marchesi’s 3 Michelin star restaurant named Erbusco and a position as Head Chef at Capriccio in New Jersey, USA, one of the top Italian restaurants in the US.
Recently HOT Magazine sat down with Chef Eraldo Colazzo to discuss his cooking style and the direction he’s taking LaGrappa’s menu
HOT Magazine: Chef Eraldo, can you tell us a little about your cooking style?
Chef Eraldo: During the early 80’s chef Michel Richard in France and chef Gualtiero Marchesi in Italy put the revolutionary grounds of the nouvelle cuisine which pretty soon will change the cuisines of all kinds all over the world.
I was at that time still in Italy and lucky enough (and skilled too I should say in modesty) to get a job as chef de partie (line cook) at chef Marchesi’s restaurant Erbusco. I wasn’t there for a long time but it was long enough for me to understand the clues of this new style. I started to develop my own with much attention to the ingredients’ color choice and pairing in the dishes ( colors have flavors to me), their shapes and final geometry and an extremely committed search to use to very best top quality ingredients available, always. I can’t work properly with average stuff no matter it tastes good too.
HOT Magazine: You’ve been at La Grappa since September of last year. Is the menu settled or is it still evolving?
Chef Eraldo: It is evolving, spread slowly in the coming weeks and months. A few of our new dishes which represent in full the concepts of the beginning of the nouvelle cuisine are featured below.
– SEA BIG BANG is a seafood salad where the seafood is quickly blanched in water, dry Martini, cloves and salt and laid separately on a bed of sauce made with mayonnaise and lobster reduction and dressed with drops of basil pesto, chili tomato sauce, squid ink, extra virgin olive oil, ground white pepper, all the ingredients are not mixed together and visible separately to recall the deconstructed style of nouvelle cuisine.
-COD IN HELL is a masterpiece of chef Marchesi which shocked the culinary world at that time with this extra strong presentation using, mainly the two strongest colors in nature: the red and the black. The red sauce is a kind of gazpacho and the black is a fish bouillon with squid ink and lime.
-THE WHITE IN THE VINEYARD is a dish of mine, white chocolate soufflé on almond sauce with grapes fillets marinated in Sambuca liqueur and Tahitian vanilla.
HOT Magazine Thank you Chef Eraldo for your time.