London Letter: Fine dining with a culinary maestro

LAST week I wrote about the rock star Sting, an eccentric foreigner in Tuscany where we recently holidayed. But take it from me, the locals are even more barking.

I discovered this when we asked Eric, our hotel manager in the Chianti hills, to recommend a place to eat. He somewhat hesitantly mentioned a restaurant called Chef Claudio.

Eric was reluctant, not because of the quality of the food, but because Claudio was a serious wild card. No one, including his waiters, was sure when he would be open.

Eric said he would phone, but within a minute the look on his face told us no one was answering despite the fact it was lunch time.

The next day we tried again. This time there was an answer. But it wasn’t Claudio. ‘Claudio has escaped,’ we were told. I wasn’t sure if that meant he had done a jailbreak or was on the run from the loony bin, but he wasn’t ‘cheffing’.

The following day Claudio wasn’t opening as he was on a ‘wine tasting’ expedition. Seeing this was 10am, I was impressed.

Then out of the blue, Claudio phoned us. We were instructed to be at his restaurant at 8pm. Sabrina the taxi driver would pick us up.

Sabrina arrived with Swiss rather than Italian punctuality and we were off to the mysterious Claudio. Who was he? I asked her.

‘Claudio very famous in Florence,’ Sabrina said. ‘Then get tired of too much hard work, so he come to countryside. But all his clients follow him, so he still work too hard.’

Well, when he deigns to open, I thought.

In a quaint Tuscan village comprising a few dozen houses, we finally met the enigmatic Claudio. He was a short, thin man with brilliant silver-steel hair. Even though I am suspicious of skinny cooks, he had the undeniable aura of a maestro.

The restaurant was actually Claudio’s converted dining room in his home. It only had six tables. Low swing doors closed off the elevated kitchen so Claudio could regally survey his diners, who were mere mortals, from a vantage point.

As we sat, a glass of chilled white wine was placed before us. I was about to say I preferred red, but the look on Claudio’s face indicated otherwise. This was a palate cleanser on the house.

Illegible menus

Scruffy handwritten menus were distributed, which even if they weren’t in Italian would’ve been illegible. I mean, pasta is spelt as pasta in any tongue, but not on Claudio’s menus.

Claudio said he would help us. This actually meant he would order for us, and a starter appeared out of nowhere. It was some type of meatball on a celery puree, and delicious doesn’t come close to describing it. Claudio then ‘recommended’, in a voice a Regimental Sergeant Major would die for, that we try a ‘light’ Chianti red.

The bottle arrived and after a tentative sip, management whispered it was corked. I said don’t dare tell Claudio, he’ll throw us out. She then took another sip and pronounced this the best wine ever. It was true – the taste was such a shock to the buds that you needed a second sip to truly savour it. I looked at the vintage – 2009. This meal is going to give the credit card a smack, I thought.

We had four more starters, all equally magnificent. The final one was some sort of crushed bean pate which sounds awful but tasted out of this world. I mean, who can make squashed legumes taste good?

Then the main course arrived; linguini seafood with chunks of tender octopus, prawns and cod and the pasta simmered in Claudio’s special seafood stock. Within minutes our plates were clean.

The bill arrived and I peeked at it. Sixty Euros – I couldn’t believe it. In England, this would have set us back more than £150.

Sabrina was ready to take us home and she wouldn’t accept money. We were Claudio’s customers, she said, almost reverently.

There is no question that I will never go to Tuscany again without visiting Chef Claudio. That’s if he hasn’t ‘escaped’, of course.