Buongiorno! Among the many restaurants on the Place de la Brèche, Baci stands out with its green, white and red tricolor flags. And if we greet in Italian when we hire, it is not to add to the decoration. Here, half of the staff are Italian, starting with the chef, Alfonso D’Aniello, who originally comes from the Naples region. He worked in almost the entire peninsula before settling in France.
Offering authentic Italian cuisine, rediscovering what it lost to globalization, is the bet that Marco Pion made by creating this establishment a year ago, in 2023. He had already opened the Bombino pizzeria three years earlier with a Neapolitan pizza chef, Vincenzo .
“We promote how pasta is eaten in Italy”
“I wanted to go further, not just offer pizza. Italy is full of products, cultures, terroirs »explains the young French restaurateur who became passionate about transalpine gastronomy while working with an Italian chef.
In the kitchen “team” du Baci works mainly with Italian products, carefully selected on site, “not in a supplier’s catalog”. Starting with the pasta: “We buy them from a very old family business, Cuomo, who has just created his museum in Graniano. »
This has a price, “but it is a product in which we see a big differenceexplains Alfonso, they are made with a bronze matrix; their texture allows the sauce to absorb well. Their white color comes from very slow drying. It has nothing to do with smooth, yellow pasta.”.
This quality provides cooking al dente incomparable… Which sometimes needs to be explained in space: “In France, we are used to eating overcooked pastasmiles Alfonso D’Aniello. We explain, we show how they are eaten in Italy. » Same fight for carbonara prepared according to the original recipe … without cream, bacon or onions. “We had to get him to agreecontinues Marco Pion, but our carbon evenings are full today! »
What do we eat there?
Baci offers traditional Italian dishes, including Neapolitan pizzas, prepared on raw stone, in an oven built on site by Neapolitan artisans. One of chef Alfonso D’Aniello’s specialties is truffles, “which we bring in every week directly from Tuscany. Few restaurants offer them ». Marco Pion also likes to find unusual products from small artisans, such as capocollo, a little-known variant of coppa, or wild boar mortadella with truffles. On the dolci side, the menu offers two varieties of ice cream: fior di latte and pistachio di Bronte (Sicily).
