Chef Andrea Misseri arrives in Nashik to align wine and food at the biggest wine company in India
Nashik’s taste buds are going to get yet another twist with Italian chef Andrea Misseri coming over to give a modern Italian feel to the various menus at Sula Vineyards in Nashik.
Misseri, who has been at the helm of two of the busiest restaurants in Rome – Dilla & Buvette, has now arrived in the city of grapes to help update and revamp the food options at Sula’s various hospitality outlets. In the picture are, The Tasting Room at Sula that serves international and Indian finger foods to go along with its luscious wines, restaurants Rasa and Little Italy that serve non-vegetarian Indian and vegetarian Italian cuisines and lastly, The Source at Sula’s inhouse restaurant La Bodega which tosses up multi-cuisine fares.
Misseri, who has worked on various prestigious gastronomic platforms serving foreign ambassadors to movie stars, has begun food trials at Sula. His vision is to Italianize Indian food at the restaurants in Sula and also incorporate wine in food across all menus.
Some of the fusion dishes already popular in the trials include Italian Puri with Hummus, Italian Koftas, Sev Puri with wine reduction and the Sparking Shiraz ice-cream. “The idea is to interact with the company style using wine as an ingredient. The food should light-up the faces of the guests who come from metros. In Mumbai and Pune, all type of cuisines is around the corner, so what different can we provide them with here? Food that matches with our wine is my answer. If you have good food, you drink more wine,” said Misseri, who is fondly called as Andy.
About Andy
Misseri has been working across India for the last two decades from managing the menus at famous & prestigious hotels and restaurants like Taj, Novotel, Ramee Guestline, Out Of The Blue and a series of them in Goa. He is also a food importer and is famous across the gastro circles for sourcing beautiful Italian ingredients like truffle and Italian herbs and bringing them to India. He also wishes to help Sula import various such products and introducing them in the market.
He met CEO & Founder of Sula Vineyards Rajeev Samant during his years in Goa. Samant was impressed with his working style and the ability to fuse various cuisines together and that is when the thought of bringing him to Nashik germinated. For Misseri, fusion food is vastly important because it usually combines the local with the global – imagine an Aloo Trufle Pizza!
Andy at Sula
For The Source at Sula, he wants to go a bit more stylish and exclusive with Poached Eggs in Parmesan Fondue with Truffle for breakfast, a Chilli Cheese Fondue for those warm magical evenings at the courtyard and wine infuse risottos for cozy dinners in the restaurant.
“The idea is to add and restyle the dishes and basically create a format which can be used as a basic structure with timely updates in the future,” Misseri, who plans to be in Nashik for the next couple of months, elaborates. His biggest challenge is to surprise the management and the guests with the use of wine in food. And, he believes that his open-mindedness as well as his international experience in not only creating the food but also presenting it keeping in mind the Indian mind and palate will help him achieve his task.