Michelin Starred Advice

Aqua

Le Marche is famed for its cuisine, so wherever you decide to eat, whether it is in the small Trattoria in a cobbled street of the local medieval town, or to the family run agriturismo in the heart of the countryside, you will be spoilt by the quality of the local ingredients and the high standard of the cooking.

With such a discerning local market and such a long established reputation for good unpretentious cooking it would be foolish to open a restaurant that aimed at fine cuisine or that pushed toward the sort of standards awarded a Michelin Star, without being 100% sure that there was a market for it!

As part of our planning, we have been researching the local restaurants, talking to the local mayor and determining where the gap in the market is. If we are to offer a variation on the local cuisine, then it needs to be something unusual, something different, something that people would want to come to because it did offer that choice. This might be because we focused on a particular type of cooking such as Game or truffles( we have a whole wood full of white truffles after all!), or because we want to offer a variation on the traditional Antipasto, Primo and Secondo found on practically every Italian Menu.

Our belief is that in a hotel where people come to be pampered and to unwind, they should be able to experience food that is every bit as memorable as the rooms or the spa treatments. By focusing on the use of only the very best organic home grown ingredients and combining this with imagination and flair, we can create an experience that focuses on delivering the very best of Italian flavour, yet with a more international twist. We want you to savour the experience, to have a choice of wonderful wine that will complement the food. Dining with us should be about indulgence, about creating memories and about taking the time to really enjoy the flavours.

All these dreams are all very well, but our first priority is to make sure that we have thought of evry detail and done all our business planning up front. So for the moment we have been researching the size and fitment for the right type of kitchen; we have been taking advice on what is the right number of staff to provide the best possible service, yet not cripple us with fixed costs that would make the restaurant unprofitable, We have been incredibly fortunate to be able to call on the advice of our friend and famous chef, Laurent Manrique. Laurent has earned a coveted two Michelin stars for his <a href=”http://www.aqua-sf.com/” target=”_blank” title=”Aqua”>Aqua</a> restaurant in San Francisco. Prior to this Laurent ran the great Peacock Alley at the Waldorf Astoria in New York for Alain Ducasse and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of how to set up a kitchen that does not compromise on its standards, yet still returns a healthy margin.

Marco met up with Laurent at Aqua on a recent business trip to San Francisco, and Laurent was kind enough to spend several hours pouring over the plans with Marco to ensure that we deliver a restaurant that will make a lasting impression on you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 10:10 am and is filed under Restaurant and tagged with Aqua, Laurent Manrique, Michelin Star. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.