Flavours of Tuscany

Jul 25 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

A roving restaurateur has teamed up with the region’s top chef to bring the authentic taste of Tuscany to Tyneside – and simple, local ingredients are at the heart of the union. Jane Hall reports.

PICTURE the scene: you’re sitting sipping wine in a quiet corner of an ancient Italian piazza, the sun shining down from a clear blue sky.

You and your partner have just eaten a simple alfresco meal of pasta and pizza, and now you’re feeling replete and relaxed as you watch the world go by.

It’s lunchtime halfway through your holiday exploring the delights of Italy’s west coast. You started in Tuscany, have travelled down to Latium and are now in Campania. Sicilia is still to come.

Many things have already made a positive impression on you: the stunning scenery, the magnificent ancient architecture, the friendliness of the people and the near-perfect May weather.

But it’s the cuisine that is making you wish you had packed your eating trousers. In a country where food is famously more than a form of nourishment, but a way of life where family, friends and feasts are indelibly linked, you have had none finer than the pasta and pizza you’ve just eaten in the small trattoria in Sorrento.

It’s a perfect moment, and one you can only wish you could savour forever. But while most people resign themselves to reliving life’s happier occasions through their photographs and homemade movies, Dave Townsley had other ideas.

He describes the leisurely meal he shared with girlfriend Debbie Adamson in Sorrento’s pretty old town on the Amalfi coast, as his “eureka!” instant, when he realised he had, if not exactly been doing everything wrong, at least not been living up to the true spirit of the Italian food he had for the past 12 months been bringing to the people of North Tyneside and beyond.

The 32-year-old entrepreneur opened Tuscany in Whitley Bay in March last year with the intention of bringing an authentic touch of Italy to the Tyneside coastal town.

Dave thought he and business partner Ali Khedrihad been doing a good job until he and Debbie, 32, headed to the Mediterranean for their break and experienced for themselves what the true taste of Italy really is.

They discovered as others have before them that Italian food inside of Italy is totally different from that offered outside its borders.

For one, there is no such thing as Italian cuisine per se – although some famous dishes like pasta and pizza have become cornerstones of the ‘English’ diet.

As a nation, Italy is still in the toddler stage. For hundreds of years it was divided into city states and each was governed individually. As a result regional foods quickly developed, and as each state was autonomous, the cuisine didn’t travel from place to place.

Hence menus in north Italy with its wide plains ideal for grazing cattle, feature butter, cream, cheese and a lot of beef. No cows are farmed to the south, but instead sheep, goats and chickens thrive.

The Liguria region is known as the birthplace of pesto and succulent fresh fish, but the tomato-based Italian sauces we are all familiar with are anathema. Instead, tomatoes are king in Sicily, where the cuisine is strongly influenced by the island's Greek, Arabic and African history. Sicily also has a reputation for producing some of the best Italian desserts.

In Milan and surrounding Lombardy, rice is eaten more than pasta, and risotto is big news. Lombardy is also the home to gorgonzola and mascarpone cheeses, and polenta is a diet staple.

Turin is famous for its chocolates and is also renowned for growing white truffles and producing wine. In Puglia, at the heel of the famous Italian boot, seafood is in abundance.

Tuscany, from where Dave’s restaurant takes its name, produces some of the most famous Italian produce, however, from black and white truffles to pork products, while salami, Parma ham and parmesan cheese all call the Emilia-Romagna region home.

But there is one thing all Italy’s regions share on the gastronomic front – adherence to a simple set of principles: that food should be simple, cooked from fresh, be made from what is grown and can be bought locally, and be in-season.

Seven weeks after his return from his memorable holiday, Dave is sat at a table in the window of Tuscany on Whitley Bay seafront. Outside the rain is falling from a leaden sky and the sea looks cold and grey; bistro furniture is stacked on the terrace, ready for the next sunny July day.

Despite the dreary weather, Dave is fired up. His recent sojourn has inspired him to introduce a new menu to Tuscany, marrying the best in fresh local produce with the essence of earthy Italian cuisine.

It has taken him just six weeks with the help of the region’s top chef, Terry Laybourne of Newcastle’s award-winning Jesmond Dene House and Cafe Vivo, to turn Tuscany’s offerings on their head.

Specialities now include grilled duck breast with Umbrian lentils, wild mushrooms and mostarda di Cremona; Porchetta, a Tuscan-style pork roast with fennel, herbs and garlic, and Tuscan lamb casserole.

Traditional Italian favourites like risotto and pasta have been given a new twist, with dishes like goats’ cheese ravioli with pancetta and shallots; lemon and thyme risotto with grilled prawns and risotto Milanese with Luganega sausage, all now making an appearance.

There are also five types of traditional pizza from calzone to quattro staggioni, and for dessert diners can choose the likes of lemon polenta cake with poached plums; chocolate olive oil tarfuto and Dave’s favourite, panacotta with raspberries.

Dave hopes diners will be as passionate about the new menu as he is – and feel they are genuinely getting a taste of Tuscany on Tyneside.

“One of the things that I became conscious of early on in my holiday was that the old menu we were offering was based around a standard format that you would find in any Italian restaurant in the UK. The food was good, but there was nothing, apart from Tuscany’s interior design, that made us stand out.

“Italian food has always been my favourite – I love its versatility and the way there is always something for everyone. But as I quickly discovered on holiday, what we think of as Italian and what the Italians think of as their own, is very different.

“The food we were producing was an English version of Italian food; it wasn’t as authentic as you see when you go to Italy, and a lot of the dishes were over-complicated.

“But true Italian food is very simple, very fresh and very flavoursome. Every single ingredient in a dish stands out and is allowed to shine. It’s no lie when I say every meal Debbie and myself ate out was without exception good. We didn’t have a bad meal.”

But it is Sorrento that will forever stand out in Dave’s mind. “Sorrento really tipped the balance for me,” he recalls. “It is a beautiful place anyway, and Debbie and myself were sitting al fresco at this restaurant looking at the menu. It was proving impossible to choose what to order, so we decided to keep it simple and have a pasta dish each followed by an authentic Italian pizza.

“The flavours were fantastic and really blew us away – yet there was very little to both dishes. They both relied on using the highest quality ingredients presented in the simplest and most unspectacular manner but which were completely opposite in terms of taste.

“I just said, ‘this is what we have to do at Tuscany'. Although I was on holiday I became infatuated with the Italian approach to food and decided I had to bring some of that back with me.

“Everyone knows Terry Laybourne is the best in the business and he was the first person I thought to approach for help in bringing the true taste of Italy to Tyneside.”

Like the Italians, Terry has always known the value of using the best local – in this case North East – ingredients, a philosophy he has now passed on to Dave and the Tuscany team. Everything from the fish to the vegetables, meat, milk, cream and even the bottled water, is local. Only Italian ingredients for which there is no local substitute are imported.

“It’s about businesses working together as a community. Why go all the way across the world to get something that is on your doorstep? It’s also about the freshness of the ingredients. What could be better than running down to North Shields Fish Quay?”

It’s all a long way from Dave’s beginnings in the catering trade as a teenager when he ran a mobile shop which he sold to buy himself a hot dog van. He then traded up to a mobile kebab unit, which he again sold to buy himself three catering trailers. He then bought a pizza shop before opening a delicatessen followed by an upmarket coffee shop in Newcastle.

That was then followed by an off-licence and general store in Hadrian Park. “I’ve bought and sold and bought and sold until I have reached the point I have. I love food and all kinds of food.

“Anyone who operates a restaurant does it for a love of food – it can’t be just for financial gain as it is a hard business to be in.

“I hope that love of food is apparent to our customers and that they fall in love with the real flavour of Italy as much as I have.”

Tuscany, 10 East Parade, Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, (0191) 253-3050, www.tuscany-restaurant.co.uk

As a nation, Italy is still in the toddler stage. For hundreds of years it was divided into city states