Truffle Inclusive: La Frasca restaurant

“La Frasca”, a satellite venue of the PomoDoro association whose main objective is to promote the social and working inclusion of people with disabilities, is the ideal place to be pampered by seasonal, zero-kilometre cuisine.

Alberto, the restaurant’s reference chef, tells us about this wonderful experience which allowed him to combine his work in the kitchen with an equally important aspect, the social one. Can you tell us how your experience as a chef began, and how you came to manage such a complete restaurant, with special menus, themed evenings with other chefs, an important presence on social media with marketing activities in line with high-level restaurants, in summary a refined restaurant, a circular economy and a concrete inclusion project is that right?

After my diploma, acquired at the hotel institute in Abano Terme (PD), I worked in some local restaurants, moving first from a more traditional cuisine and then to a more elaborate cuisine, entering the circuit of starred restaurants first with chef Renato Rizzardi from Locanda di Piero (VI) and then with chef Alessandro Breda from the Gellius restaurant (TV).

Then the opportunity arose to return to work with Giulio Calgaro, my dear friend, at the La Frasca restaurant, of the social enterprise Il PomoDoro, I decided to immediately seize this great opportunity which allowed me to combine what is my I work in the kitchen with an expectation as important as the social one. Here we are able to touch the raw materials that are grown in our countryside and at the same time create dishes designed by people who have worked in the world of fine dining.

The La Frasca restaurant, a name deliberately separated from the social reality of Il PomoDoro, wants to differentiate itself from the rest of social catering, choosing a contemporary cuisine, which takes care of the details and the choice of raw materials to bring us as close as possible to high-level restaurants, all this with the active inclusion in our dining room service of people with different abilities, our apprentices, who also participate in cultivation and sales activities during the day.

The cuisine of your restaurant will take into account the products grown by your kids at 0 km, the training of the fragile kids themselves and therefore the continuous search for activities suitable for each of them for an excellent result. Plus you have the management of a restaurant with all its problems. Which of these activities is more difficult and complicated?

In our business, each sector is carried out by constant collaboration between sector professionals, educators and apprentices, I believe this is the secret to the success of daily activities, it is this teamwork that allows us, as in any other working environment, to solve the normal problems that arise every day.

Manage “behind the scenes” and room activities together with your collaborators. What did you like about the project with T&C Tartufi? What gave you the most satisfaction?

The thing that I certainly appreciated the most was first of all the idea behind the project which I found very current and valorising for our sector, and the fact of combining the idea of the truffle, seen by most as a product of elite to a social inclusion project.
The thing that gave me the most satisfaction by far was the happiness and satisfaction of our kids at having been selected for the project because they truly felt important and fulfilled.