Word before… culinary delight

With the opening of Truff&Moi, I have seen myself in the position to offer a quote that would capture in a few sentences how the idea of a restaurant opened during a pandemic appeared. And not just any restaurant, but the first of your life! A restaurant where the guest will not actually step into. How do you persuade a person, especially a gourmand, to “invest” his confidence by risking what he appreciates the most and giving a chance to a restaurant he has never heard of before?! What could you say about this moment that would be both memorable, but also expresses empathy for this Horeca industry in which we are involved, including with the soul?! It is definitely a challenge to surprise only in a few words!

So, I stopped for a second from all the madness today, I looked inside and I remembered the way Horeca left its mark on me, initially on my mind and heart as a child raised in communist Romania, with the key around his neck. What you feel when you are first exposed to this culture from the Mediterranean basin, the way the warm breeze greets you from the moment you get off the plane, the crowded restaurants where parents with children of all ages sit at tables alongside their grandparents until late at night… it’s clear, I can’t describe the accumulation of sensations unless I were a writer, a good one, a “best-seller type”. What I can tell you for sure is that I have not forgotten and I will never forget key moments from my culinary experience in the Mediterranean basin: the first mussel from a “impepata di cozze” or “a ‘mpepata e cozze” as Gianni, a family friend from Naples, called it; he simmered them in their own juice and prepared them with a lot of pepper (in the meantime I found out that their scientific name is: “Mytilus galloprovincialis”). Another unforgettable experience was the first “Fine de Claire” oyster that my father showed me how to “prepare” and then eat raw directly from the shell. Regarding oysters I discovered in the meantime that although they are consumed a lot in Provence and go well with the famous quiet rose wines from the area, they go much, much better with the slightly more “agitated” wines from another region, Champagne. But this is another story, as they say in a well-known Romanian ad: “friends know why.”

The experience of the place must be lived by everyone on their own and I am convinced that many of us have already built memories that will last until the next holiday on a Greek island whose beauty is given by the apparent wilderness. Or maybe you miss the comforting loud dinners of a secluded small town in Italy, places that come along with dishes delicious by their simplicity. Obviously, there are no places where you feel treated like a real star except in the south of France, the birthplace of Chef Stephane – the artisan behind the Truff&Moi menu.

So, my role ends here, I drew the introduction for what awaits you – a culinary journey, a fine-dining voyage over which I added in abundance the ingredient that will remain imprinted in the memory of senses as joie de vivre… et manger ( and truffles 😊). And if we keep talking about the joy of eating, I must also mention the words of a man used to be blunt, without unnecessary flourishes, Anthony Bourdain – “You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.” Signed by: I, Ciprian, a pragmatic man, but who intuited our common need to remember that good things do not necessarily come to those who wait, sometimes we meet them halfway and most often we make them happen.