Le Calandre: Rubano

The Alajmo brothers’ burgeoning dining group opened its first restaurant outside Italy last year in Paris, but standards remain stratospheric at the Paduan restaurant where one of the most intriguing stories in modern Italian gastronomy began.

In 2002 Massimiliano Alajmo – then 29 – became the youngest chef ever to win three stars shortly after taking over the kitchen from his mother. Just over a decade later Le Calandre continues to evolve. The menus have now been shaken up, primarily to allow the restaurant to keep in step with the seasons more easily. Guests now choose from three simple cartes, each containing a dozen or so dishes. There’s a classics menu – including Max’s famed cuttlefish cappuccino and his hand-chopped raw Piedmontese beef with black truffles – which is offered alongside a menu that’s quite modern and another that’s pitched somewhere between the two.

But even Le Calandre’s more overtly modern food is still grounded in Italian culinary tradition – and what tastes fantastically good. The restaurant remains a family affair with the more flamboyant brother, Raffaele, overseeing the dining room. Max’s oldest daughter Adele may only be eight years old, but she apparently makes an excellent risotto al Parmigiano, so the future of the restaurant looks assured for the next generation at least.