Second Helpings (V).

New seasons, menus, and special events.

Second Helpings (I, II, III, & IV) can be found here, here, here, and here.

Talea* (6 hands, Solaika Marrocco, Luigi Stinga, Antonio Guida)

For their second anniversary, Talea put together a six hands featuring the talents of the above chefs. To start, AED650, with a few extra courses thrown in, feels like a fair cost per person. Unfortunately, unlike other culinary collabs where things flow seamlessly together, this menu was a collection of plates, with each chef basically doing their own thing (and not always to create a successful dish). Case in point? The plate below. While the Ravioli di alici with saffron butter sauce looked amazing, for unknown reasons, Chef Solakia decided to fry (?) the bottom of the pasta, which resulted in a rather disgusting and dried concrete sort of texture. Yes, I wish I was being hyperbolic. This was super unfortunate, as the sauce was lovely, well blended, and would’ve probably tasted great on just about anything else.

While disjointed, the accompaniment…