Taki Off, chef Viglietti's restaurant opens in Rome "Chef Viglietti opens the doors of his Taki Off, a restaurant within the restaurant, which takes guests to an immersive, anarchic, nonconformist experience, a stone's throw from Piazza Cavour"
Taki Off, chef Viglietti's restaurant opens in Rome
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Crest on the head, earring and tattoos on the arms. Massimo Viglietti he is a chef who does not go unnoticed, even more than for his style, for his cuisine. Especially now that, in Rome, he presented Taki Off, a contaminated spin-off of Taki, one of the most famous Japanese restaurants in Rome.
We are in via Marianna Dionigi, a few steps from Piazza Cavour. Here chef Viglietti, after the (starred) experience from Achilli to the Parliament, he found a home and opened the doors of a new temple of fusion, where Japanese flavors and ingredients meet Italian cuisine according to the contemporary gastronomic vision of the Ligurian chef.
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"Not just a restaurant, but a meeting place for ladies, knights, poets, dreamers and sailors". A presentation that makes you dream, first with the eyes, then with the palate.
Entering Taki Off ...
You enter, black on the walls, precious Japanese fabrics that illuminate in flashes, fossil wood elements. An essential mise en place that strikes at first glance. The music - carefully chosen by the chef because it is part of the immersive experience - does the rest. RomaToday had the opportunity to preview the fusion cuisine, eclectic, nonconformist, for ladies, knights, poets, dreamers and sailors of chef Viglietti.
Taki Off is a restaurant within a restaurant, a Roman novelty that represents the success of an experiment launched in the summer, called "Taki Labò" (where Labò stood for the laboratory) and immediately awarded by food and wine critics as the Best News of the year for the Gambero's Guide to the Best Restaurants in Rome 2021 Red. An award that encourages Massimo Viglietti and Yukari Vitti (owner of the Japanese restaurant Taki) to continue in this ambitious and nonconformist project even in a moment of maximum uncertainty like this.
And this is how from the Taki Labò experiment, Taki Off was born - in full Covid - The restaurant opens with a series of changes compared to the initial project, in order to welcome guests in compliance with the latest dpcm, opening the gaze of the latter. on new gastronomic perspectives.
And all this is also possible thanks to the alchemy born between Viglietti and Yukari: “When I met Massimo, I felt a sensation that happens to me very rarely: I was amazed - he says Yukari Vitti - I am originally from Kyoto, a city where tradition is jealously guarded and where I formed my taste, which I propose again in the Taki restaurant. Once I arrived in Italy, many years ago, intrigued by its cuisine, I realized that I didn't want to go back. So I stayed and, at the end of a journey, the decision came to found a restaurant with traditional Japanese cuisine that was missing in the city of Rome. When, with my husband Onorio, we met Massimo and tasted his cuisine, we were fascinated by how the ingredients and flavors were combined. I understood that he was the right person to make a dream come true: to undertake a restaurant path that, alongside Taki, expressed a new gastronomic thought between East and West, creating a common ground between two very different countries."
Thus Taki Off manages to look beyond the comfort food and the reassuring flavors of the family cookbooks, while Taki - Japanese Restaurant of true traditional cuisine - continues on its path, acclaimed and sought after by the Roman community of lovers of Japanese cuisine: “I am a man who wants to discover new worlds - says the chef Massimo Viglietti - to listen to good music, to make those who enter our restaurant in Piazza Cavour dream, concentrating a holiday in a few moments. Not just a table where to eat, but a meeting and sharing place for dreamers and sailors: so I always imagined a place where everyone would feel at home and in which to express a cuisine free from cultural barriers. And with Yukari, we managed perfectly.
Coming to eat at Taki Off places only two conditions: the mind must be free of prejudices and the palate without foreclosures. Let yourself be conquered: it will be fun, it will be beautiful! ”.
Yukari Vitti and Massimo Viglietti
Taki Off, chef Viglietti's restaurant opens in Rome
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The experience at Taki Off: an anarchic and immersive menu
Taki Off, in this particular moment, wants to give a parenthesis of escape to those who cross the threshold of the restaurant, with a gastronomic journey that does not follow a rigid scheme but favors the sensations that arise spontaneously: the dishes are frames of a general image and choosing a few instead wants to experience a different film every time, an absolutely revolutionary and original taste experience, showing how oriental taste can be successfully combined with Italian products.
The opening of the kitchen is from 12.30 to 17.30, from Tuesday to Sunday and at any time, in addition to the dishes, it is possible to indulge in the sin of gluttony of coffees at the lamp, corrected with spirits with a strong personality, such as Calvados, Grappa , rum, aromatic herbs and spices. On Sundays there is also a special menu, "Sunday going to mass ", which can be composed by deciding the number of courses to taste or order it in its entirety, ie 8 courses plus 2 desserts. For those wishing to drink following the chef's advice, the "Marriage", or the pairing with wines, sake (of which Taki - Japanese restaurant holds about 40 labels), champagne and drinks.
At Taki Off you live an absolutely anarchic gastronomic experience, in which to forget the sequence of appetizers, first and second courses, to immerse yourself in a new, different, certainly strange musical rhythm, but in which Japan and Italy merge indescribably.
At Taki Off the experience can start with the dessert, with a white chocolate ball and Tarte au citron crackle, continue with salmon, squid and sea bream Nigiri; beans, chestnuts and shrimps; cream of potatoes with chartreuse, eel, lettuce and bacon. The combinations are courageous, sui generis and tell the technique, the experience, the desire to dare, to experiment, to amaze the Ligurian chef transplanted to Rome.
Viglietti reveals that you can put bottarga and caviar on the prized Wagyu. That you can pour a cherry tomato mocha over an egg yolk to taste a lust, that a scallop with fresh duck foie gras can be paired with a reduced coke. And it tells you that you can enter at any time of the day at Taki Off, if only for a cake and a coffee by the lamp corrected at Calvados.
The flagship of the Taki Off menu is, in fact, the coffees "Waiting for another turn of hands": 4 types all prepared at the table, each corrected with different spirits and flavored with aromatic herbs and spices: rum and cinnamon, whiskey and seaweed, grappa and rosemary, calvados and tobacco, to accompany some "oddities" - as Viglietti calls them - in whose sweetness and flavor meet in the same recipe.
Desserts, in fact, are not only sweets but successful greedy experiments, such as Marjoram cream, corn, San Lorenzo salad, candied olives, shortcrust pastry in which the vegetables are combined in an unexpected way with the custard creating a dish of great balance , Eggplant, veal base cream with whiskey, hazelnuts, blanched chickpeas or peanut butter, orange, Greek bottarga, coffee reduced and cream ice cream, specially prepared by Caffè Vitti.
Taki Off is an all-round gastronomic experience, declined in an unexpected journey between East and West, which is worth experiencing in the capital.
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