GUADALAJARA - Over the past few weeks, happy diners at Monferrato have raved about the artichoke, Brie and basil ravioli and some still ask about last year’s crab-stuffed pasta.
You probably won’t get to try either of those dishes soon. Fortunately, if you walk into the restaurant tomorrow, your tastebuds may get a chance to celebrate something even more mouthwatering. “The menu is symbolic. Everyday, I try to do something different,” says Maurizio Ghia, owner, chef, manager and creative force behind one of Guadalajara’s favorite Italian restaurants. “It would be too limiting to favor one dish over another.”
Ghia tempers creative freedom with ironclad discipline.
“In Italian food, there is no improvising. You have to do things right, there are certain rules to follow, to know,” he says. “A meal is either well-made or not, and the good ones are always made with lots of love, lots of passion.”
Born in a small town in northern Italy near Torino, Ghia began learning about Italian cuisine when he was 15.
“You have to remember, 25 years ago, there weren’t all these jobs there are now, especially not in small towns. But we did have a very deep respect for gastronomy,” says Ghia. “You have to sacrifice for this job. Some young people just want to party, they don’t work or learn.”
Ghia is still sacrificing – after 12 years working for Princess Cruises and sailing the world, he chose Guadalajara to start his own restaurant five years ago. Since then, he works an average of 14 hours a day, seven days a week. He shops, he cooks, he supervises his staff of nine or ten, he chooses the wines and supplies the music. He even hand-painted bricks onto what were once flat, boring walls.
“I wanted a more traditional, rustic feel,” he explains.
Ghia has succeeded. Where some Italian restaurants slide into kitsch, Monferrato is a graceful, cozy retreat with well-spaced tables, a charming mosaic patio and soft music. The waitstaff is attentive but inobtrusive, the servings are perfectly-sized and artfully presented and the pasta is always al dente.
Ask Ghia how Monferrato is different from the bulk of Italian restaurants in town and he’ll immediately leap to the heart of the matter.
“We don’t do fusion, just original Italian food,” he says. “And we always cook our pasta when the customer asks for it, not beforehand.”
Monferrato is part of the Slow Food movement, a philosophy rejecting fast food and fast life. Once customers sit down, they may linger for hours over glasses of wine, salmon carpaccio, handmade pasta, veal piccata, lemon trout, grilled ribeye rubbed with rosemary, sage and oregano (the most expensive dish on a very resonably priced menu at 155 pesos), or an ever-changing menu of one-of-a-kind desserts (including panna cotta with fresh seasonal fruit coulis).
There are thousands of restaurants in Guadalajara, and if Ghia has one complaint it is that people here too often eat only because they are hungry.
“My customers say they come back for the food,” says Ghia on a brief break between cooking dishes. “There’s nothing frozen here, everything is made from scratch, and if a dish needs artichoke and I have none, I don’t make it. I’ve even found fresh local mozzarella... 90 percent like the real thing and better than that tasteless stuff you get at Walmart.”
Monferrato does not advertise. The restaurant relies on casual walk-ins who come back time after time, on word-of-mouth recommendations, and on the curiosity of fans yearning to taste Ghia’s specials.
“I never know when I’ll change a special, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily,” says Ghia. “It depends on the ingredients I can find, on a feeling. All I want is that every day is a little smoother, that there’s never an unhappy client, that they all like the food.”
Monferrato is on Av. Guadalupe 571 in Col. Chapalita (by the intersection of Guadalupe and Lazaro Cardenas). Open Monday through Thursday 1:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., and Friday through Sunday 1:30 to midnight. There is live piano music on Friday nights from 9 p.m. to midnight, and an informal dominos group also gathers upstairs on Friday nights. More info at 3587-6271 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
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