One year after its reopening, thanks to the Valenza family (owners of the historic Caffè Gilli and Caffè Paszkowski in the city) Giacosa 1815 shines with its own light and exudes authenticity, reworked with sober elegance from old photos of the venue on Via Tornanbuoni. We met the sheriff Luca Manni, bar manager of the Valenza group, to let us tell you about the offer and the most intimate details.
The story.
Founded in Turin in 1815 by the Giacosa brothers, It had made its entrance into the city of the lily – an important stop on the Grand Tour – only in 1860, immediately becoming a meeting place for the dandies of the time. It was in 1927 that he made the leap which consecrated the sign for the centuries to come, when he decided to move in the premises of the former Casoni Profumeria drugstore where in 1919 Count Camillo Negroni and the bartender Fosco Scarselli had invented – or perhaps discovered – the cocktail of the same name.
After several more or less fruitful changes of ownership, in 2001 it was incorporated into the Roberto Cavalli boutique under whose management it reached its closure in 2017, which had caused despair among the many Florentine enthusiasts who saw another piece of the old city gradually disappear, until last year.
Yes because, right in this period, 365 days ago, the Valenza group reopened the doors of the historic Giacosa café, working for a long time under the radar to resurrect from the ashes what was one of the most important addresses in Florence and perhaps in Italy as a whole. And who knows what the future holds for it.
The environment
The environment, signed by interior design architects Paolo Becagli and Alessandro Interlando, is the son of Giacosa himself, taken and reworked from photos of the past with historical and sober elegance. Wrapped in navy blue armchairs you have the impression of being transported to another era. The protagonist of Giacosa is always there to welcome customers, the counter with its carefully curated bottle rack, capable of immediately making you breathe the sense of belonging to an entire city.
Hi Luca, can you tell us what Giacosa 1815 means to you?
Look, I'll tell you straight away that it was the driving force that pushed me to accept the proposal of Mark Valenza. I worked at La Ménagère and that year we received the award for the best aperitif in Italy Red Shrimp and I am called to represent the company. During this award ceremony I meet Marco Valenza, present for the award ceremony of the bars. After some time, through a mutual friend, he contacts me to propose an operation for me incredibly important. Reopen Giacosa.
He told me “I have the brand, I have the place, I need the person and I would like it to be you” Giacosa just for the name, for a bar enthusiast it is a stimulus you can't say no to. For a Florentine even more, and for me it was perhaps the greatest opportunity of a lifetime. You know, they can buy everything from us, they can do whatever they want but the only thing they can't take away from us is our history.
Then if you think that I used to go to the old Giacosa to drink and I also had fun there. – laughs-
Tell us about the project, where did you start from? And what was your imprint?
Giacosa has had a troubled opening, to say the least. The two waves of Covid-19 with related lock-downs have slowed down the work, finding the materials and who does the work has been a long job. And consider that Giacosa brings with him Negroni, with all the necessary attention, before it was Casoni, all true but if the Giacosa brothers had not opened it would not have even reached us. Finally we have a true Italian and Florentine story, which we have the obligation to carry forward. The negroni It must be in our blood, in our DNA, and it must be carried forward by treating it with respect.
I want to say that, it may seem trivial but it is not. We could not do a good job if we did not have the right people in the right place. If I did not have certain people at the bar to physically push the projects forward I would do nothing, and no one would take home the victory. I cannot and above all I do not want to take all the credit.
The initial work was to think about how to develop things and what imprint to give, in accordance with the idea of the property. We obviously started from the Negroni and its classic recipe. The drink list in fact opens with the Negroni Giacosa, and 4 sets of negronis: nitro, shaken, with a top of soda or prosecco. To do this, however, we had to study the various labels carefully; there are some vermouths, for example, that are better suited to being shaken, others that are better suited to being siphoned. We had to look for the most suitable solutions, not the best; you know, the ingredients are those, the doses are those, you just need manual skill and study.
How was the Negroni Giacosa born?
Before opening, as I was telling you, we had some time, and so we asked ourselves about the perfect recipe. People started drinking Negronis more than 100 years ago and the palate of these people has necessarily changed over all these years. Starting from the three ingredients we tried to unbalance, rebalance and experiment. We tried different solutions, focusing a lot on gin or focusing a lot on bitter, a lot of vermouth and bitter and a little bitter and so on. We set up a real social experiment with blind tests by interviewing customers, colleagues from the bars, the team and I must tell you that it was a lot of fun to follow this data collection closely. The result gave us a fairly clear preference for bitter, and therefore our Negroni Giacosa is unbalanced towards bitter and amaricante. And on average, our customers' palates are confirming our 6 months of testing.
I know you're working on the new menu, how do you complete your drink list?
So we said, first page history and classic negroni, second page negroni menu, then we find some twists on the Negroni, extremely fun in my opinion. Without spoiling too much about the new menu I can tell you that we are pushing even more in that direction. Currently we have for example the CosmoNegroni, or a Refresh Colada negroni. The kids have a lot of fun there and so do I.
On the last page we find some signatures that vary also thanks to the imagination of our team. Giacosa of the group is the most cocktail bar in absolute, here the proposal is more central and manages to have more vent to the imagination of Mirko Mauriello and William Francis the guys who are here. Willy went through the whole process of the group with me, first Move On, then Gilli and now Giacosa, while we went to fish Mirco out, he has a London past, a past in the starred restaurants and is in all respects my factotum. I imagine something, I tell it to him and he creates it. The bar is pushing hard on these “laboratory” things, and these guys really know more than the devil.
Last question, the hardest one. Favorite cocktail at Giacosa?
Look, it's hard to choose. Maybe I'd say the Nitro Negroni and the Cosmo Negroni.
