Massimo Bottura’s new “Not Barbecue” restaurant

Al Gatto Verde in Modena, Italy, redefines barbecue with a wood-burning oven, conceptual fire cooking techniques and passionately sustainable practices.

I'm three dishes deep into the tasting menu at Al Gatto Verde – Massimo Bottura's new "Not Barbecue" restaurant at Casa Maria Luigia, his intensely stylish guesthouse on the outskirts of Modena, Italy – when the cotechino sangue di drago arrives.

Cotechino, a Northern Italian pork sausage flavoured with juniper, cloves and garlic, is the quintessential Italian New Year's Eve dish; stewed with lentils and served at midnight. I've eaten it every winter of my life, but only on New Year's, and never on an early autumn night in the ochre-hued Emilian hills, surrounded by edgy artwork.

Al Gatto Verde's cotechino is a square, ruby-like nugget with a crispy Japanese-style deep-fried crust, draped in a vibrant plum-coloured "dragon's blood" sauce. My fork glides through the buttery soft sausage. The bite is velvety and tart, and the familiar New Year's Eve flavours of pork and spices burst through the unexpected yet arresting smokiness.

Smoked. Slow-cooked. Flame-fired. Familiar. These are the dishes at Al Gatto Verde. But Massimo Bottura is right – this is not barbecue. At least, it's not American barbecue known for its smoked meats and carby sides, nor is it primal meat cooked over flame. Al Gatto Verde's Not Barbecue offerings are even a departure from the contemporary Modenese dishes developed in Bottura's three Michelin-star restaurant, Osteria Francescana, in his bistro, Franceschetta58, or for his culinary collaborations with Gucci and Enzo Ferrari.

Helmed by Casa Maria Luigia's Head Chef Jessica Rosval, Al Gatto Verde continues the Bottura tradition of dismantling conventional flavours while following a rigorous "no waste" policy. Like Osteria Francescana's iconic dish "Pasta Pesto in Abstract" – born when one of the osteria's chefs overcooked several kilos of spaghetti with pesto and, after Bottura challenged the staff to repurpose it, the pulpy pasta was fermented into miso and transformed into a zesty layered flan.

Not Barbecue evolved from Casa Maria Luigia's breakfast offering called – surprise – "Not Brunch". "We've been working with fire since we opened Casa Maria Luigia to recreate the breakfast my grandmother cooked when I was a kid on Christmas day," explained Bottura. "In 2020, when we reopened after lockdown, we created a special brunch."

The wildly popular brunch, called Tòla Dòlza – "take it easy" in Emilian dialect – uses a wood-burning oven, Tuscan grill and "Big Green Egg" charcoal smoker grill to produce a feast of fruits and vegetables, fluffy frittatas, focaccia and re-visited Emilian treats like sbrisolona (crumble pastry) deliciously topped with smoky cotechino and sweet zabaglione cream.

"From brunch to barbecue, the step was very short," said Bottura. Rosval began creating new Modenese dishes with barbecue-adjacent techniques, like roasting Bottura's signature Parmigiano sauce-bathed tortellini in the wood burning-oven just before serving to infuse them with the smokiness of chestnut wood and impart a delightful unexpected crunch. "We put together all these different contemporary techniques, and we've recreated the atmosphere of a barbecue," said Bottura. "In your palate, of course."

Casa Maria Luigia's idyllic country setting was, naturally, the perfect venue for the Not Barbecue concept. Since Bottura and his wife, Lara Gilmore – entrepreneur and president of Bottura's anti-foodwaste non-profit Food for Soul – opened the guesthouse in 2019, Modena's cab drivers have come to know the road well. "They're giving us lots of business," said my driver as we drove through rolling yellow hills towards the stately cream-colored villa.

The property originally consisted of an 18th-Century carriage house and has since incorporated the adjacent vineyards, surrounding structures and bucolic grounds on which now stand a swimming pool, tennis courts and Gilmore's thriving herb, vegetable and flower garden. As Gilmore led me past rosemary and wildflower bushes, she pointed out the smoky mint green colour of every wooden shutter and door. The colour is laced throughout the property, from the walls of the Music Room to the utility sheds to Al Gatto Verde's wood-burning oven.

"We named [the guesthouse] after Massimo's mother," explained Gilmore. "We decided not to call it Villa Maria Luigia but Casa. We wanted to indicate that this was a home away from home."

An extremely stylish home. Each of the 12 rooms is decorated with a mix of vintage and modern designer furniture and contemporary artworks by luminaries like Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia, and Ai Weiwei: country guesthouse meets interactive pop art installation. There are Murano glass chandeliers and frescoes on vaulted ceilings, the Music Room is lined with vinyl records to spin on the vintage record player, and the guest-accesible kitchen is stocked with sweet and savoury baked snacks made with produce from the garden.

The year 2022 saw the addition of Acetaia ML, a repurposing of the neighbouring 1960s acetaia (vinegar factory) where Bottura now produces artisanal balsamic vinegar made from the property's grapes for Villa Manodori, his line of condiments. The musty, oak-scented air is intoxicating as the tour guide leads me past designer Ingo Maurer's "Heart Attack" and through rooms of vintage wooden barrels, some dating back to 1910, some used to age sommelier Valentina Bardini's craft cocktails.

I'm finally ushered the few paces through Acetaia ML's courtyard to Al Gatto Verde, as guests stroll contentedly and staff filters through the open kitchen, hauling crates of late summer truffles and tending to the Big Green Egg. The industrial-chic restaurant itself is cosily-lit and livened by green wainscoting and mixed media art including Jack Pierson's "Fate". Every centimetre of Casa Maria Luigia is intentional, yet the vibe is incredibly chill and joyous.

With Bottura's penchant for "things that are not", it's unsurprising that as he and Rosval were developing Casa Maria Luigia's new restaurant, inspiration struck at a Mike Bidlo exhibit of the conceptual artist's 1980s replications of iconic

artworks.

"I saw 1982 Not Jackson Pollock. 1984 Not Frank Stella. 1983 Not Andy Warhol," said Bottura as we chatted outside the restaurant, where those three paintings are now displayed. "[I thought], Wow, this is amazing… because it's painted even better than those, like, technically. But conceptually it was incredibly interesting. I said, you know what? I'm gonna open Not Barbecue."

The restaurant's name was a lightning bolt, too, when Gilmore was smitten by a vintage photo of Enzo Ferrari's custom Ferrari in smoky sage green – "Casa Maria Luigia green". The photo had been taken at a local restaurant called Gatto Verde. Gilmore found that it still existed, and so did its sign: Albergo Ristorante Dancing (hotel, restaurant, dancing). "It was that spirit," explained Gilmore. "That playful 'anything-can-happen'."

"Al Gatto Verde is a state of mind," said Rosval. "That limitless potential to take ingredients that are still very deeply rooted in Modena and in Emilia Romagna. We don't want to put a title on it. So we just say what it's not. It's not a lot of things. But it's also a lot of other things."

It's smoky New Year's Eve sausage served 365 days a year. It's baking focaccia in a wood-burning oven so it puffs up and deflates as you pull apart its crackly surface to dredge it in baked ricotta, almond hummus and lard-laced pesto. It's stuffing a borlengo (Modenese flatbread crepe), with truffle parmesan sauce and grilled porcini that have been smoked to resemble Japanese bonito flakes.

There are dishes honouring Rosval's Canadian roots, like the "burnt ends" of her melt-on-your-fork Montreal smoked lamb leg and the "pasta arsa" made with dried-out pasta dough. The latter was conceived when Rosval became "obsessed" with dandan noodles – numbingly spicy, smoky Szechuan noodles topped with pork and peanuts.

She asked herself, what would happen if a Canadian made dandan noodles in Italy?

The answer: she'd scorch dried-out pasta, ferment seven Italian chillies, swap Southern Italian pistachios for the peanuts, then add short ribs flavoured with maple syrup, and, finally, a puree made from orange peels left over from fresh juice.

"No waste is the law," said Rosval.

No waste cooking is just part of Al Gatto Verde's sustainability initiatives. The roof features 85 kilowatt solar panels, and the specially-developed Mapei ceramic tiles allow the kitchen to recycle rainwater. The wood-burning oven, too, has been outfitted with a zero-pollution tank to reduce emissions.

"Being sustainable is about you," said Bottura. "You're in New York, you're in London, you're in Modena – being sustainable is in your mind. How you say good morning, how you treat employees. There's this big idea that high-end cuisine is not sustainable anymore. Actually, I'm here. Come see how I work. Just check what we are doing."

BBC.com's World's Table "smashes the kitchen ceiling" by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.

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