The Spirit of the Supper Club

[Cadrega - Italian Supper Club]

What is the first thing you offer a guest? A chair, or “Cadrega” in Milanese dialect.
The idea of joining the growing movement of underground restaurants came after a birthday dinner in a famous “three stars” venue in London. Coming home after a marvellous meal we were both thinking: “it was really a great experience, but so distant from the homemade ravioli we had last night…”
Was our home cooking better than that famous chef? Surely not. It was simply different and this is of course the pure spirit of the supper club. We are not professionals and we doubt you will ever see us on Masterchef. The idea is not to compete with proper restaurants and prepare extraordinary food with amazing presentations, but to offer great quality and genuine simple dishes that you would not be able to buy anywhere.
We like the idea of inviting new people to try out some of our favourite dishes, cooked with passion and dedication, using the very finest ingredients without any shortcuts or compromises, exactly like we normally do when we cook for each other at home.
We use the freshest organic ingredients and buy fruits, vegs, meats and fish in places like Borough market, Applebee’s, The Ginger Pig, La Fromagerie, Brindisa and Peck in Milan. We bake and prepare pastas using organic flour delivered from our region, Lombardia. We prepare sauces with our own conserve produced in a sunny courtyard of Brianza by our family every year between the 10th and the 15th of August, whenever the right lorry with the right tomatoes lands from Puglia. We get olive oil delivered from Trevi in Umbria and rice from Vercelli, in Piemonte.
Food can be one of the greatest pleasures in life, but (in our view) only when it is good. We are indeed very fussy eaters (one of us in particular… You would never wish to have him as a guest for dinner!) However that means particular care and passion when preparing our own food. This passion and our culinary traditions are exactly what we intend to share with our guests, while sitting on the “Cadrega”.