Simone Tondo, esthete chef with simple pleasures

When he worked alongside Swedish chef Petter Nilsson at La Gazzetta, a former restaurant in 12^e district of Paris, Simone Tondo admired the elegance of her boss, who had the habit of tying a Dries Van Noten scarf around his neck before getting into the kitchen. The young Italian, who had just arrived in Paris, found there a vision of the profession as he had always been looking for, cooking mingling with all the other pleasures of life. “Art, music, fashion, football…” smiles the chef, now 35 years old.

A certain idea of ​​style which defines that of the Sardinian, Parisian since 2009, passed on to other aesthetes: Carlo Cracco in Milan, very famous in Italy, Mauro Colagreco in Menton, and Giovanni Passerini in Paris. But, since 2017, Simone Tondo has been at the helm of Racines, in the confidential passage of Panoramas, in the 2^e borough. The address is small, around thirty seats on the ground floor and a private room for six seats located upstairs.

The atmosphere is warm, as is the food. Simone Tondo defines places as follows: “A pretty place, where there are beautiful people, with simple things, more and more simple in fact,” he summarizes. You can meet the actors Vincent Lacoste and William Lebghil, or even the director Wes Anderson, seated in front of his dishes, mainly from Piedmontese cuisine (“the one that the French know best and love”), notably vitello tonnato (thin slices of veal topped with a tuna sauce).

This taste for simplicity, he says, comes from his childhood spent in Sardinia, in a village in the heights of the island, and from “feeling of insularity”. He cites the Genoese architect Renzo Piano, for whom the sea, when you grow up facing it, is as much “an advantage rather than a limitation” : “It forces you to stimulate yourself, to get out of your comfort zone. » What Simone Tondo is doing in Paris.

Here, it is happy to see the appetite of tourists, of Parisians “and even Italians” for his cuisine, satisfied that quality transalpine products are more accessible than a few years ago – the pastificio Local (“pasta makers”) find favor in his eyes, as does the fresh ricotta produced in the Paris region. He never ceases to love the French capital, the atmosphere of the city, its old cafes where hard-boiled eggs are served, its Japanese restaurants… “I often feel like I’m in a movie. »A lovely film, with beautiful people and simple things.