Wave goodbye to the January blues with a plateful of pasta instead. Carousel, London’s award-winning culinary hub, will be changing up its regular programming to host Murra, a pioneering chef residency series highlighting the best of Italian cuisine
Anything Italian is always a good idea. Taking place across the entire month with four different residencies, the new series aims to showcase the new wave of Italian cuisine.
Brought to London in partnership with Rome’s Cultivar Studio, Murra shines a light on the chefs who are changing the game in Italy; emerging talent finding new ways to interpret the country’s incredible culinary heritage, while still respecting the classics.
With over 300 guest chef residencies under its belt, the Murra series looks set to begin 2024 – Carousel’s tenth year – with a suitable bang.
1 Nino Rossi
QAFIZ | CALABRIA | 3 – 6 January
At QAFIZ, award-winning chef Nino Rossi and creative director Rossella Audino showcase local Calabrian ingredients through their creative and original dishes (think ‘glazed eel, ‘nduja and honey’; or ‘tubettoni, smoked potatoes, lobster bay emulsion, tropea onion’).
The Michelin-starred restaurant, tucked in Calabria’s breathtaking Aspromonte mountains, sources its produce from the restaurant’s own property, including extra-virgin olive oil, aromatic herbs, and vegetables. This results in cuisine that maintains solid relationships with the surrounding area through the dialogue between man and nature.
2 Luciano Monosilio
LUCIANO | ROME | 9 – 13 January
Known as the ‘King of Carbonara’, Luciano Monosilio has become the defining voice of contemporary Roman cooking, creating a bold new culinary dialect that’s rooted in the capital’s fiercely proud traditions.
Awarded his first Michelin star at the age of 27, Luciano worked his way up through Italy’s most garlanded kitchens, from Uliassi*** (no. 34 in the World’s 50 Best) to Piazza Duomo*** (no. 42), before opening the eponymous ‘Luciano – Cucina Italiana’ on Campo de’ Fiori.
The ‘next gen’ trattoria has its own micro-pastificio. The dried pasta that he produces onsite is of the highest order, and features regularly on his intuitive, often experimental menus alongside the likes of ‘Grilled Leek, Nori, Ricotta, Onion Agrodolce, Sun Dried Tomatoes’ and ‘Fassona Beef Tartare, Marrow, Saffron’.
3 Giglio
LUCCA | 16 – 20 January
At Giglio in the the Tuscan city of Lucca, three young friends – Benedetto Rullo, Lorenzo Stefanini and Stefano Terigi – serve up a progressive Italian cuisine combined that incorporates French techniques and the occasional use of international ingredients (a nod to their combined experience in some of the world’s best restaurants: Relæ, Copenhagen; Ryugin, Tokyo; and Les Solistes, Berlin).
Awarded a Michelin star in 2018, the restaurant – housed in an 18th century palazzo – offers a menu that changes quarterly with the seasons, ensuring they feature traditional dishes that also tie in with the territory.
4 Retrobottega
ROME | 23 – 27 January
Rome’s dark and sultry Retrobottega attracts a young and hip crowd, made up of a mix of Romans and international experience hunters who have at least one thing in common – their love of food and innovation.
Michelin starred Chefs Giuseppe Lo Iudice and Alessandro Miocchi push culinary boundaries through their dishes, emphasising seasonality, creativity, and traditional regional ingredients that they forage themselves in fields and forests just outside the city.
They also host a guest series of their own, ‘Sabotage’, which featured Carousel’s own Ollie Templeton and Jose Lizarralde Serralde in November 2023, cooking favourites from the Carousel Wine Bar menu.
Make it happen
Where: 19-23 Charlotte Street Fitzrovia, London, W1T 1RL
How: Book via carousel-london.com
