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Guest Chef - Villaggio
DINING & ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - JULY 2003
Guest Chef - Villaggio
Villaggio's Mark Connor
Mark Connor, 39, a native of Oxford, England, came to The Bahamas in October, 2001, to start Ristorante Villaggio. A year in the planning, the restaurant was designed to be like one he knew in Istanbul with a New York/Italian theme. It exudes class.
Connor spent five years working as a chef in Italy, but much of his culinary experience has been aboard cruise liners and his kitchen is designed as a cruise ship galley, with self cleaning ovens and hoods.
?The level of cuisine on cruise ships rivals that of high class restaurants around the world,? says Connor.
While studying catering and culinary management at Westminster College in London, he became an apprentice chef at the Spread Eagle Hotel in Witham, England and then moved to London hotels, including a two-and-a-half year stint as chef de patrie at the Grosvenor House Hotel in fashionable Mayfair. He was tutored and supervised by internationally acclaimed chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, creator of the Ocean Club?s elite Dune restaurant on Paradise Island.
Connor then moved to the Marriott in Grosvenor Square, London, for a winter season, a summer aboard Cunard?s Queen Elizabeth II and another winter at the Grosvenor as senior chef de patrie.
For the next five years he honed his skills in upscale eateries around the world, including the Newstead Hotel in Paget, Bermuda, the Viola Restaurant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, cruising the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and South America as executive chef aboard Ocean Cruise Lines ships, Ramada Renaissance restaurants at Los Angeles Airport and Times Square, New York, and aboard the Orient Cruise Line?s Marco Polo.
Global experience
From late 1994 until the fall of 1997 Connor and a partner owned and operated an 80-seat open-kitchen restaurant in Trento in Northern Italy. He then spent a winter as consulting executive chef at the Dorsett Regency in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
For the next two years Connor cruised the Mediterranean, Black Sea, South America, Antarctica, the Pacific Ocean and Africa aboard the Marco Polo and served as senior executive chef in the relaunching of the Orient Lines? Crown Odyssey.
All that experience comes together in the multi-coloured tile galley of Villaggio where Chef Mark and general manager Dario Cecchini combine their talents to transform a meal into a dining experience.
Here are two antipasti dishes from Connor?s galley.
Pan seared scallops
(serves 4)
1 lb scallops
Olive oil
Salt & white pepper
1?2 small lemon
Sauce
Veal stock
2 tbsp port wine for raisins
1?2 cup port wine
1 tsp unsalted butter
Juice from 1?2 small lime
24 raisins
Pine nuts, toasted
Purée
1?4 cauliflower, chopped
1 tbsp onion, finely chopped
Pinch of saffron (10 strands)
Sage
1?2 cup chicken stock
2 tsp butter
Salad
Baby hydroponic lettuce
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt
1 thin slice smoked back bacon (pancetta)
Fresh chives
Soak raisins in 2 tbsp port wine overnight. Sauté cauliflower with onion, sage and saffron in covered pan with 1 tsp butter. When onions are translucent and cauliflower is soft, add chicken stock. Remove lid and reduce until it becomes a soft purée. Taste, season and fold in remaining tsp butter. Set aside.
Bake pancetta in oven until crispy and brittle. Break into small pieces and set aside.
Reduce 1?2 cup port wine until almost evaporated, add 1 cup veal stock and reduce by half. Add 1 tsp butter, salt and pepper to taste and lime juice.
Dry scallops with a paper towel. Lightly season with salt, pepper and 1?2 small lemon. Heat pan until very hot. With a tissue, dab a little olive oil on scallops (not in pan). Fry for approx 45 seconds each side or until outside is crispy.
Spray lettuce with lemon juice and olive oil and place in centre of plate. arrange scallops and cauliflower puree around salad. Place broken pancetta in purée. Drizzle 1 tsp of sauce over each scallop. Scatter drunken (soaked) raisins, freshly toasted pine nuts and chives over dish.
Chef?s note: The cauliflower puree and buttery scallops along with the richness of the port wine sauce create an interesting contrast.
Atlantic lobster salad
(serves 4)
Court bouillon
2 leeks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3 onions, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
2 fennel bulbs, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3 litres water
1 sprig each: thyme, parsley basil and tarragon
1 tbsp sea salt
2 lemons, sliced
4 star anise
1 ounce white wine
Boil and simmer 30 mins, strain through muslin.
Salad
4 small crawfish tails
2 mangoes ? just ripe
3 tbsp classic vinaigrette
51?2 oz baby spinach leaves
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Bring the court bouillon to a gentle boil, then drop in crawfish tails. Poach them gently for 5-6 mins. Remove from heat and allow to cool a little in the bouillon.
When cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the shells in one piece and return to the bouillon. When cold, remove and drain.
Peel and dice the mangoes. Toss with half the vinaigrette.
Toss the spinach in the remaining vinaigrette and season with the salt and pepper. Arrange the spinach in the centres of plates.
Scatter mango over the spinach. Slice crawfish and arrange on top.
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