A day at Bordo, from first delivery to last table

One Thursday, start to finish

Restaurants are usually described by what arrives at the table. Less is said about the eighteen hours that make it possible. This is an ordinary Thursday at Bordo, told in the order it happens.

The day begins well before anyone sits down to eat. At six the kitchen is lit and quiet, and the first job is to check what has arrived. Everything that follows depends on how carefully this hour is spent.

The fish arrives before the street is awake. A driver from the south coast hands over crates of turbot and langoustines, and Chef Matteo Rossi opens each lid himself. Anything that is not perfect goes back in the van.

Vegetables come next, then the bread, then a small box from Piedmont that nobody is allowed to open until it is on the pass.

The morning delivery, sorted on the pass before the kitchen wakes.

By nine the energy in the room has changed. The ovens are hot, the stocks are simmering and the two cooks at the pasta table have settled into their rhythm, the sound of the rolling pin carrying across the kitchen.

Two cooks flour the long table and begin with eggs, flour and nothing else. By eleven there are tagliatelle, ravioli and rigatoni for the day. None of it is kept overnight, and none of it is made by machine.

Why by hand

A hand-rolled sheet has a rougher surface, and sauce clings to it in a way that is easy to taste and hard to explain. It is also slower, which is rather the point.

Noon is when the building quietly changes gear. Delivery crates are cleared, the cellar is opened and the dining room is set for the evening, with every table checked against the booking list one more time.

Downstairs, Elena Marchetti decants the evening’s first bottles and walks the cellar with a small notebook. Upstairs, the room is laid by hand: linen pressed, glasses polished one at a time, candles trimmed.

The cellar, mid-morning.

The room, an hour before service.

There is also a layer of work that guests never see. Allergies are noted and checked twice, birthdays are written beside the right table, and every waiter is briefed on who is coming and what they are likely to want.

The seating plan is rewritten three times a day. Allergies are checked twice. A note from the previous visit, perhaps a favourite wine, perhaps a table by the window, is passed to every waiter before the doors open.

At eight the doors open and the first guests arrive. From here the day belongs to service, and everything prepared since dawn is called upon at once, one plate after another, with as little fuss as possible.

This is the part everyone remembers, and the part that depends on everything above. The kitchen goes quiet in the way a theatre does when the lights dim. Orders are called, plates are checked, and each dish leaves the pass only when the chef nods.

Plating the last courses of the evening.

Midnight is quieter, but not finished. The last tables are cleared, the stock is started for tomorrow and the kitchen is wiped down inch by inch. Only when every surface is clean do the cooks go home.

By the time the final guests leave, the kitchen has been working for eighteen hours. The pasta table is scrubbed, the stock is started for tomorrow, and a small plate is set out for the staff. Then the lights go down and the whole thing begins again at six.