24 Hours at the #1 Restaurant in the World

I am spending the next 24 hours at the number one restaurant in the world. We're having breakfast, lunch, and dinner here, and staying in the chef's home away from home. It's a world of culinary fantasy, pop culture, art, sports cars, and music, and we're gonna take a little peek into the mind of one of the most famous chefs in the world. I am so excited, you have no idea. We are in Modena, the land of fast cars and slow food. It's the home of Ferrari and Lamborghini, but also Parmigiano-Reggiano and some of the best-aged balsamic vinegar in the world. But even with all of these amazing things, there is one man to represent Modena, and that is Chef Massimo Bottura. Massimo is the chef behind Osteria Francescana, which was number one in the world twice and holds three Michelin stars. He's created iconic dishes like Oops, I Dropped the Lemon Tart, the crunchy part of the lasagna, and beautiful psychedelic spin-painted veal, but today, his reach goes far beyond that. Him and his wife, Lara, have built the Francescana group with restaurants all around the world, and even in Modena, they have a bunch. So in the next 24 hours, we're, of course, going to go to Osteria Francescana, but we're also going to stay at his boutique hotel called Casa Maria Luigia, which, by the way, is insane, visit their more casual restaurant, Franceschetta 58, and their newest restaurant, Al Gatto Verde, and at the very end, we're going to have a very special surprise. It's gonna be a ton of food, so to prepare for that, we're gonna need a three Michelin star breakfast. The breakfast spread was impressive, to say the least, but there was actually a good reason for that. We start with the heavy breakfast from the childhood of Massimo. This one is like his spirit from the grandmother's meal, special buffet during the Christmas day. And it definitely was like Christmas morning, but it was also a little bit overwhelming. Gnocco fritto, super traditional fried dough, goes with the mortadella, and we put ricotta on top. Oh my God. I loved how savory this breakfast was, and you kind of already get a sense of how much each dish means to Massimo. Before we went to lunch, Laura wanted to show me one of the projects that's near and dear to their heart, called Tortellante. We started this about six years ago. This is an actual working pasta lab, but it is also about rehabilitation, teaching young people on the autistic spectrum not only how to make tortellini, but how to run a business, get some out of the house, they're in a safe place, they're in a place where they're learning, growing. What they're doing here is incredible, and I personally love chefs that go beyond the reach of the restaurant, because they have so much ability to make impact in the world. Our next destination was Franceschetta 58, their more casual restaurant, where we tried their I Heart Modena tasting menu. As you can tell, Massimo loves the city that he grew up in. Also, this is their most affordable tasting menu, with their eight-course menu costing just 74 euros. So if you're in Modena and want to try some of Massimo's cooking without paying those really expensive prices, this might be the place to go. We started off with a local seafood dish topped with sauce made from turnip tops and trout eggs. The trout eggs gave this little burst of saltiness, and the warming sauce from the turnip tops really just rounded out that dish. Then we got a couple fun dishes. The first was a monkfish served on a skewer with marjoram, with a really rich and tender fish that contrasted nicely with the bright and almost sweet marjoram. The second dish was called leek, leek, leek, which was actually a pretty descriptive name. These dishes to me are different in the consistency of the leek, starting from the marinated one, then we do have a broth of roasted leek, then on the top, a marinade made out of leeks and dust of leek itself. Needless to say, it was an explosion of leeks. This was followed by a potato gnocchi dish that was layered with a roasted potato sauce, and the texture of the gnocchi was spot on. Perfectly light and fluffy with just a little bit of that chewiness that we all love. There was a calf's head salad. Honestly, I've never had calf's head before, and it was served with this sauce that was sweet and cut through the richness and the fattiness of the calf's head beautifully. But the next dish was the one that I was waiting for. Tortellini from Tortellante, which is where we were visiting right before this with a Parmigiano-Reggiano cream sauce. It's such a simple dish, and yet it was packed full of flavor. Creamy, salty, savory, but perfectly balanced, and I wish I had more. Oh my goodness. The filling is delicious, and the cheese sauce adds that beautiful, beautiful creaminess to it. We finished the mains with a pig from the Emilia-Romagna region called Mora Romagnola, and for dessert, we had a fun play on cacio e pepe with this dessert pasta called cacio e pere that was made with pears, cinnamon, and black pepper. I genuinely didn't know how I was gonna survive the rest of the day because that casual lunch was so much food, and if the food is already that good, I can't even imagine what Osteria Francescana will be like. I needed a break between lunch and dinner, so I decided that it was a good time to explore Massimo and Lara's home away from home, Casa Maria Luigia, and it's one of the coolest places I've ever been. Casa Maria Luigia is their boutique hotel which has 15 rooms and two different restaurants which we'll be visiting, but more than that, it's their collection of art and music and all the little things that inspire them. So here's our little speed tour of the place. The property has gardens, a pool, tennis courts. The rooms are beautiful, and in typical Modenese fashion, they're stocked with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, of course. They even have an acciattaia on property where they produce their own balsamic vinegar, and you guessed it, there's art hanging in here too. But the absolute coolest part of this entire property is this garage that I stumbled upon called Massimo's Playground. There's music and there's art and there's his cars and his motorbikes, and it's just like this garage of all the things that he collects. This is also the gym. This guy's just chilling, but I definitely thought he was real too. One of his motorbikes has his signature and three Michelin stars on it. Massimo and Lara have basically curated this little art gallery for guests to see, and it was really interesting to experience. There's a room that is filled with vinyls that is purely just dedicated to listening to music. They've got all the jazz classics, and honestly, I want a room like this in my house in the future. In just a little bit, we're going to see how all of this art and music influences his cooking and hear from the man himself, but first, we're going to try their newest restaurant on the property, Al Gatto Verde, for dinner. We're taking a step up to their 140-euro tasting menu dinner created by Jessica Roswaal and her team. She worked at Osteria Francescana for five years before coming to Casa Maria Luigia. We started with a super hydrated focaccia that was served with a modernese pesto, a little local ricotta, and an almond hummus with cedar tip oil. Every topping was perfect. One's a bit sweeter, one's a bit more savory, and it was the perfect start to this meal. Next, we had not a mussel. It's the reconstruction of a mussel, but without the mussel. It's made with a blue crab, scallop, shrimp, cuttlefish baked in the oven, and served with this sauce that is made with a burned apple and lightly smoked creme fraiche. After this, we had a delicious porcini borlengo with 36-month-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and a cottuccino with dragon's blood, or in this case, hibiscus. It was sweet, sour, and smoky all at the same time, and was just kind of this flavor bomb on your tongue. The concept here is about live-fire cooking, and the next two dishes really embraced that. A Montreal lamb with pera mostarda and a burnt-ends bread, which was this big chunk of meat that was cut through really well by the pera mostarda. Then a burnt pasta that was cooked like a risotto with some beef short rib, sweet and spicy pistachio, and maple syrup because the head chef is Canadian. We finished the night with this absolutely gorgeous rose that was made with charcoal, caviar, raspberry, rose, and seawater. And it's one of the first desserts that I've had that literally hits every single flavor note. It was a great dinner with really bold flavors that prepared us well for our big day tomorrow, dining at Osteria Francescana, meeting Massimo himself, and a pretty big surprise afterwards. Osteria Francescana is one of the restaurants that I've wanted to visit the most. Ever since I saw that first Chef's Table episode with Massimo, I knew I had to come here. Massimo is known for completely reinventing Italian cooking, taking deeply-rooted traditions and evolving them. And in doing so, he's become one of the most famous chefs in the world. So without further ado, let's experience the number one restaurant in the world. The meal started with a collection of small bites, a green olive, caper, and Modenese pesto macaroon, a crispy quinoa chip with venison and beetroot tartare, porcini mushrooms, and truffle powder. But the last bite was the coolest of the bunch. Last bite, visually a dessert, a donut that is filled with the carbonara pasta ingredients. And just when they drop off the next dishes, in the distance, I hear, Genta! That is the perfect encapsulation of Massimo, just this ball of energy that is so authentically himself. He came, chatted for a few minutes, and then went back to work. We'll see him again in a bit, but before he left, he described the next dish. Potato wants to be a truffle. Potato that is cooked in truffle and hazelnut juice. Then, dehydrator, powder. We create a sourdough with the potato flours, boil it, bake it, cut it, fill it, and truffle on top. The next few dishes all focused on color, starting with camouflage soud, which was a combination of broccoli flan with fava bean, parsley, and beetroot cream, topped with chicory, anchovies, and toasted bread. After this, we had two monochromatic dishes. This orange dish was a fatty fish called a barracks, which was stuffed with pumpkin, topped with mustard, and then served with a pumpkin sauce. The crunchiness from the skin, the fish is really nice and tender. There's a little bit of sweetness from that sauce. One of the best fish dishes I've had in my life. And this black dish was meant to elevate simple ingredients. They used a fregola pasta with lentils and cuttlefish ink to look like caviar, and served it with a mantis shrimp and blue crab broth with roasted eel inside. It was an unexpected seafood dish, but with really powerful flavors there. Next up, we had to play a guessing game on whether this dish was tortellini or a dumpling. Mm, it really does toe that line between tortellini and dumpling quite well. That's impressive. This was followed by a dish called mille folie de folie, which means a thousand layers of leaves. It was fried sweetbreads on the bottom, a foam of roasted potatoes, and all these different leaves made from celeriac, sunchoke, and maple. And to finish the mains, we had a dish that was about the fight against food waste, because all of the different parts of the pigeon are used in this one dish. There's a roasted pigeon breast, the reconstructed leg with crispy quinoa on the outside, roasted potato with crispy pigeon skin chips, and a sauce that uses all the other parts of the pigeon. And from mains to desserts, we move from pigeon to pig? This was one of the most fun dishes on the menu, called This Little Piggy Went to the Market, which was a chocolate pudding with a sauce on top made from pig's liver and dark chocolate. Whoa, that's probably the coolest dish on the menu so far. This next dessert was a milk dish filled with dulce de leche, topped with crispy milk skins, and then sprayed with the essence of grass. And to finish the meal, we had a dish called Bread is Gold. Our bread, it's a fake bread, and it's filled with a classic zabaglione cream and panettone. Panettone is a bread variant. So we are serving panettone mousse, in this case with candy orange, raisins, and almond. Really sweet and delicious, and just a perfect dessert. Like when you think of a dessert, this is a dessert that you think of. Every dish was beautiful, a work of art, and tasted incredible. It's a 325 euro menu, so it will cost you a pretty penny, but 100%, Osteria Francescana should be at the top of all of your bucket lists. But do you remember those dishes that I showed you at the beginning? Oops, I dropped the lemon tart, the crunchy part of the lasagna, the beautiful psychedelic spin painted veal. I didn't have any of those. But lucky for me, Massimo and Lara had one last huge surprise for me, which was dinner at Francescana at Casa Maria Luigia. We're past the 24 hours at this point, but I think we'll make an exception. We got to try the famous dishes. I was so excited. It's a 330 euro menu, a communal dining experience with an open kitchen, and Massimo and Lara themselves are here to do some storytelling about these famous dishes. In a way, it's a time capsule. Every night, we share our most iconic dishes, and so this was an opportunity also to be transparent, to show you how we work, show you how we do things. And both Lara and Massimo are much better storytellers than I am, so I'm actually gonna let them walk you through this menu, because it is a truly special experience. Mont St. Michel is an oyster shell with a lamb tartare. These animals are called presale. They are grazing on the salt marshes of Normandy. Massimo listens to music, and this one particular time, he had got out a record by Thelonious Monk, but he started playing with black on black as a color, as a color palette for this dish. Massimo said, but when I was growing up, my mother made risotto, and risotto was the way that I would understand the ingredients. I created this dish in 1993, so I pick one ingredient, and I transform the ingredient in five different ingredients. My grandmother was coming in with big pan of the lasagna in the middle of the table. There was a moment that me and my brothers, we were fighting over the crunch part. The rest was for the adults. We went all the way to the Verrocchio in King's Cross, because we had heard rumors that there was this huge round painting by Damien Hirst, and there were these swirling colors, amazing colors, and he decided that all the side dishes of that filet that he was gonna serve were all gonna be pureed like the Damien Hirst painting. Definitely one of the most beautiful dishes I've ever seen in my life. It was New York, beautiful, sunny day, and Massimo started thinking of that classic song, "'Autumn in New York." One Saturday night, one of the lemon tarts get passed to the waiter, and it falls and cracks on the floor. Massimo walked in, and he saw this big mess. It's the most beautiful thing that you have ever made, because we do not celebrate Southern Italy for its perfection. We celebrate Southern Italy for its imperfection. This was exactly what I was waiting for, but even for this surprise dinner, there was still one last surprise at the end of the meal. Can you guess what it is? What does Massimo love the most in this world? Drum roll, please. The tortellini again. It's a perfectly fitting end to a perfectly beautiful experience. If you wanna see more of the craziest food from around the world, definitely subscribe below, but for now, I'll see you later.