Rivoli | Food Design

The cutting edge of culinary research may take a little finding. It’s at the top of a steep hill some 20 km outside Turin, in a castle. You’ll need your Sat Nav.

Yet the unlikely named Combal.Zero restaurant, in the lofty setting ofRivoli Castle and its Museum of Modern Art, is the laboratory where chef Davide Scabin perfects his methods and refines his results in the science, and art, of food design.

Internationally acknowledged, Scabin‘s talent has unfolded over 20 years of planned experiments with ingredients, colours, shapes, textures and temperatures. It demands strictly calculated rhythms of preparation and service, with almost manic attention to detail and carefully choreographed working and dining models.

So a far cry from the rustic tradition that abounds all over Italy. Scabin has evolved a distinctive, apparently simple style. At Combal.Zero, in the long glass-sided dining space in the castle grounds, food is contemporary and creative, very elegant; the menu unconventional and even ironic. Be surprised.

The restaurant made 28th position among the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants this year, has a couple of Michelin stars and three forks from the Gambero Rosso. Out of the way but not unnoticed.