You want people to buy more tyres. How do you do that?
You get people to drive farther, and their tyres will need changing faster. That’s why Michelin – the tyre manufacturing company – came up with a restaurant guide where they started rating restaurants:
- One star: “A very good restaurant in its category”
- Two stars: “Excellent cooking, worth a detour”
- Three stars: “Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey”
Today, Michelin’s restaurant guides are more well known than their tyres. And one restaurant that wins three stars consistently year after year is Osteria Francescana. Started by a petroleum seller turned chef: Massimo Bottura.
Osteria Francescana has been rated as the world’s best restaurant twice. Situated in the small Italian town of Modena, people travel from all corners of the globe to dine there. It’s one restaurant that has truly caused the most wear and tear on tyres!
So what is Massimo Bottura’s secret?
Bottura set out to take some of the most traditional Italian dishes and recreate them in a new way. His process was two pronged and involved:
- Deconstruction +
- Reconstruction
Let’s deconstruct and reconstruct three of his most famous dishes.
Case study 1. Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano
Bottura took on a challenge. Can he create a dish with just one main ingredient? He chose Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and created a masterpiece out of it.
He played with the texture and presented the cheese as a sauce, as foam, as a crispy wafer, as cream, and as a hard shard. He played with the flavours where people experience everything from sweet to salty to nutty to spicy to umami.
But that’s not all. He went deeper. And played with the age as well. He took the same cheese which was aged differently: all the way from 24 month old to 50 month old cheese!
No one else before Bottura has experimented with a single ingredient so extensively. The dish was called the dish of the decade!
Bottura is a master of deconstruction. He takes a dish and deconstructs it so he understands each element of it.
This means isolating. Isolating the ingredients, the cooking methods, the textures and flavours. Deeper understanding comes from this process of isolation.
Case study 2. Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart!
One day, Bottura’s dessert chef dropped a lemon tart on the counter just before it was supposed to be sent out to be served. Service would now be delayed, and so the chef started profusely apologizing for his mistake.
Bottura stops him: “Don’t you see? This is perfect!” Bottura got another lemon tart made and dropped it to recreate the splash!
This “dropped” tart became one of the most copied desserts in the world!
Once you deconstruct and understand the elements, the job becomes to reconstruct them. But to reconstruct them with a splash. Reconstruct them in a way that wows people. Which means you have to provide the most amount of surprise and delight.
Alchemy of delight
Bottura’s whole idea is transformation. How can he transform old traditional dishes? How can he transform the way ingredients are used? How can he transform the experience people have in his restaurant?
To achieve this transformation, he constantly asks what-if? What-if is the magical phrase he uses to reconstruct wow. What if we made a dessert that tastes like sea? What if we made a dish that encapsulates Autumn? What if a kitchen mistake becomes the feature of a new dish?
What-if is the gateway to innovation. Because it liberates creative thinking. It allows you to push conventions and challenge assumptions. It allows you to mute your judgemental brain and see where pushed boundaries lead.
Case study 3. The crunchy part of the lasagna
Bottura asked what if the most sought after corner portion of the traditional lasagne was made the most prominent part?
So he decided to rethink the lasagna. He isolated the elements of a traditional lasagna: pasta, bechamel sauce, ragu, and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
And he then asked what-if. What if pasta isn’t soft but crisp crunchy like it gets in the corners of lasagna?
And then he brings it together with layering. First the layering for flavour: bechamel and ragu like a traditional lasagna. Then the layering for aroma: a crisp tuile of cheese. And finally, the layering for visual appeal: cooking the lasagna in a way where it seems like the corner piece. Each and every piece is sent out mimicking the corner piece that people crave.
Layering is intertwining and combining. It’s adding different isolated elements so that they belong together and create depth and a rich complexity. When you unfold these layers, the depth creates delight. And the complexity creates unpredictability which creates surprise. Its how you create wow.
By being meticulous in isolating, rethinking, and then layering each element, Bottura crafts a dish far surpassing the sum of its parts. That’s how he has created a restaurant that people will make a special journey for.
Action Summary:
- Isolate to understand each component of your work deeply.
- Ask What-If to challenge norms and think outside the box.
- Layer to add complexity and depth, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.
- By being meticulous and detailed in thinking through the 3 steps, you will elevate your product so it becomes better than its parts.