CICCIO SULTANO
Having the fortune to bask in his name - one of international recognition and respect – the work of Copystudio became one of defending originality. Nomen omen, as the Latins would have said: a name is a privilege, a name is a destiny. Thus was born the decision to combine three elements, three signs that together would singularly define Sultano’s personality. Wheat, oil, and salt. All of the rest resides in a fourth element, at once present and invisible: the wind. Leaving aside the easy seductions of exoticism, or worse, of folklore, and added another level of concreteness giving way to the brand’s emblem: the signature of Ciccio Sultano, nakedly handwritten, a stark sound of five syllables. All of which aligns in a calculated theory, a culmination both existential and professional, insinuated by a formula used by another great exponent of Italian cuisine: form is material, and material is form. The power of Ciccio’s cuisine unfailingly translates into knowledge and consciousness. Every day, we set out to create the extraordinary from the ordinary, from roots and seasons that in Sicily are like authentic gifts. His perfect culinary approach that blends tradition and innovation; traditional cuisine of Sicily and passion for Sicilian produce… “Taking the past and transforming it into the present. Imagining this transformation up until the point that you identify the recipes of the past with the same spiritual predisposition with which you listen to a fairy tale. In short, bringing them to life, assimilating them and then, of course, translating them into a personal and contemporary language. Tradition is none other than yesterday’s innovation, in a process that is constantly repeated. I have always compared the meeting between tradition and innovation to the way the land and the sea caress each other. The point at which they touch is the shoreline. To do something truly new, you have to know how to betray tradition while underlining it. As a chef, my job is to walk barefoot on the shore.
146 - WG January 2019
OSTRICA DI CAMPO