The house

A monastery kept quiet, and a kitchen kept slow.

In silence

the way the building has been used for five centuries

We keep the rhythm the building was built for: rise early, work in silence, let the season decide, and serve only what the day can honestly give.

Reale lives in a monastery raised above a river valley, where the walls are thick, the windows are narrow, and the light arrives one hour at a time. We cook the produce of these high pastures with a patient and unhurried hand. Little is added and much is left alone, so that a single ingredient can be heard in a quiet room.

First light on the monastery wall above the valley

We begin in the dark, before the valley wakes.

Restraint

We add as little as the dish will allow. What is left out is part of the cooking.

Light

We follow the windows through the day and let the room set its own pace.

The building

We keep the house as we found it, and cook the way its quiet asks us to.

Marco Vitale grew up in the valley below the monastery and learned the kitchen from the women of his family before the great rooms of Rome and Turin.

He returned to the mountains to cook slowly again. His cooking is austere by choice, built on mountain lamb, wild herbs, aged pecorino and the saffron of the plateau, and finished with restraint rather than flourish.

Marco Vitale

Chef and keeper of the house

Five centuries of the same quiet.

1503

The cloister is raised on the rock above the river, built for a small and quiet order.

1866

The order leaves the valley, and the rooms keep their silence for a century.

2002

The old kitchen is lit again, and Reale opens with a single table.

Today

A small house inside the stone, holding the same hours and the same quiet.

The few hands that keep the house.