Bonifacio Between Art and Fine Dining: the De Renava Biennale and Finestra
From the works of Nimu Dormi to chef Edoardo Menna’s dishes, a journey through the Corsican town’s contemporary art, landscape and Michelin-starred cuisine.
Bonifacio, in Corsica, is a town with a distinctive charm, with its lively harbour and the remains of its medieval citadel, founded in the ninth century and later embellished by the Genoese, perched on a promontory of white limestone.
Among its attractions are the King of Aragon’s Staircase, 187 ancient steps carved directly into the cliff, and the Bastion de l’Etendard, the highest in France, dating back to the thirteenth century. In the heart of the Strait of Bonifacio lies the archipelago of the wild, granite Lavezzi Islands.
In the harbour of Bonifacio, fine dining becomes an experience that plays with shapes and colours through the presentation of the dishes and the skilful hands of young Tuscan chef Edoardo Menna. Finestra has earned a Michelin star, thanks not only to its flavours but also to the experience the chef brings to the table, having built relationships with the local community and sought out exceptional local produce to combine with his own roots.
Meanwhile, making our way up through the town, we find works across several venues that make up the third edition of the Bonifacio Biennale. This year, the exhibition is conceived as a series of acts in an opera. The selected works are primarily videos and installations.
The Bonifacio Art Biennale, conceived by the Corsican team De Renava
Nimu Dormi is the title of the third edition of the Biennale organised by the De Renava association.
Prisca Meslier, founder and curator of the Corsican biennial, invites us to imagine what might happen during a night when an entire community stays awake. Night has a secret magic that encourages people to reconnect with their wilder side, come together, celebrate and step outside their comfort zone.
Turandot orders the people of Beijing to stay awake and discover the identity of the foreign prince. Calaf himself urges the princess, tormented by love, not to close her eyes, for at dawn every shadow and every mystery will be dispelled.
The title evokes the idea of a watchful community, capable of reclaiming the present. In particular, occasions for celebration become spaces of freedom, transgression and social transformation, where a community can lower its inhibitions while experimenting with new practices and forms of democratic expression. It is a return to the public square, to exchange and dialogue. The exhibition spans five historic sites across the Corsican town, including buildings and spaces that are not normally open to the public: the Impluvium, the Cisterna, Caserma Montlaur, Palazzu Publicu and L’Agorà.
The Biennale unfolds like an opera: Overture, Prelude, Acts and Triumph. Celebration is explored as a laboratory for change, in which bodies, images and sounds challenge the established order and open up new possibilities for connection. At L’Agorà, a former nightclub that closed in 1993, Nervous by Adel Abdessemed brings together video, song and Corsican identity through the prayer Dio vi salvi Regina. In the Prelude, works by Niki Danai Chania and Alex Foxton introduce nocturnal and ritual dimensions, combining rave imagery with references to spirituality. At the Cisterna, Tony Regazzoni evokes the culture of Italian nightclubs in the 1970s, while at the Palazzu, Pussy Riot bring political protest and dissent to the fore, even putting their personal safety at risk in the name of ideals and justice.
The journey continues with the soundscape of Ghjuvan Petru Graziani and Rinatu Coti, creators of Corsica Humana à Ribella, and with reflections on cyclical time and the Dionysian dimension.
Finally, at Caserma Montlaur, the Triumph brings together different artistic languages around the idea of celebration as an arena and a possible escape from the established order: a ligne de fuite, in Deleuze’s sense of the term. Philippe Caamano, a young Corsican artist, transforms 35 illuminated blocks recovered from the military building into a system of Morse code signals. Mode 2 connects Jamaican rhythms and punk, dance and physical proximity. The power of dance returns in the work of Brazilian performer Puma Camillê: Rhythm of Resistance brings together resistance, the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights, voguing and capoeira. Anri Sala reflects on how war can leave deep trauma, transforming the way people experience communal moments. Mark Leckey, in Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), explores the power of images and music to shape collective memories, moving through British subcultures and revealing the social and political dimensions of the dance floor. Completing the exhibition is Vanessa Beecroft with VB48 (2001), documentation of a seven-hour performance featuring semi-nude Black women, conceived in the context of the G8: the female body, exposed yet steadfast in holding its position, becomes a vehicle for tension and power. These different works share an ability to examine the public sphere, celebration and social gatherings as spaces that reveal conflicts and desires while accelerating processes of transformation.
VB52, by Vanessa Beecroft, video recording of a performance at Castello di Rivoli, 2003, Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan – Naples.
Finestra, the Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking the harbour
We are in the belly of a ship—or perhaps we can imagine ourselves in the belly of a whale, like Pinocchio. The keel is in full view, and two golden propellers, plated with up to 22-carat gold, turn gently overhead. On one of the shorter walls, a crescent-shaped window gives the restaurant its name. On the opposite wall, an anamorphic mirror, “le miroir martelé”, reflects and distorts the sea and the masts of the boats resting in the harbour, while a shelf displaying spirits and magnum bottles echoes the window’s semicircular shape. Located on the second floor of a narrow building, the restaurant occupies what was once a Genoese shipyard. Gardera-Pastre is the architectural duo behind its striking interior, creating an intimate dining room where the ochre walls complement the oak tables set for 25 guests.
At the helm is Edoardo Menna, 31, from Montespertoli, who already has considerable experience behind him. Among the experiences he recalls most fondly is his time alongside Luciano Zazzeri of La Pineta in Marina di Bibbona, at his game-focused restaurant, La Locanda del Sole.
He went on to join Alain Ducasse’s kitchen brigade aboard the first boat with a fine-dining restaurant on the Seine, and worked alongside Martino Ruggeri in Yannick Alléno’s restaurants.
Finestra brings together Italy and Corsica, drawing on the encounters between chefs Italo Bassi and Edoardo Menna and local fishers, producers and craftspeople.
The kitchen reflects the rhythm of the seaside town, as is evident from the restaurant’s website, where five videos introduce the relationships, places and ideas behind the dishes: from Danza dei pesci, with its half-past-seven appointment with the fishers, to a visit to the market in Inventario del marinaio and a stop at the famous Cafe Nicois in the upper town, followed by L’Equipaggio è sul ponte, in which the entire kitchen brigade tastes the dishes to be served at dinner, and finally Coup de feu en Cuisine, the busiest moment of cooking and service.
The tasting menu begins with a welcome offering: a trio of fried pasta, a tribute to Italy. “The canapés are our reinterpretations of three classic pasta dishes. Pasta alla norma becomes a fried raviolo filled with ricotta and aubergine caviar, topped with roasted ricotta. The farfalla with cream and salmon becomes a puffed farfalla with horseradish cream, trout roe and chives. Cacio e pepe becomes puffed calamarata with a cream of Sardinian pecorino with truffle and black pepper.”
The amuse bouche—literally, “mouth amuser”, a small tasting associated with nouvelle cuisine and served before the main courses—takes another Italian classic as its starting point. Jeu autour des pizzas features a margherita pizza crostino, a delicate leaf-shaped biscuit with the classic ingredients of a marinara, and focaccia in liquid form. The latter is served as a small shot containing focaccia extract, topped with a skewer of 24-month-aged Parma ham. The tasting-menu dishes follow.
In spring, the chef imagines dishes inspired by flowers, herbs and the green of the fields. In summer, the star ingredient is fish, accompanied by the heady aromas of fruit and herbs such as basil, marjoram and mint; autumn brings pumpkin, mushrooms and herbs such as thyme, rosemary and wild fennel.
The Autumn Menu (€115) is conceived as a retreat into the island’s hinterland and is divided into three “courses”.
Ispirazione mattutina, or “Morning Inspiration”, is the cold starter. Menna began with the image of the surf washing over rocks in the first light of day: waves crashing against the cliffs of Bonifacio, creating foam. The dish consists of seasonal “crevettes”, a selection of prawns ranging from blue prawns to pink prawns and small red prawns caught by a trawler in September. The prawns are hidden beneath a fennel foam and fermented turnips, which rise like fuchsia flowers above the composition.
The main course is Aria di campagna, or “Country Air”, and recalls lunch in a farmhouse. The weather is still mild, but the end of summer is greeted with a touch of nostalgia. One dish consists of chestnut-flour cappelletti filled with roast rabbit—a tribute to the chef’s Italian roots—served with wild fennel flowers, chanterelle mushrooms, Parmesan-rind jelly, roast Jerusalem artichoke purée, and rabbit broth freshened with black truffle and Jerusalem artichoke. The cappelletti are also cooked in an extract made from Parmesan rinds; the result is an intense, warming dish reminiscent of the earthy forest floor. The roasted Jerusalem artichoke, in particular, evokes the flavours of coffee and hazelnuts.
Alongside the cappelletti, a ballotine is served: a small roll made with the finest cuts of rabbit—the central fillet—and quail breast, both farmyard animals.
The meal draws to a sweet close with “by the fireside, as in the old days”. The pre-dessert consists of a pumpkin and foie gras crème brûlée.
Its crust is broken with sheep’s milk ice cream. Finally, there is “Montecinto”, named after Corsica’s highest mountain.
Brocciu ice cream scented with rum, roasted chestnuts and a mushroom meringue.
One of the chef’s signature dishes is the Ravioli Filled with Ratatouille, which also stands out for its colour palette.
These small pasta parcels are filled with ratatouille and served with a reduced cream, liquorice-scented aubergine juice, watercress oil and a Brocciu royale. Brocciu is a Corsican cheese produced in April; the chef preserves it using the same technique as for ricotta forte from Puglia, known as “squand”.
At the end of the preparation, he adds caviar to enhance a humble dish such as Niçoise ratatouille or buglione, the slow-cooked vegetable stew prepared in Tuscany.
The meal ends with petit fours: a pine nut semifreddo and an olive-oil biscuit presented in a trompe-l’œil of “U diu grossu”, the rock formation in Bonifacio.
There is a hidden mystery to discover in the three-dimensional representation of the citadel, created like an illustration in a pop-up book.
“Cooking is an act of pleasure and care for another person, a gift to someone dear. It became a creative expression during the Baroque period, with the great court banquets, but we cannot equate a chef with an artist… A plate is often compared to a blank canvas. There are chefs—take Bottura, who creates camouflage on the plate using shades of green—who pay attention to the aesthetics of presentation. And yet, it would be interesting to consider the question from a conceptual point of view.” In other words: what thoughts, feelings and stimuli does a chef want to convey when deciding that a dish is ready to be included on the menu?
Giorgia Basili is an art critic, curator and author. She contributes to Il Sole 24 Ore Cultura and ArtEconomy, TPI – The Post Internazionale, and art publications including Artribune, ArtFrame, Insideart, Exibart and Art(e)Dossier. In recent years, she has been exploring the relationship between art and food and wine, as well as the travel sector through an artistic and cultural lens, highlighting the connections between architecture, design and visual art.
