Talented chef Lorenzo Cogo is debuting a line of freeze-dried soups called "LOCO" in PAM stores these days. They cost €3.90 and cook in 3 minutes. We tasted them Chef Lorenzo Cogo debuts a line of ready-to-eat soups with his initials: LOCO, at the supermarket. And we tried them. But how did we come up with this initiative? Lorenzo Cogo is the son of chefs, the grandson of chefs, a chef by name and in fact (in Venetian dialect-his region-chef is actually called "cogo"). For an abundant decade he has been considered one of the most interesting young people on the scene, starting when-after years traveling the world working in the most diverse kitchens-he decided to return to his hometown and open El Coq restaurant. It was 2011 and Cogo, who is class of 1986, was 25 years old. The accolades from guides and the pilgrimage of fans was immediate, but the guy held his own. Then, in 2016, the El Coq project moved to Vicenza where it endured not without difficulty until the pandemic. In 2020 Lorenzo Cogo decided to take a break from cooked cuisine by founding a consulting firm to follow start-ups and innovative projects in the restaurant world. But already in mid-2021 he is back behind the stove when he takes over the complex and intricate machine of Dama Restaurant, a sumptuous restaurant in Venice part of the historic Ca' Bonfadini hotel. The sachets of LOCO freeze-dried soups The sachets of LOCO freeze-dried soups Lorenzo Cogo tells about LOCO soups At Venice's Dama, Cogo offers rich, research-based seafood cuisine with justifiably expensive tasting menus (actually not too much for the context and the city), which haven't stopped him from keeping his attention on a more popular approach, however. So here's the idea of signature ready-made soups. "I set out to bring a good taste into everyone's homes," explains the chef, "I know it's crazy and in fact the name of the project not only represents my initials but actually means 'crazy' in Spanish!" How long did the design take, we asked the chef, "I've been thinking about it for a long time, let's say 5 years. This is not a consultancy or a branding to some big retail brand where I put my name, it is really my own company, a personal entrepreneurial initiative, so I studied everything for a long time, from the suppliers to the machinery that allows me to dehydrate and freeze-dry. The thinking came from an idea to spread my cuisine, I think all cooks have this desire, only I realized that now doing as the great chefs of the past did that is to open restaurants everywhere is very difficult and so I thought I would look at a more popular product. And then nowadays people have a palate and an attention to products that is significant compared to years ago, plus they have less and less time," this is how the chef explains to CiboToday the motivations behind the project."

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