The pleasure of food comes from taste, but what if it was the sense of smell that guided us? This is the idea behind Profumo Spazio Sensoriale, an elegant open-air restaurant and cocktail bar set in a lush 10,000 square metre garden in the heart of Via Cassia. Amidst soft lighting, lounge music and intimate rooms, the restaurant opened a few years ago has brought a whole new concept to Rome: olfactory cuisine. As the name already anticipates, dining at Profumo is an unusual experience, a sensory journey in which the sense of smell is the protagonist.
Foto dalla pagina Facebook di Profumo Spazio Sensoriale
The tasting menu curated by chef Biagio Minafra is not divided by courses, but by four great olfactory families – Floral, Citrus, Marine and Spicy – and presents a raw, a first course, a second course, a pinsa, a dessert and a cocktail for each path. It is up to the guest to choose the one that suits his or her taste because, as the restaurant’s creators explain, “pleasure is free, it’s the desire to taste a bit of everything”. Of course, there is also the possibility of ordering dishes ‘à la carte’, a careful selection of Italian, Roman and international dishes masterfully prepared and tastefully presented. Before and after mealtimes, Profumo is also a cocktail-lounge bar where you can enjoy a different kind of pre or post-dinner entertainment. The pride of the house are the excellent drinks created by bar manager Flavio Esposito, again divided into the same four olfactory families as the tasting menus. The result is colourful, fragrant and tasty cocktails that you want to smell before you drink, to try and understand the essences and secret ingredients used to prepare them.
Everything is made even more magical by a location that has been carefully planned down to the smallest detail, with floral arrangements in the park and trees covered with lights in the indoor hall. During the summer, the park also becomes a meeting place for events with a bucolic atmosphere, from Saturday and Sunday lunches among the estate’s trees, from live music evenings to festivals dedicated to the world of flowers. The extrasensory journey of Profumo also passes through them, the 150,000 thousand flowers a year used to embellish and enrich an experience that takes one out of the city, yet never leaves it.
