Tucked away in the Atlantis Hotel, Ossiano offers a captivating dining experience amidst an aquarium, with floor-to-ceiling windows that submerge diners in an underwater world.
In a rather poetic manner, executive chef Grégoire Berger, a French native from Auray in Brittany, steers this ship with his trusted sommelier, Danijela Tesic.
At Ossiano, Berger and Tesic find synergy in the way they create and express themselves with complete freedom.
Berger’s menu, Metanoia, meaning to change one’s mind, is a nine-to-11-wave tasting journey that weaves in his childhood moments and travels from around the globe, highlighting Brittany and coastal cities around it. Each dish is at once unexpected and breathtaking, visionary in flavours and grounded in approach, giving testament to Berger’s unparalleled creativity and traditional French technique.
Berger and Tesic work hand in hand for each course. Berger first storyboards his idea and intentions for a dish, then together with Tesic, brainstorms on the best way to express and maintain the integrity of the story of the dish. They pick out essences of the different components of a dish, look at elements of different wines, and spend time selecting a wine that would best complement a particular dish. As a self-professed storyteller, Berger is insistent that the story needs to take centrestage, and Tesic agrees; taste is what invokes awe in the diner, not labels.
Take the langoustine on the menu, a gift from the shore of Brittany with the smell of the sea from sea fennel, a seashore herb: the dish is served on a plate made out of recycled bottles from the ocean, a tribute to Berger’s lifelong respect for seasonality, terrior and sea foraging. A creamy chardonnay brings out the elegance of the langoustine, and the freshness of the ingredient.
Berger is enthusiastic about the stories of his food; he makes sure to visit every table and shares the inspiration behind the dishes with guests, sometimes with pictures in hand. Tesic, too, with equal fevour for her wines, flits from table to table, regaling diners and inviting them into the story, with her charming personality.
“If you don’t have the passion, if you don’t have the little sparkle in your eye when you tell it”, says Tesic, the dish means nothing.
It is with this artful storytelling, and absolute immersion into the underwater world, surrounded by the hypnotic lull of majestic underwater life that you forget the outside world, and are transported on the journey of Metanoia, wave by wave.
