Elio Fanutza, owner of the “Letizia” restaurant in Nuxis, passed away today at the age of 78 (he was born on 19 July 1945). Descendant of a family of restaurant operators, Elio Fanutza has continued and enhanced the business founded way back in 1926 under the banner of “Letizia”, now close to the centenary celebrations, a goal which he cared a lot about and which he intended to to celebrate.
«One of the attractions of Nuxis is the Letizia ethnic restaurant where Elio Fanutza, if requested in time, teaches how to distill aromas and colors from the shrubs of the Mediterranean scrub – wrote the late Caterno Cesare Bettini, his great friend, president of the L’Altra Sardegna Tourist Consortium, of which Elio Fanutza was a long-time member and vice-president, committed to the valorisation of the territory for tourism purposes -. Regardless of the cultivation of bergamot (a rare citrus fruit in Sardinia but not in Calabria), one of the many skills of the Fanutza family is the ice cream obtained from the anicino mushroom, in addition to the specialties of Manuele (Lele) who combines mastic oil with excellent goat’s cheeses. »
Elio Fanutza has long cultivated a passion for coloring wool and fabrics with natural dyes, making use of herbs and spontaneous plants that abound in the countryside and mountains of Lower Sulcis, which he knew like few others. And he studied the use of vegetal essences in the production of precious distillates, which he used in the preparation of typical dishes which in Sulcis for decades can only be tasted in the “Letizia” restaurant, where a great chef, the son Manuele (the other son, Fabio, has undertaken a different career, as a non-commissioned officer in the Carabinieri).
«His main virtue is willpower, which allowed him to face many obstacles and some envy – wrote Enrico Cambedda in a long article-interview published ten years ago in the magazine Lacanas -. Surveyor’s diploma, a few years of university study in pharmaceutical chemistry and biology, military service and the start-up of a prestigious ethnic restaurant, where you can eat ravioli with borage or nettle, goat with serpillo, pancakes with elderberry and even mushroom ice cream (anicini). Not to mention the helichrysum-scented game. In his DNA there is a love for nature: the impervious mountains of Nuxis, the thousand varieties of herbs, spontaneous plants, roots, wild fruit, mushrooms. »
Son of a miner, Elio Fanutza learned from his father to make grafts, crosses, to distinguish the various plant species, to respect every blade of grass, and he learned the secrets from the stories of the elderly, who he loved to listen to for a long time. some plants. From them he learned to use the plant only when it was in the vegetative rest phase and to color the fabrics under the influence of the crescent moon. He taught young students the fundamentals of a wonderful art in some training courses. He would have liked to set up cooperatives to start production but in the area the culture of business risk still encounters often insurmountable difficulties. Inevitably, production has always remained at an amateur level.
On 28 November 2020 Elio Fanutza lost his wife Gioconda, with whom in about half a century he created many original recipes, including, in 1980, the “Letizia” ravioli, a “magical union” between Elio’s botanical knowledge and the “know-how” of Gioconda.
Nuxis will say their final farewell to Elio Fanutza on Monday 4 March, at 3.30 pm, in the church of San Pietro.
Giampaolo Cirronis
