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- Pink Grapefruit Marmalade
- Pink grapefruit, apples and ginger
Brugnera, Friuli
I cooked for fifteen years in London restaurants. Then I came back to Friuli and put the same cooking inside a 220 gram jar: three ingredients, no thickener, my name on the label. In 2026 eight of those jars won awards at the world marmalade competition.
Alessio Brusadin
8products awardedI worked at the Halkin Hotel when Gualtiero Marchesi was the name behind the kitchen. That is where I learnt that the difference comes from the gesture repeated well, not from the brilliant idea.
Fifteen years between five-star kitchens and Italian restaurants. Then the line I told my interviewer, which is still the most honest of all.
Grano, at Kew Bridge, was one of my restaurants. In 1999 it was named best Italian restaurant of the year in London. What stayed with me is not the plaque, it is the method: watch, taste, simplify.
Restaurant kitchens keep hours that sooner or later present the bill. After fifteen years abroad I come back to Italy and spend eight years between South Tyrol and Trentino: in Val di Non, with the Fratelli Corrà, I start cooking for a pantry instead of a service.
Viale Europa, Camol industrial estate. About a hundred thousand jars a year leave this place: jams, citrus marmalades, chutneys, ragù, brusadine. It is not a home kitchen and it is not a factory: it is a workshop, and you can visit it.
Mara Nocilla counts what comes out of the workshop: over 80 preserves, over 50 jams, marmalades and brusadine, 16 chutneys, 11 ragù.
Eight products awarded at the world marmalade competition: two Silver, three Bronze, three Merit. Fifteen years in London, then I come back to Friuli and go and win in England on the most English ground there is.
I do not cook in bulk: I cook one pan at a time. The wide surface evaporates the water quickly, and what is left in the jar is concentrated fruit, not diluted fruit.
The Dalemain World Marmalade Awards is the world marmalade competition: it started in 2005 in the Lake District, in England, and the judging panels bring together some sixty judges, from the Waitrose buyer to food historians. In 2026 eight products from Brugnera won awards.
Orange, lemon, pink grapefruit and lime. The award can be checked on the official PDF of the competition.
I say "eight products awarded", not "eight marmalades": in Italy the word marmalade is reserved for citrus fruit only, and only two of the eight are citrus only. The others contain pears, apples, strawberries, passion fruit, dried fruit.
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"The kitchen kills you, and so does life after the kitchen!"
Alessio Brusadin to Mara Nocilla, Gambero Rosso, 16 July 2024
There is no secret recipe and nothing to hide: there is a room with the pans, the jar-filling bench and the farm shop at the front. You walk in and you see the whole production.
The story is there to explain the price. The jar is there to check it: turn the label round and count the ingredients.