Valli Girls, Valli Alley and Giamba Caviar

From: Godfrey Deeny

1. The eccentric Roman Giambattista Valli in his atelier

2. If there is one insurmountable individualist in fashion today it is Giambattista Valli, who’s ever so off kilter choices in fashion, boutiques, magazines and now food are never less than classy.
   
   His latest diversification is into that noblest of foods – caviar. The house of Valli recently celebrated the launch of his own spring selection with a well-fueled lunch in the designer’s favorite dining spot, Caviar Kaspia, located just around the corner from his atelier and boutique, a quarter we have rechristened Valli Alley.
   
   Entitled Caviar Kaspia de Printemps de Giambattista Valli, the Paris-based couturier’s black beauties come in a soothing pink and chic black box. Valli, who is famous for wearing pearl necklaces, even featured a black necklace design on his caviar. Well he would, wouldn’t he?
   

3. The goods: Venetian caviar

4. 
   We’ve enjoyed our fair share of private backroom dinners, with Giambattista Valli or Moncler Rouge, the puffer jacket brand for which he has created some remarkable avant-garde collections.
   
   A word of elucidation: caviar is made of the sieved roe of the sturgeon family of fish, some 90 percent of which coming traditionally from the Caspian Sea, which is bordered by five countries – Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Russia banned foreign sales of caviar for much of the last decade and in 2008, the Russian fishing ministry unexpectedly announced it had banned sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea for five years. Conservationists heralded the ban, which included fishing for research purposes – a traditional loophole used by fish illegal fishermen. However, this February Russia partially reversed course and began exporting farmed black caviar to supply an international market estimated at 350-tons annually.
   
   Elsewhere on the planet, there has been a boom in developing caviar resources in as distant locales as Montana’s Flathead Lake and the Gironde estuary at Bordeaux. Intriguingly Valli’s black beauties come from sturgeon farmed near Venice, and Giamba’s subtle blend selected from white Transmontanus sturgeon is quite simply delicious.
   
   “My job is creating fantasies and one of my favorite dreams is having Caviar Kaspia as my dining room,” exults Roman-born Valli of his typically cool iconoclastic invention. He’s like that with everything, even making a magazine. Like his guest editing of cult title A, where his theme was the simple question, what constitutes beauty? So everyone from Diane Von Furstenberg to Andre Leon Talley to yours truly contributed.
   
   Eat Valli’s edible black pearls with chopped eggs and onion, or if you are Irish like me with a baked potato and cream, and wash them down either with champagne, or preferably for a Celtic palate, with hyper chilled vodka embedded in a block of ice.
   
   Caviar has a justified reputation of being expensive, but if you want to discover the sensation, Valli’s entry level jar of 30 grams costs 57 euros, a 30 gram jar 95 euros and a 125 gram selection 236 euros – in a word, far less than any of his famed silk volume cocktail dresses. As the French say, le rapport qualité-prix is, well, très correct. Though ideally one’s dining companion should be some witty and leggy gal in a Valli frock in Caviar Kaspia.
   
   Everyone from Tom Ford to Mischa Barton have thrown parties amidst the haute glam charm in this restaurant, located on the west side of Place de la Madeleine.
   
   Caviar Kaspia’s owner, the natty Spanish Scottish Ramon MacCrohon table hopped at my last dinner there with Valli, when the designer celebrated the opening of his excellent debut boutique during Paris’ latest haute couture season.
   
   Attired in his signature necklace, Giambattista spooned down caviar with a mother of pearl spoon, perched on a banquette in between Dasha Zhukova, Charlotte Casiraghi and Diane Kruger. Me I got to sit alone with not one but nine gals, the likes of aquiline beauty Elizabeth von Guttman, twinkle eyed Alexia Niedzielski, ever babelicious Averyl Oates, high cheek boned Lauren Santo Domingo, legginess personified Caroline Sieber, surfer dating Gaia Repossi and doe-eyed jeweler and fine dancer Delfina Deletrez.
   
   Some Irishmen do have all the luck…. Especially when dining on Giambattista’s pearls.
   

5. The Girls: Laetitia and Diane All Photos by Godfrey Deeny