Sirocco Y Sol — Mediterranean fire, sun-soaked plates

Mediterranean cuisine on a Kigali rooftop — the city below, the sunset straight ahead.

Caprese — tomato, buffalo mozzarella and basil on a wooden board — Caprese · Capri, Italy

Meet the dish · From Italy

Caprese — the flag of Italy, laid out on a board.

It comes from Capri, the island off the Naples coast, and it was built to be looked at as much as eaten: red tomato, white buffalo mozzarella, green basil. The colours were never an accident.

Nothing is cooked. There is no sauce to hide behind and no heat to rescue a poor tomato — only fruit picked ripe, mozzarella still heavy with its own milk, basil torn at the last second, and olive oil. Four things, and nowhere to hide.

It arrives on our table in Week 3, when the kitchen turns Italian.

See the Italian menu

Our Story

The whole Mediterranean, on one rooftop.

Greek, Spanish, Italian, Moroccan — the Mediterranean was never one kitchen, and we saw no reason to pick a favourite. So we brought them all to one table above Kigali: souvlaki and paella, tagine and tiramisu, mezze passed the whole way round.

The name is the reason it works. The sirocco is the wind that crosses that sea — up off the Sahara, over the water, into Morocco, Spain, Italy and Greece. Sol is the sun waiting on the other side. One wind, every coast.

The rest is what a rooftop gives you: the city going quiet below, the hills turning gold, and no reason at all to hurry.