MyCaffé Menu of the Week, 29 June – 4 July: When the Heatwave Meets the Kitchen

When the heatwave meets the kitchen.

Menu of the Week, 29 June – 4 July 2026

Belval is 36°C this week. The kind of heat that makes the terrace feel less like a choice and more like the only place worth being. The kind of heat that changes what you want to eat: lighter, brighter, things that taste of the coast and of summer at its most uncompromising.

The kitchen at MyCaffé has read the weather. This week’s menu is five dishes that know exactly what season they belong to.

The Tagliolini con Scampi su Crema di Zucchine open the week with something that tastes the way a good June evening feels. Tagliolini, those fine, delicate egg pasta strands that demand a sauce of precision rather than weight, meet prawns whose sweetness is at its best in warm months, resting on a zucchini cream that is cool, verdant and deeply summery. Zucchini in cream form loses the raw freshness of the vegetable and gains something silkier, more rounded, a base that lets the prawns sit without sinking. A first plate that asks nothing of you except that you slow down.

The Risotto con Pollo, Funghi Champignons e Cipolla Croccante is the week’s most grounding dish, and deliberately so. Chicken and mushroom risotto is one of the great Italian comfort combinations, earthy and generous, the champignons bringing a quiet depth that does not compete with the chicken but carries it forward. The crispy onion is the decision that elevates the bowl: sweet, golden, caramelised in a way that breaks through the creaminess and gives every spoonful something to find. A detail that a lesser kitchen leaves out and a thoughtful one never does.

The Girasoli Farciti con Verdure Grigliate, Pomodorino Fresco, Melanzane e Primo Sale arrive this week dressed entirely in the colours of the season. Girasoli, those large sun-shaped pasta with their ruffled edges, named for the sunflower they resemble, carry inside them a filling of grilled vegetables, aubergine and Primo Sale. Grilling transforms vegetables in a way that no other cooking method does: the sugars caramelise at the surface, the interior softens into something sweet and concentrated, and the slight char adds a depth that raw or steamed vegetables cannot replicate. Primo Sale, young and milky and barely a few days from the dairy, brings a clean freshness that anchors the filling without heaviness.

Then the Puccia Polipo, which is the dish of the week and deserves to be introduced properly. The puccia is one of the great breads of Puglia, specifically of the Salento, the southernmost tip of Italy’s heel. It is a soft, round, slightly chewy bread traditionally made with durum wheat and baked to a thin crust that cracks when you press it, revealing a pillowy interior. In Salento, it is street food at its finest, traditionally stuffed with whatever the season and the sea provide. Here at MyCaffé it is filled with grilled octopus tentacles, their surface charred and their interior tender from slow cooking before the grill, alongside cime di rape for bitterness and green depth, stracciatella for the cool, creamy contrast that only the heart of burrata can provide, and cherry tomatoes for acidity and brightness. This is a dish that carries the whole of the Puglian coast in one hand. Eating it on a 36°C day in Belval with the sun overhead is about as close to the Adriatic as you can get without leaving Luxembourg.

The Tagliata di Filetto di Pollo con Pomodori Secchi, Insalata di Spinaci e Salsa Yogurt Fatto in Casa closes the week as it has these past weeks. Halal chicken fillet, sliced across the grain, sun-dried tomatoes whose sweetness is concentrated and deep, fresh spinach and a homemade yoghurt sauce that brings the whole plate into a cool, bright equilibrium. A dish that is as good on a hot Friday as on any other day.

Come any morning this week from 06:30, the terrace is open and the first cappuccino of a summer morning in this heat is one of the quietly perfect things life offers. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings until 19:00, Alessandro will be at the bar with MyAperitivo: a salumi board, tarallini and a glass chosen for the season. A cold Grillo from Sicilia or a light, chilled rosato from the south is not a suggestion this week. It is a requirement.

Bentornata, estate vera. ☀️