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Seven ages of a chef: Giorgio Locatelli

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'I love the idea that someone can come to the restaurant pissed off and leave happy,' says the Locanda Locatelli restaurateur, 51

My granddad opened a restaurant in northern Italy in 1963, the year I was born. It was on the shore of this little lake, an hour from Milan, and the whole family worked there. I was the youngest and, from the age of five, my job was to make the fruit salad. I had a little curved knife I've been good with knives ever since and I had to fill the biggest container we had. It was light blue, I still remember, and when we had to clean it I would climb inside it. That's how big it was.

I always wanted to be a chef. They were so cool compared to the waiters. My mum thought it was a bad idea, because the chefs were nuts, always drunk. But I didn't want to be an Italian chef. I always thought that if I learned how to cook classic French food, haute cuisine, like Escoffier, it would be for ever. I was 23 when I put on the Savoy jacket for the first time and I thought I'd arrived. After that I went to Paris for three years, because all the old-school chefs in Italy said you were a nobody if you hadn't worked in Paris.

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