‘It takes courage to keep a door open to the unexpected’: Massimo Bottura, Michelin-star Italian chef

For sure, because it was the moment when I started to shape my future. My mama was putting herself and her credibility with my father on the line to protect me, and to give me a chance to be happy. I wasn’t happy. I was studying but I wasn’t doing well. I was passing the tests but not with great scores. All my brothers were really successful in their studies. The eldest one was an engineer, the second a doctor, another an accountant and then I was supposed to be a lawyer. In a small town like Modena, that piece of paper (a degree) is very important. But she realised that I had a lot of energy that I needed to do something with, and supported me. And that’s probably what kept me going in the early years of Francescana when no one was understanding what I was doing. I didn’t give up because I wanted to show my father that my mum was the one who was right and not him.

Osteria Fracescana got off to a rough start, and many of your most iconic dishes were conceived during that period.

At the time, I would keep asking myself why couldn’t people understand what I was doing. Every single plate they criticised meant so much to me. I was so sure of what I was doing that I just kept going. Imagine, I created Five Different Ages of Parmigiano in 1993, a more avant-garde dish than any other. It has just one ingredient. Well, no, two. Parmigiano and time. Time of the ageing process. Even Tortellini Walking on Broth and The Crunchy Part of the Lasagne are from the early years. The concepts are the same. The big difference is no one was listening to you then and now everybody has ears for you.

How would you describe your process?

I compress my passion into edible bites. My cuisine sits on centuries of history but is filtered through a contemporary mind. I look at the past in a critical way. That’s what I mean when I say you have to cook better than your grandmother. (Pablo) Picasso always said that he drew like Raffaello (Sanzio da Urbino) since he was 13, and then he spent his whole life learning how to paint like a kid. But first of all, you have to draw like Rafaello. Or, you have to cook like your grandmother. Then, you can analyse your own kitchen. And in doing that, you ask yourself, why do I need to eat the entire lasagna in 2023 when I can just have the crunchy part, which is the part that I love!

Most people associate you with Osteria Francescana and the countryside hotel Casa Maria Luigia. Not many know about the cultural project Food For Soul.

That’s the most important legacy I am going to leave behind. In 2015, there was a universal exposition and the theme was ‘Feed the Planet’. They asked me to organise several parties during the six months but no one asked me what I was thinking about feeding the planet. So, I decided to do it in my own way. The numbers are easy to analyse. We produce food for 12 billion people, we are 8 billion on Earth right now. 860 million people go hungry while we waste 33 per cent of what we collectively produce. We use water, electricity and human capital to produce food and then we burn it, becoming the first cause of climate change. Is this normal? So, I created soup kitchens. Every morning a small truck would go to the universal exposition, collect all the excess food and bring it back to the soup kitchen, which was in the most neglected neighbourhood of Milan, where some of the best chefs in the world would cook for people in need. From thereon, we grew. One night, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) called me and asked me to build our second soup kitchen there. Today, we’re on our 14th. Our next project will be in Istanbul. The greatest thing to come of this, for me, is that now everyone’s talking about food waste.

Massimo Bottura’s creation (Credit: Pixel Ganache)

There is more talk today about biodiversity, food security, climate change, and fair trade than ever before. Many of your contemporaries like Daniel Humm and Rene Redzepi are changing the fine-dining landscape. What do you see as the future of fine dining?

A: I think the meaning of luxury has changed. What it used to be 20 years ago, is not what it is today. I’m trying to explore different situations with our restaurants but the one thing we do at Casa Maria Luigia is serve some of our best dishes on communal tables. No more small, private tables. Everybody comes and they share their joy and happiness with us. But more importantly, courage is the name of the future and its citizens must be courageous. Because when you try and dream up a future, no one understands what you’re doing. It takes courage to keep a door open to the unexpected.

Damini Ralleigh is a Delhi-based food writer and co-curator of Holy Tisch, the parent organisation of the Future Food Convention

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