Chef autobiography

During those years, I had the huge privilege and happiness of working in Bahrain for La Taverna, in Berlin for the Enoiteca Il Calice, in Moscow for the Ristorante da Mario, in Rome for the Crowne Plaza Minerva Hotel, in Paris for the Hotel Royal Monceau Carpaccio, in Saint Germain en Laye for the La Scala Restaurant, and finally for the Hotel Castille working alongside the great master Alain Ducasse.
That experience with Alain Ducasse took me to the top of my culinary education, marrying passion, simplicity, and finesse.

I had the honour of cooking for and satisfying many people with my cuisine, including celebrities such as Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton, Richard Gere, Liz Taylor, Johnny Hallyday, Margaret Thatcher, the US President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Boris Eltsine, and Francesco Cossiga, members of the G8 Summit in Venice, and many more.

My professional and human paths have been particularly marked in recent years by major encounters: with Carlo Petrini, the creator of “Slow Food” and of “Terra Madre”, and his humanistic conception of food; and with Massimo Bottura, elected best chef in 2014 and running the second best restaurant in the world.

Since 2010, my wife and I and our two children have been living in a village at the foot of the Sainte Victoire Mountain in the town of Trets, in France, where I run a small school of gastronomic cuisine.
The education I give to my students is based on daily creation of dishes from the best Mediterranean cuisine, revisited with “humanistic” values and with the principles of organic produce and sustainable development.

It was a huge honour for me to join the chef Alain Ducasse on 1 October 2015, to become chef instructor at his school in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris.

In order to share this philosophy of “eating with awareness for supporting life”, I created an educational recipe game app. This application passes on not only ancestral knowledge, but also the importance

Stepping out from the shadows of their kitchens, chefs these days are admired and celebrated not only for their food but also their personalities, transforming them into culinary superstars loved by many. Unafraid to mingle with their audience and discuss everything from cooking to their personal lives, celebrity chefs of our modern times are inspirational and a reminder that behind every perfect plate of food is a lot of talent, passion, and a lust to be the very best.

1. Life, On the Line by Grant Achatz

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Grant Achatz is a true-blue culinary champion. Life, On the Line, is his tale of hard work and gastronomic craving that sees him rise from working at The French Laundry to making his dream come true, serving contemporary dishes at his restaurant, Alinea. Moreover, the book is about courage and how, at the top of his game, Grant had to fight tongue cancer. Trusting an alternative treatment that leaves him without a sense of taste, Life, On the Line highlights Grant's determination and never-stop attitude that led him to continue cooking professionally, even when facing death.

2. Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

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Sarcasm and humor aplenty, Blood, Bones, and Butter is Gabrielle Hamilton's life story from her early years developing a passion for good food working with her mother to lying about her age so she could wash dishes in a restaurant. This enthralling journey that takes her to places far and beyond finally culminates in the opening of her award-winning New York restaurant, Prune. What's especially striking about the book is that Hamilton is not just a genius cook, but also a brilliant writer who narrates the most personal of moments from her life with clarity and a sense of honesty that very few people can.

3. Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay

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The most renowned chef in the entire world, Gordon Ramsay writes as he speak

Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White, Anthony Bourdain, and Joe Bastianich are but some of the “celebrity chefs” rotating their presence on our TV screens right now.

They’ve changed the way we cook and have made chefs into rock stars at an international level.

Gordon Ramsay, probably the most “visible” amongst the lot – my 8-year-old, when asked to do a one-page biography of someone famous, chose him – has been the judge of Masterchef US for a few years now and has two restoration series wherein he travels to different parts of America helping people find their spark back in running restaurants and/or hotels.

Marco Pierre White is a guest judge on Masterchef Australia, and Joe Bastianich, till last season, was with Masterchef US, but as far as I know, he will be hosting the Italian version of the show from now on.

Anthony Bourdain is a well-known travel writer and TV personality roaming the world discovering foods and drinks and being totally badass about it.

If my education on food was to be wholesome – my plan as of now – I needed to know about the people who are responsible for the food revolution that has gripped the world over the last decade.

Ramsay and White are two chefs that are very much in the limelight all the time for one reason or another, primarily because of their food or else their controversial statements. Bourdain and Bastianich have a somewhat niche following, but all four of them have achieved superstardom – legendary status even – as chefs and restaurateurs in the case of Bastianich.

This is not to say there aren’t any more chefs or celebrities who are equally active professionally outside the kitchens as they are inside.

In fact, there are so many who have written biographies, cookbooks, and restaurant stories that the whole food genre in books has become extremely varied and complex, like the main course of any three-star Michelin restaurant.

As I write this, I still have a half

When I was writing about the dinners I had with my elderly friend Edward, I made a decision early on not to include any recipes. Edward, an accomplished cook, rarely wrote down any instructions for, say, his oysters Rockefeller or chicken paillard. While the food we ate was certainly important, the book was not meant to be a cookbook, but instead a memoir about the nature of friendship.

In this pursuit, I was inspired by a rich literature of culinary writing in which food is a central motif, but is held together by the story of its preparation and the fellowship that comes from sharing a meal. So many writers – from MFK Fisher, who wrote lyrically about the pleasures of dining alone, to New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton, who documented her hardscrabble upbringing through family meals – use food as a catalyst for memories and loving nostalgia.

While I’m still a big fan of a good recipe book – anything by Jamie Oliver, Yotam Ottolenghi and Julia Child – it’s the stories in beautifully rendered memoirs that stay with me longer than any recipe. It’s Nigel Slater using burnt toast as a metaphor for his mother’s love, and Anne Fadiman getting drunk as a teenager when she tries to please her vintage-wine-obsessed father. Below, are what I consider some of the best culinary memoirs.

1. The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir by Anne Fadiman
Fadiman’s most recent book about her father, the American author and radio personality Clifton Fadiman, is a deftly written memoir – a coming-of-age story written around her father’s oenophilia. He was “a lousy driver and a two-finger typist”, she writes, “but he could open a wine bottle as deftly as any swain ever undressed his lover”.

2. The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was ahead of her time. After spending “two shaking and making years in my life” with her new husband in Dijon, she returned to California in the early 1940s where she became a serious food writer. The Gastro