Staying True To His Roots

Acclaimed Italian Chef Massimo Bottura has changed the way italian cuisine is perceived. His contemporary spin on traditional food is winning hearts and awards alike.

- Sudit Pigott

MASSIMO BOTTURA, 54, IS ALWAYS ON THE MOVE. “Quite literally, he cannot keep still,” laughs his wife, Lara Gilmore, affectionately. New Yorker Gilmore, 48, is her husband’s muse, the interpreter of his vision, and the key to his expression of how creativity in cuisine and art feed each other. She beckons her husband to come and sit down rather than pace the terrace as we talk at the Parabere Forum in Bari, Italy. Significantly, we are at the second edition of a relatively new annual event that aims to bring balance and enhanced visibility to women in the gastronomic world.

These days, Bottura needs no introduction. Modena-born and rooted, he has put his city, a perfect Romanesque gem deep in Emilia-Romagna, indelibly on the global culinary map. It has been a long journey – there was no speedy shortcut to becoming Italy’s most famous chef. There were years during which neither Bottura nor Gilmore thought they would make it as chef-restaurateurs, let alone attract the worldwide attention they now have. Now, three Michelin-star restaurant Osteria Francescana is rated No. 1 of the World’s 50 Best, has a near perfect 19.5/20 Gault Millau rating – a widely acknowledged food guide founded by two French restaurant critics, Henri Gault and Christian Milau in 1965 – and is booked up for lunch and dinner months ahead.

Becoming a chef certainly wasn’t the route his parents envisaged Bottura taking. He had always been a bright student, if inclined to be rather wild and football- and music-mad (little known secret: he’s a great DJ).