Il viaggio di Vetri: A Culinary Journey

Read an Excerpt

la famiglia

Every once in a while, if you're lucky, you meet people who change your life forever. When I first went to Italy to cook, I was fortunate to meet a handful of people who were eventually woven into my very heart and soul. These are the people who mentored, inspired, and motivated me when I worked in Bergamo, in Lombardy. They taught me to approach food with simplicity and respect, and they continue to shape my thinking every time I return to Italy. At one time or another, we all worked at Taverna Colleoni dell'Angelo, a magnificent yet unpretentious restaurant on the Piazza Vecchia in Bergamo's high city. Those who no longer work there have since opened their own successful restaurants and shops. These people are the lifeblood of Bergamo, and they personify the style of cooking that I embrace.

Pierangelo Cornaro

The Boss il boss

Pierangelo is one of the most accomplished chefs I know. He grew up in a restaurant family in Bergamo, cooked all over Europe, and returned to Bergamo to open Antico Ristorante dell'Angelo, which soon earned two stars from Michelin. In 1976, Pierangelo took over for his father at Taverna Colleoni dell'Angello. There, he established a new kind of cuisine that skillfully blended regional traditions with current restaurant trends. In 1980, he was the only Italian chef invited to La Jeune Gastronomie, a world-renowned culinary competition hosted by New York's American Institute of Wine and Food. Pierangelo's unexpected success was hailed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere, expanding the taverna's already enviable reputation. He has since taught courses on Italian cuisine everywhere from the Italian Culinary Institute in Turin to the Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa, California.

With his son, Nevio, Pierangelo continues to expand his Italian culinary heritage. Everyone in Bergamo calls him the Boss, and his Taverna Colleoni dell'Angelo has become a prominent training ground for chefs. Cooks from around the world travel there to work, and in turn, the Boss sends his chefs around the world. Many have gone on to open award-winning restaurants of their own.

The Boss is a magnanimous soul. When I was working at the taverna, after dinner service, he regularly stayed up until three or four in the morning telling story after story about restaurants he had trained in, chefs he had learned from, and cooks he had taught. He would show us cookbooks, give us lessons, and make us laugh. Everyone respects him. The most valuable thing he taught me was to be serious about food.

Graziano Pinato

The Chef il cuoco

Born and raised in Bergamo, Graziano Pinato is the chef of chefs. He has been cooking at Taverna Colleoni dell'Angelo for more than twenty-five years, and now that the Boss works the front of the house, Graziano is the head chef. He is the single most important influence on my cooking and the most proud, genuine man I have ever met.

Graziano shares everything and hides nothing. There were never any secrets in his kitchen. He wants nothing more than to get other people excited about the subtleties of his craft. Whenever a special ingredient came in-from kid to fresh turbot to truffles-Graziano would take me aside to explain it to me. After preparing the day's dishes for the menu, he would make extra dishes to show me the numerous ways of seeing and preparing the same food. He took me to farms. He scheduled visits to butchers. He sent me to restaurants. Graziano put my hands deep into the world of fine food. Whenever we had a day off, he would pack me a take-home lunch because he knew I had no money. He was like a father and a brother to me.

I cooked with Graziano for a year and he taught me what it means to be a chef. Or, more important, what being a chef doesn't mean. It doesn't mean being a technical wizard. It doesn't mean obsessing over stars and great reviews. It means you cook with your heart. For example, Graziano explained that when you prepare meat, you should think about the animal, the environment in which it was raised, and what it ate, so that you pay tribute to the animal's life and make your dish the best it can be. The same is true for fish, poultry, vegetables, and every food that comes from the earth. Graziano taught me that being a chef means understanding all facets of food, respecting the ingredients you are working with, and honoring them to the best of your culinary ability.

Marco Rossi

THE PASSIONATE ONE

Marco has more passion in his pinky finger than most people have in their whole body. In 1994, we worked together at Taverna Colleoni and became good friends. He was a waiter, and you could immediately tell how much the Boss liked him. People even thought he was his son. With Marco, the Boss laughed his deepest and shared his most private side. Marco has a charisma that people cannot resist.

Marco is a successful restaurateur as well. He studied at the prestigious San Pellegrino hotel school, put in some time at a Marriott hotel in Boston, and worked for Pierangelo at Antico Ristorante dell'Angelo. My friend Luca Brasi calls him a phenomenon. Whatever he touches turns to gold. In 1999, the same year I opened Vetri, Marco took over Le Cantine D, a restaurant above a wine store in Bergamo. It became an instant success. A few years later, Marco moved the restaurant downstairs to be closer to the wine store and renamed it L'Osteria. Another instant success.

Marco was born and raised in Bergamo, and every time I return there, we stay up late talking for hours about food, music, movies, and just about everything. His lust for life inspires me to trust myself and follow my own vision. A lot of my passion for cooking comes from working with Marco.

l'appassionato

Massimiliana Locatelli

THE ARTIST l'artista

Massi was the soul of Taverna Colleoni. Originally from France, she moved to Bergamo when she was in her twenties. When we worked together in 1994, Massi was the oil that made the restaurant's engine run. She organized all of the restaurant's parties, kept all of the books, handled the flowers, answered the phone, and designed the menus. She is the most creative restaurant manager I have ever known. Eventually, her talents grew too big for the job she was doing, and Massi went to work for a graphic design company. In 1998, she opened her own shop, Artementi, on Via Mario Lupo in Bergamo's high city. To this day, she designs incredible menus, cards, signs, and more.

Massi is such a close friend that I feel I am an extension of her creativity. Whenever I come up with something new for Vetri or Osteria, the idea seems willed to me through her. She creates all of the menus, business cards, and other designs for Vetri and Osteria.

Paolo Frosio

THE TALENT il virtuoso

In 1990, at the age of twenty-three, Paolo Frosio opened Frosio Ristorante in the small town of Alme, just outside of Bergamo. In his second year, he earned a Michelin star and became Italy's youngest ever Michelin-star chef.

Born into a family of restaurateurs in Valle Imagna, in Bergamo Province, Paolo honed his skills at the San Pellegrino hotel school, intending to study agriculture later. But once he got in the kitchen, Paolo knew where he belonged. He trained with many notable chefs around the world, including Piero Selvaggio at Valentino in Los Angeles, and now runs Frosio Ristorante with his brother, Camillo. The Frosio family also owns a restaurant in the mountains outside Bergamo.

No chef I have worked with has inspired me more than Paolo Frosio. Every time I eat at his restaurant or work in his kitchen, I learn a new technique or discover a distinctive flavor combination. Paolo has an incredible palate and is singularly focused on surprising and delighting guests. Like the architecture of his restaurant, which was built in the 1700s and remodeled through the centuries, Paolo's food blends elements of both classic and contemporary cuisine. I'm always impressed by his ability to zero in on two ingredients and marry them in a single dish in a completely unique way.

Most of all, Paolo understands balance. Take, for example, his relationship with his brother and partner, Camillo. Paolo is the thinker. Camillo is the reactor. Paolo stays in the kitchen. Camillo stays in the dining room. Paolo knows that this kind of balance gives a restaurant its soul. He lives and breathes the life of a creative chef, always pushing himself to discover new dishes, new flavors, and new presentations.

Luca Brasi

THE VISIONARY il visionario

Another genius at the stove, Luca Brasi also has a keen eye for business. His father is a prominent businessman, and it was expected that Luca would follow in his father's footsteps. But Luca was stubborn. He wanted to go his own way and had a passion for cooking. His father sent him to work in a restaurant so Luca would understand how tiring and demanding it was to work all day in a kitchen. The plan backfired. Working the line, Luca's passion blossomed and he found his true path in life.

Luca developed his culinary skill at the hotel school in Bergamo and refined his talent at Taverna Colleoni a few years before I arrived. Then he cooked throughout Switzerland, France, and Italy, eventually returning to Bergamo, where he restored an old trattoria in the historical center of Osio Sotto, updating the place with a clean, contemporary design. In 1997, he opened it as La Lucanda, a trendsetting restaurant and charming eight-room hotel. In the kitchen, Luca is swift, effortless, and brilliant. Like many successful Italian chefs, his food perfectly unites tradition with innovation. One of his signature dishes, tortelli with bitter almonds and black truffle, shows that food can be bold and unfussy at the same time.

In 2003, La Lucanda earned a Michelin star, and a year later, Luca opened Olfa café and pasticceria just down the street. In 2007, he sold the hotel-restaurant in Osio Sotto, including the name, and, with his wife, Cinzia, and son, Mateo, moved closer to Milan to run the one-hundred-room Hotel Devero and its three restaurants: the upscale La Lucanda, a more casual bistro-style restaurant, and another Olfa café and pasticceria.

Luca has taken some big risks in life, but they have all paid off. He is a humble man, soft-spoken and polite, but you can see the wheels turning, the ideas emerging, and the plans developing. During the many meals and conversations we have shared, Luca has proven to me that a passionate, creative person can also be a businessman.

Chapter Two The Journey

il viaggio

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to go to Italy. My paternal grandfather, Mario Vetri, was born in Sicily in the town of Enna in 1896. He left there in the 1920s, when the country was in the throes of a depression, immigrating to Philadelphia, where he happened to meet Jenny, the daughter of his neighbors in Enna. They married and my father, Sal, was born in 1936. I was born a generation later, in 1966. On Sundays, we would all go over to my grandparents' house just as the family had done in Sicily. There, we would cook, eat, share stories, and laugh. My grandmother Jenny made all sorts of Italian specialties, like meatballs, eggs in tomato sauce, ricotta cheesecake, and, of course, the seven-fish dinners at holiday time, with fried baccalà (salt cod), fried smelts, and fried squid. She also included a little meat like braciole.

That was my life growing up in Abington, Pennsylvania, just north of Center City Philadelphia. I played basketball, cooked with my family, played guitar. In 1990, I graduated from Drexel University with a degree in marketing and finance, but music was my passion, so I went to Los Angeles to study jazz guitar at the Musician's Institute of America. At school, I didn't have a lot of money, and I took a job cooking at the North Beach Bar and Grill to make ends meet. Cooking came naturally. I had always cooked with my parents and grandparents.

Miles Angelo was the chef at North Beach, and we worked together for a year. When I graduated from school, I had hoped Miles would give me a raise and a more permanent position, but he couldn't, so I decided it was time to move on. My band was trying to make a living playing music, but the gigs paid poorly. I heard Wolfgang Puck was opening a restaurant called Granita, and I inexplicably had a strong urge to work there. What if I just knocked on the door? Would I be offered a job? I gave it a shot. I went to Granita every day for three weeks. Each time I asked the chef, Joseph Manzare, for a job. Each time, he would reply, "I don't have anything." But he was also encouraging, always adding, "Come back another day." The third week, one of his chefs called in sick at the last minute. Joseph yelled out the back door to me, "Do you want to hang around tonight?" I quickly accepted. That night, I worked the line, and after the shift, Joseph asked me if I wanted to come back the next day. I returned to the Granita kitchen every day for six weeks.

I had left North Beach and had very little money, and Joseph wasn't able to pay me anything. But I did eat at the restaurant, and I had saved enough money to keep up with the rent. And every day, I went in, hoping Joseph would offer me a permanent job. Six weeks later, one of the cooks left, and Joseph immediately offered me the position. That year, Joseph Manzare became my mentor. He taught me all the basics I would have learned in culinary school: how to fillet a fish, simmer a rich stock, make reduction sauces, braise tough meats, poach delicate seafood, roast a chicken. Joseph opened my eyes to the beauty of food and guided my hands through the world of fine cuisine.

For the next two years, I steeped myself in Granita and a few other California restaurants. I cooked at night and played guitar in the studio all day with my band. We were trying to record an album, but we weren't getting anywhere. I had also become restless with California cuisine. I was working as the morning chef at a place called Bambu when it dawned on me that the food I was cooking was soulless. Every dish had an identity complex. Broccoli-hazelnut puree served under grilled salmon with a port wine reduction. Enoki mushrooms, black-eyed peas, and corn salsa. Do these things go together? Salsas were made out of everything. The pasta, fashioned from premade sheets, some thick, some thin, was awful. And almost every main course followed the same prescription: make a salsa, put a piece of fish on top, and then make a reduction sauce, whisk butter into it, and add it to the plate. Diners were applauding the food, but I thought it was terrible. I knew I had to get out of LA.

It was 1993, and Joseph had moved on to become the chef at Wolfgang Puck's Spago. We had become good friends and took a Tuesday-night class together in restaurant operations management. I had mentioned to him that I wanted to work in Italy, and one night after class, we stopped by Valentino restaurant, where he introduced me to the owner, Piero Selvaggio.

I told Piero that I had been cooking in California for a few years and was learning all about California cuisine, but that I really wanted to cook Italian. I told him about my Sicilian-born grandfather, Mario, about cooking on Sundays with my whole family, and about how I felt the need to cook in Italy. Piero didn't know me, but he trusted Joseph, and I guess he saw something in me. He told me he knew of a restaurant in northern Italy, in Bergamo, where I could work in the kitchen and live in an apartment the restaurant maintained for the cooks, and he would make some calls. A week went by and I hadn't heard anything, so I called Piero to ask him if he had talked to anyone. I think he was a little annoyed, but he wrote a note and told me to give it to the owner of a restaurant called Frosio, outside Bergamo. The note explained simply that I was a cook in LA and I wanted to work in Italy, and to "please help out any way you can," followed by Piero's signature. That note was all I had. No phone number. No place to stay. No guarantee that I would find work. But I knew I had to go to Italy, so I bought a one-way ticket to Bergamo and boarded a plane with the note and fifteen hundred dollars in my pocket.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from il viaggio di vetri by MARC VETRI DAVID JOACHIM
Copyright © 2008 by Marc Vetri. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---