Chef's Table (2015) s01e01 Episode Script
Massimo Bottura
1 Today's quake coming just after 4:00 in the morning.
The epicenter coming near the city of Modena, and we can expect the worst of the damage in that area, I think.
We're hearing of factories in rural areas collapsing and historic structures, like bell towers, being brought crashing down.
One lunch, we had the restaurant fully booked.
There were like this very strong shake, and everyone was running out and street was going like a wave.
Was crazy moment.
After the earthquake, the consortium Parmigiano came to me saying, "Massimo, you have to help us.
This is a disaster.
360,000 big wheels of Parmigiano are damaged.
That could be the end of half of the production of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
And if you don't act very quick, everyone is gonna go out of business and we gonna lose everything.
" So I went to the consortium.
I said to the president, "I have the idea.
We're gonna do a recipe on Riso Cacio e Pepe.
We're gonna make a risotto, and we're going to cook the rice using the Parmigiano.
" The president was like "Really? Are you sure you're gonna" "Don't worry.
Don't worry, it's gonna be great.
We're gonna make a dinner in which, all over the world, everyone can cook that recipe.
" I want to show everyone what happened to Modena and help them sell everything they produce.
Japan, London, New York, everywhere they were cooking Risotto Cacio e Pepe.
40,000 people, they were cooking Risotto Cacio e Pepe.
All 360,000 wheels were sold they were sold out.
No one lost a job.
No cheese maker closed the doors.
That was a recipe as a social gesture.
- That's Massimo Bottura! - Ciao.
- Ciao, vecchio.
- Ciao.
- Ciao, ciao.
- Massimo.
Ciao.
Wait.
Ma'am how are these? These chanterelles? The chanterelles are good.
The porcini are no good.
You have to come in the morning to get porcini mushrooms.
Wait, what's this? Caesar's mushrooms.
The Caesar's mushrooms are good.
They're a little There are some good ones.
Look! I'll have good ones in the morning, Massimo.
Tomorrow morning, we'll come tomorrow morning.
You could get them now, but come a little earlier.
I'll come around 9:30, 10:00.
- Yes, when the good stuff is on display.
- Okay.
- Now, this morning I have - Okay.
Bye.
Have a nice day.
Hey there.
Look, it's the maestro.
Give me, give me a One of the, the The ones in front that just came out.
Give me that one in front, how is it? Will you split it with me? Yes, with pleasure.
My God, it's good.
Can you send some of this to Francescana? A mixture, half a crate of these and half of these.
Really, really good ones.
Do you have These are the Mmm.
Massimo brings something else to the plate besides food.
That's the goal of one of the world's greatest restaurants.
He's arrived at his own formula for what being a three-Michelin star is about.
For Massimo, it's about the art, it's about the music, it's about the place, it's about the ingredients.
It's not just about the food.
It's about the whole concept behind the food that makes it into something far more interesting.
Every time I go to the restaurant, I'm always astounded by what I see.
All of these dishes were made with traditional Modena ingredients, but used in a different way than the way a trattoria would use.
One of the most important ingredients in his food is memory.
His memory of tasting things and of the way things were made, and taking those memories and re-interpreting them in a more modern way.
He's the most important chef in Italy.
He has three Michelin stars.
In San Pellegrino's 50 Best restaurants list, he's number three.
I hope to see him in the number one spot! spoon tarts, spaghetti with cream sauce, lobster bisque.
March! March! He's a rock and roller.
He's an exciting, dynamic guy who seems to me ready to go 24 hours a day.
Always excited about food, excited about wine, excited to communicate to you what he knows about Italy.
Massimo's artistic sensibility is unlike anything that had ever been done before.
There is no one who's doing what Massimo is doing.
Today, he's an icon in Italy.
But when he started, the whole of Italy was against it.
It was a type of treason.
He was considered a traitor of Italy.
Modena, it's a small town with a very, very strong gastronomic tradition.
The Modenesi are very demanding about food.
The actual country of Italy is 150 years old.
The actual traditions are 26 centuries.
So, you have people who have very, very deep roots.
If you ask any Italian where you can find the greatest food in the country, the answer is usually, "Mom.
" Massimo takes a dish that you can find at home and brings it into a restaurant in a different way than it'd ever been seen before, and that's why in the first years of this restaurant you never found anybody from Modena in the dining room.
It wasn't what Mom did, and so they were upset by that.
As a chef, he takes what his mother made and turns it into something divine.
I grew up in a very large family with three older brothers, one smaller sister.
But all the aunt and the grandmother, they were living with us.
I was kind of very energetic child and I was running around as crazy, and my older brother, they didn't like it, so they were chasing me.
And my safety place was in the kitchen under the table where my grandmother was rolling pasta.
My grandmother was defending me with the wood, the matterello, as we call matterello to roll pasta, from my older brothers, "Get out of here! Leave him alone.
He's the youngest one.
" So, from under the table, I was looking at the world in a different perspective.
The flour was falling from the table and I was on my knees, and in that moment, I was stealing from under the table the tortellini.
So when they ask me, "What is the plate of your life?" It's a tortellino, but it's a raw tortellino, because that's the moment in which I was stealing the raw tortellino just made one second before from the hand of my grandmother.
That's why food is so important for me because in many different creation I do, you can find that I'm trying to take you, in that moment, back to where you were a child.
Can I drive the tractor? No, come on! I'm telling you.
Max, can I drive the tractor? No, because it must be extraordinary.
He's serious.
He wants to drive the tractor.
No, no, I don't want to cause trouble.
Does he have a tractor license? No, a wagon license.
Yes, yes.
Ah! Massimo is someone you kind of have to chase.
He's always ten steps ahead of you.
He's running down the street, and you're in his shadow.
Everything that comes to his mind gets thrown out there on the table immediately.
There's no editing.
There's no being cautious about his ideas.
Massimo's volcanic in that way.
My role, and it's very fun and it's very entertaining, is always kind of catching up with Massimo to be a witness.
If I don't write down, take note, decode what the recipe is about, and find a way to make that accessible to other people, nobody's going to.
One of the things that I love about him is that he's always creating without even touching one ingredient.
We'll have been at the movies, and we'll walk out of the movies and I'll say, "So, what'd you think about the film?" And he'll say, "I don't know, I just I wasn't really paying attention.
I was thinking about a way of making mozzarella invisible, and if you could drink that and have all the flavor of tomato and mozzarella, how cool would that be?" And I would think, "God, he really didn't watch the movie.
" Lara is so important for what we do.
She'll look at the things from distance so she sees everything very clear.
When you have a relation, you speak the same language.
If you speak the same language, you can share a dialog.
We share the language of creativity and the language of dreams.
Ciao, ciao, ciao.
1998, when his father, Umberto, came to eat in Osteria Francescana, at the end of the meal, he said, "This is very good, but you should start thinking about the aging process.
The aging process is Modena.
The whole area is about slow, slow passing of time.
" There is no shortcut for producing Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and this is the reason that we not taste the cheese, but we listen, okay? The sound for us is like to have an X-ray machine and to see what you have inside.
- No, it's no good.
- Okay.
No.
It's perfect.
Okay, Carlo, let's open it.
The smell is amazing.
The smell is amazing.
But every time I open a cheese like this, I get emotion, you know.
It's unbelievable.
When I say, in my blood there is balsamic vinegar, and my muscles are made by Parmigiano it is true.
It is true.
VoilÃÂ ! Who wants to taste? Dear God! Vecchio.
Tom Here, taste some.
Parmigiano is The taste of Parmigiano is the perfect umami, the perfect balance between sweet, savory, acidic and bitterness.
You don't feel anything, but there's everything there, so your palate is like, "Wow! Can I have some more, please?" If you buy the best ingredients, you have to help the ingredients to express themself.
Massimo knows Parmigiano intimately.
This is a guy who has respect for not only the cheese, but for the crust.
That's so typical of what he's about, because he's about using all of the ingredient to its greatest advantage.
One of the first dishes that I ever had at Osteria Francescana was Five Ages of Parmigiano.
This is a dish that shows the maximum respect for an ingredient of this area.
You're seeing somebody who is taking five completely different ages of Parmigiano and puts them on the same plate but treats each one individually, showing you that it's not just one thing, it could be five different things.
You learn something about an ingredient and you learn something about Massimo from that dish.
Should I finish this dough? No, look, look.
- I'll see if it's okay.
- It's good, isn't it? No, it's a little thick.
A little more.
Okay.
Lidia, see if this one feels right.
No.
It's still, it's still yes, a little thick.
Now, check if the dough is all right.
You want to move this there? Yes, there is good.
Okay, roll it a little more.
It's a little uneven.
You have to straighten it out.
You know anyone can make it round? When you do it this way, it doesn't come out as good.
When I start my first restaurant, Campazzo, I was younger, I had just left from university.
I wasn't ready.
In the first three, four months, I lost so much weight, because I was so stressed out.
One day, a woman knock at the door.
Knock, knock.
"Permesso, permesso.
" That lady is Lidia, and Lidia was like an angel that was coming down from the sky.
She said, "If you need some help, I live on the other side of the street, so I can help you, and I have a lot of experience.
My only problem is my eyes.
I don't see very well.
That's why I'm home right now.
" She was talking and talking and explaining and like a classic mama Modenese, "Blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah.
" I said, "Lidia, I'm sorry.
Why you keep talking? If you wanna show me and you want this job, put this apron on and show me what you can do.
" And she did.
Lidia was the one who teach me traditional plates.
She was helping me making and rolling pasta.
The most important lesson, she said, "Half an hour before the service, everybody have to stop to sit down and have a proper meal.
" She gave a sense of family.
People felt that, and was the most important thing.
Who's going to start singing? Who's singing? Well, the tradition is No, when you come the first When you make tortellini for the first time, you have to sing a song.
Right, Lidia? I'll sing now.
That little bouquet of flowers That come from the mountains I want to give it to my sweetheart when he comes tonight Brava, Lidia! After a couple of years, Campazzo was successful, so I said, "Lidia, I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna spend time living in New York, away from Campazzo," and I left.
One day, I was walking in Soho and I wanted to get a great coffee.
So I saw this restaurant.
I walk in to have an espresso.
I had to wait 20 minutes.
So I said, "Mmm, maybe they have some problems.
" And so I said, "If you need some help, I can help you.
" I went back home.
The owner left a message, "Uh, Massimo, please, if you can come tomorrow for the shift 2:00 to closing time, would be great.
" I was in New York, living in the East Village, and one day I stopped at this little café called Caffé di Nonna.
I had an interview with the owner and told him that I spoke Italian and knew how to make a cappuccino.
By the time I got back to my apartment in the East Village, I had a message on my answering machine that said, "Could you please come in tomorrow and do a trial shift?" So we both walk in in the same schedule from 2:00 to closing time.
We literally walked in the door at the same time.
I remember Massimo says to me We walk in the door and I said, "Oh, hi, I'm just starting today, and my name's Lara.
" And he looked at me and said, "Hi, I'm Massimo.
I'm an Italian chef.
" - Really? I can't believe - And he used that - "I'm an Italian chef.
" - "I'm an Italian chef.
" Caffé di Nonna was a one-room restaurant, and there was this beautiful walnut bar, very long bar, which I was behind making the cappuccinos and I had the wine and the drinks and the whole thing.
Massimo was behind this open kitchen diagonal from me, and I sort of got to watch the kitchen.
He had lots of hair back then, lots of curly hair.
And he had this kind of turn-of-the-century, 1890s look going with these vests and men's jackets and then jeans and kind of motorcycle boots going on.
So he was a very cool dude.
I had never encountered that kind of stylish, Italian guy.
I had never really had any interaction with a chef before.
And so, there he was, this chef, and he was doing, you know He was being funny.
The first dish, the first thing that I ever ate that Massimo made this velvet artichoke soup was so simple and so direct in the flavor.
It went right for the heart.
That was the thing that won me over.
And then, out of the blue Out of the blue as it yeah.
I received a phone call.
I need to go back to reality because I left the restaurant, left everything down there.
I had to go back to Modena.
As soon as I went back, I realized I need to talk to Lara.
I was missing her so much.
We didn't have cell phones back then, so I started sending faxes to Massimo.
Little drawings about what was going on in New York, and every once in a while, I'd get a call from Massimo of what was going on and what was happening, and finally, I got a fax, "When are you coming to Modena?" And I thought, "You know maybe I should go.
" I hadn't worked out any of the details in my mind.
I was just there.
Obviously, you know, desperately in love with this guy.
After about a week that I was in Modena, Massimo got this crazy call from Alain Ducasse.
Massimo was like, "Oh, my God! Alain Ducasse!" It was end of 1993.
Everyone was talking about the big, famous chef.
Ducasse said, "Would you like to come to Hotel de Paris? It would be an honor for us to have you there to teach my staff how to make homemade pasta, how to make tortellini.
" That was a very, very incredible opportunity.
Massimo was over the moon.
But his main objective before leaving was, "I have to sell Trattoria del Campazzo.
" Me, on the other hand, I had just arrived.
Ten days had gone by and all of a sudden, Massimo's world was being turned around, and he was leaving.
We had one of those long, horrible conversations.
I wanted to know, "Should I stay or should I go?" And he said, "Lara, I've dated a girl for so many years before I met you, and how can I make a choice like this now?" And I thought, "Oh That's great.
That sucks.
" So, he sold Campazzo and he left.
I looked around and said, "You've got to get on with your life.
" So, I got a flight back to New York.
One day, me and Taka, my sous-chef, were serving the last two lemon tart.
Taka, suddenly, he dropped one of the two tart, and we were ready to serve.
I wanted to run from the kitchen.
And that tart was on the counter, in the middle, between the plate and the counter.
Half was there on the counter and half was there in the plate.
Taka was just like that.
He was He was white as the most He was He wants to kill himself.
I wanted to, you know, hara kiri, go like that.
I said, "Taka, stop, stop.
Look through my fingers.
That is beautiful.
Let's re-build as it's a broken stuff.
" Immediately, he didn't understand, but he trusts me so much and he said, "Okay, let's try.
" So, we get the lemon sabayon and we spread it on the plate.
We just Like this, like And then we rebuild on the other plate with all this single precision to make them feel we did that for purpose.
That was the moment in which we create Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart.
That day I learned something.
That in life, to move forward you learn from mistakes.
Maybe I did something wrong, but you learn from it.
When I was in Monte Carlo, I realized the mistakes I made with Lara.
I had to go, to be there.
He said, "Chef Ducasse, I have things I have to take care of.
I have some personal business and it's been a great experience, but I need to go.
" Massimo flew straight to New York and he just showed up.
He said, "I surrender.
This is it.
Let's make this our life.
Where do you want You want to be in New York, Lara? Do you wanna go back to Modena? Do you wanna open a restaurant? Do you wanna spend the rest of your life with me?" I caved in pretty quickly, and we decided to go back to Modena and look for a restaurant.
By chance, we found Osteria Francescana, but we didn't have the money to do it.
I sold everything, you know.
Everything.
And we put everything in this small space.
After all the time with Ducasse, I felt I need to do something different.
For Massimo, "Yeah, okay, once I learned how to make those recipes and they were delicious, and people came to my restaurant, Trattoria del Campazzo, now that was too easy, so we've gotta challenge it.
" It was so important to me to learn, to evolve.
So I decide to create a new cuisine out of the classic, traditional food of Modena.
People don't want the Italian kitchen to change because it's so delicious, because there is this element of comfort.
And so, all of a sudden, you've opened a window for something unexpected to happen.
The day I was open Osteria Francescana, 19th of March, 1995, Lara left for U.
S.
because her dad was He had an operation.
We were ready to open, and I was missing her.
So, I call Lara.
So he called me, and of course, back then we didn't have kids, so 8:00 in the morning was early, and I come to the phone and hadn't had my coffee and Massimo says, "So, we're opening the restaurant this afternoon, and I just wanted to make sure that it was clear.
We're getting married, right?" And I thought, "Who is this guy? He's asking me to marry him over the phone? Who does that?" I didn't hear anything, except for "Let me have my coffee before and then I'm gonna call you back.
Bye.
" That was crazy.
That was crazy.
Yeah, but that was the reality.
And then she called me back.
She said, "Okay.
" Yeah.
The day that Lara decided to come with us something changed, because Massimo was free to open his mind.
One of the things that's so great about Lara is she took Massimo out of provincial Modena and showed him a world, showed him art, showed him other aspects of life that if he was just here in Modena, he wouldn't have understood.
I think that Lara is the most important part of the success of the Osteria Francescana.
Once I met Massimo and we became friends and started hanging out, I would say, on a Saturday, "Hey, do you wanna go see some galleries with me?" And he said, "What do you mean, 'go see galleries'? What are we gonna do?" I would take him to see a Richter show and he would look at these paintings and he had no context for what they were or what they meant, and often times, he would leave saying, "Well, I could do that.
What is that about?" I wanted to bring him into this world because I thought that there might be something that he found interesting and liked and something that we could actually have in common.
It was 1997, we were at the Venice Biennial.
Walked into the Italian pavilion where you have all these great Italian artists, but mostly from an older generation and in the rafters, there are all these taxidermy stuffed pigeons, and Massimo says, "What are these pigeons doing here?" And we looked closer and I said, "Actually, that's an artist who made that installation of the pigeons.
" And the closer we looked, you could see that he had also painted them, literally, pooping on the walls and on some of the other artists' artwork.
Massimo was like, "That is genius! That guy is amazing! Those pigeons, that's like me.
I'm trying to change the Italian kitchen, but the only way I'm going to get noticed is if I kind of go up in the rafters and look from above and, in a way, deface the generation that came before me.
Only with that kind of sensationalism and that kind of provocative attitude am I gonna be able to break through and open up the doors for another generation of Italian kitchen.
" So, he felt part pigeon in his own defiance and his own wanting to break through and do something different.
He said, "I'm gonna be that pigeon.
I'm gonna be up there.
I'm gonna be going against the grain and swimming up the Po river and going against the current.
" That's when art started to have real value for him.
The artwork, over the years, somehow kind of made its way through the back door into the kitchen and really had a great influence on the way he thought through the recipes.
When we open Francescana, I would start serving tortellini in broth, the classic.
But people, they were eating that tortellino just like this, "I'm eating tortellini.
Yeah, I can go to the Trattoria or to Osteria, whatever, and I'm eating tortellini.
" So I said, "Why don't we serve something very provocative?" I serve tortellini only with six tortellini in one line.
They were walking into the broth.
Can you imagine what the locals, they were thinking about us? They want me dead.
You know, "You cannot mess with Grandmother recipe!" True tortellino is ten to a spoonful.
He wasn't even giving them a spoonful of food.
But at the same time, he was saying, "Here are six tortellini.
You have to respect each one.
" They didn't understand what I was doing.
If you eat a tortellino, most of the time, you lose yourself in the process of eating.
With this dish, I was saying that tradition, most of the time, doesn't respect the ingredients.
At one point, the rumors of the six tortellini, they spread in Modena.
The most important local critic came to our our Francescana, and he was asking for that plate.
The day after, on the local newspaper, was the photograph of me presenting this plate that was like, "But can you believe he was serving six tortellini with this gelatin?" It was like the most horrible, horrible description.
I was like, "Okay, you like provocation and you'll respond like that, I'm gonna make your life worse.
" I started thinking about that could be very interesting, to rebuild a lasagna.
Create a lasagna without the dough, without the pasta.
That kind of crunchiness and flavor and burning, it's the best part of the lasagna, the surface of lasagna.
My idea is to serve this and make everyone who comes to taste that corner, to live the experience of me, my brothers, every single child in Emilia-Romagna that loves that corner.
The best corner of a pan of lasagna.
So they tried to kill the name of Osteria Francescana, because, I think I was poisoning ideas, I was poisoning the new generation, I was poisoning the Grandmother recipes.
What he was looking for, more than anything, was to initiate a dialog and that was met with a lot of resistance.
The first five, six years was really, really, really tough.
Massimo's customers from Trattoria del Campazzo came to Osteria Francescana, but no one really wanted the plates that Massimo was serving.
In a town like Modena, people weren't ready and people didn't necessarily want that kind of kitchen.
That interaction created a lot of energy.
The friction, complaining, or even asking questions, or leaving the restaurant and laughing, "Oh, Bottura, look what he's doing," it was actually the fuel that he needed to keep going deeper into the Italian kitchen.
The idea that their recipes, meaning traditional Emilian and Modenese recipes, could be different than the ones they had eaten at home was threatening.
We were struggling, were really struggling.
I was ready to close the restaurant because it was totally empty.
He had got this really bad restaurant review from one of the most important restaurant magazines called Gambero Rosso, and they came out with this scathing review that said, "If you don't look at the ugly red Ferrari painting, the decor is acceptable.
But if we start talking about the food" And, "Massimo was too overeager in trying to be original at every cost," and, "There is no soul in this food," and, "Where was the Italian kitchen?" Massimo came back with his head in his hands and said, "Do you think that we really should keep doing this? They're not interested in eating this kind of food.
" It wasn't like closing that restaurant was going to close down his desire to bring the Italian kitchen into the 21st century.
If he left at that moment he would be surrendering, and surrendering a battle that would continue within him.
Lara, she was the one who pushed me to stay.
"Just one more year, then you can leave.
" She saw the beauty of the ideas before everyone else.
She said, "Massimo, if you leave now, you're gonna regret for the rest of your life.
" One night in April, 2001, the most important food critic in Italy was driving from Milan to Florence, and there was an accident in Bologna, so there was a very long line.
He decided to stop in Modena.
He detour and he had dinner in Osteria.
Two days later, most important magazine, Espresso, came out this article.
"Tagliatella postmodern.
" He was writing about how sorry he was not to be in my restaurant before, and how sorry for the Modenese, they didn't understand that kind of tagliatella.
That article opened the whole scene of gastronomic critics.
Word was going out and those under-the-radar gastronomy journalists from Italy, the better journalists were coming and saying, "Hey, something's going on here.
" They started seeing in Massimo something that they hadn't seen for a while in Italy, which was someone who was willing to take risks.
It really meant, "We're going to accept what you're doing, Massimo Bottura.
" It was a message to the Italian community, Modena, Parma, Bologna, Milan, these concentric circles moving outward, that there was something happening here.
In November, we got the prize as the best performance from Espresso Guide.
The prize as Best Chef, Young Chef in Italy, and the first star Michelin.
The food world woke up to the importance of what he was doing.
That's the moment when his rating in the 50 Best went way up.
Now, the restaurant is full all the time.
The Modenesi are also back with him, if they can get in.
Do you remember this? But this Yes.
Oh, my gosh! Look at this picture.
That's cool.
- Look at this one.
- I'm getting old.
- I took those pictures.
- Yeah.
No, that was you.
That was me.
That's crazy.
Look at this.
With the Kangol hat.
I know, you were cool.
Come on, Lara.
Oh, my God.
Lara, she understand me so well, and she's maybe the only person in the world, she can make me change perspective of the things.
With Lara, I became a better person, you know deeper, and, uh, you know, she opened doors.
Years later, looking back on it, asking me to marry him on the same day we opened the restaurant was his subtle way of saying, "Are you ready to marry a restaurant?" Yes, the chef comes with it, the husband comes with it, the family comes with it, but basically, I married a restaurant.
Sì.
So the restaurant to me has never been this something that took my husband away from me.
The restaurant has always been our family, and a big family.
My kids grew up celebrating their birthdays with big birthday parties in Osteria Francescana.
We opened the restaurant in 1995 and Alexa was born a year and a half after that, so she grew up hiding under the restaurant tables.
The way Massimo tells stories about growing up under his kitchen table, there was Alexa growing up under the restaurant tables and running into the kitchen, asking, "So, is there anything new on the menu?" And maybe she was three years old.
And my son, Charlie, has this sense of love in the restaurant where there are lots of people around who care about him and want him to have fun.
I love that, the fact that the restaurant was our home, and we lived just down the street, and when it was closing time, we were there, and between services, and I was constantly trying to fix things and make the paintings straight and put some flowers in a vase and You know, it's our baby.
If you have success, if you are If you live an incredible moment of happiness, the happiness is much, much more deep and big if you share with others, and you get to the point together, is like the happiness and the feeling is exploding.
It's double.
This is the point.
The epicenter coming near the city of Modena, and we can expect the worst of the damage in that area, I think.
We're hearing of factories in rural areas collapsing and historic structures, like bell towers, being brought crashing down.
One lunch, we had the restaurant fully booked.
There were like this very strong shake, and everyone was running out and street was going like a wave.
Was crazy moment.
After the earthquake, the consortium Parmigiano came to me saying, "Massimo, you have to help us.
This is a disaster.
360,000 big wheels of Parmigiano are damaged.
That could be the end of half of the production of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
And if you don't act very quick, everyone is gonna go out of business and we gonna lose everything.
" So I went to the consortium.
I said to the president, "I have the idea.
We're gonna do a recipe on Riso Cacio e Pepe.
We're gonna make a risotto, and we're going to cook the rice using the Parmigiano.
" The president was like "Really? Are you sure you're gonna" "Don't worry.
Don't worry, it's gonna be great.
We're gonna make a dinner in which, all over the world, everyone can cook that recipe.
" I want to show everyone what happened to Modena and help them sell everything they produce.
Japan, London, New York, everywhere they were cooking Risotto Cacio e Pepe.
40,000 people, they were cooking Risotto Cacio e Pepe.
All 360,000 wheels were sold they were sold out.
No one lost a job.
No cheese maker closed the doors.
That was a recipe as a social gesture.
- That's Massimo Bottura! - Ciao.
- Ciao, vecchio.
- Ciao.
- Ciao, ciao.
- Massimo.
Ciao.
Wait.
Ma'am how are these? These chanterelles? The chanterelles are good.
The porcini are no good.
You have to come in the morning to get porcini mushrooms.
Wait, what's this? Caesar's mushrooms.
The Caesar's mushrooms are good.
They're a little There are some good ones.
Look! I'll have good ones in the morning, Massimo.
Tomorrow morning, we'll come tomorrow morning.
You could get them now, but come a little earlier.
I'll come around 9:30, 10:00.
- Yes, when the good stuff is on display.
- Okay.
- Now, this morning I have - Okay.
Bye.
Have a nice day.
Hey there.
Look, it's the maestro.
Give me, give me a One of the, the The ones in front that just came out.
Give me that one in front, how is it? Will you split it with me? Yes, with pleasure.
My God, it's good.
Can you send some of this to Francescana? A mixture, half a crate of these and half of these.
Really, really good ones.
Do you have These are the Mmm.
Massimo brings something else to the plate besides food.
That's the goal of one of the world's greatest restaurants.
He's arrived at his own formula for what being a three-Michelin star is about.
For Massimo, it's about the art, it's about the music, it's about the place, it's about the ingredients.
It's not just about the food.
It's about the whole concept behind the food that makes it into something far more interesting.
Every time I go to the restaurant, I'm always astounded by what I see.
All of these dishes were made with traditional Modena ingredients, but used in a different way than the way a trattoria would use.
One of the most important ingredients in his food is memory.
His memory of tasting things and of the way things were made, and taking those memories and re-interpreting them in a more modern way.
He's the most important chef in Italy.
He has three Michelin stars.
In San Pellegrino's 50 Best restaurants list, he's number three.
I hope to see him in the number one spot! spoon tarts, spaghetti with cream sauce, lobster bisque.
March! March! He's a rock and roller.
He's an exciting, dynamic guy who seems to me ready to go 24 hours a day.
Always excited about food, excited about wine, excited to communicate to you what he knows about Italy.
Massimo's artistic sensibility is unlike anything that had ever been done before.
There is no one who's doing what Massimo is doing.
Today, he's an icon in Italy.
But when he started, the whole of Italy was against it.
It was a type of treason.
He was considered a traitor of Italy.
Modena, it's a small town with a very, very strong gastronomic tradition.
The Modenesi are very demanding about food.
The actual country of Italy is 150 years old.
The actual traditions are 26 centuries.
So, you have people who have very, very deep roots.
If you ask any Italian where you can find the greatest food in the country, the answer is usually, "Mom.
" Massimo takes a dish that you can find at home and brings it into a restaurant in a different way than it'd ever been seen before, and that's why in the first years of this restaurant you never found anybody from Modena in the dining room.
It wasn't what Mom did, and so they were upset by that.
As a chef, he takes what his mother made and turns it into something divine.
I grew up in a very large family with three older brothers, one smaller sister.
But all the aunt and the grandmother, they were living with us.
I was kind of very energetic child and I was running around as crazy, and my older brother, they didn't like it, so they were chasing me.
And my safety place was in the kitchen under the table where my grandmother was rolling pasta.
My grandmother was defending me with the wood, the matterello, as we call matterello to roll pasta, from my older brothers, "Get out of here! Leave him alone.
He's the youngest one.
" So, from under the table, I was looking at the world in a different perspective.
The flour was falling from the table and I was on my knees, and in that moment, I was stealing from under the table the tortellini.
So when they ask me, "What is the plate of your life?" It's a tortellino, but it's a raw tortellino, because that's the moment in which I was stealing the raw tortellino just made one second before from the hand of my grandmother.
That's why food is so important for me because in many different creation I do, you can find that I'm trying to take you, in that moment, back to where you were a child.
Can I drive the tractor? No, come on! I'm telling you.
Max, can I drive the tractor? No, because it must be extraordinary.
He's serious.
He wants to drive the tractor.
No, no, I don't want to cause trouble.
Does he have a tractor license? No, a wagon license.
Yes, yes.
Ah! Massimo is someone you kind of have to chase.
He's always ten steps ahead of you.
He's running down the street, and you're in his shadow.
Everything that comes to his mind gets thrown out there on the table immediately.
There's no editing.
There's no being cautious about his ideas.
Massimo's volcanic in that way.
My role, and it's very fun and it's very entertaining, is always kind of catching up with Massimo to be a witness.
If I don't write down, take note, decode what the recipe is about, and find a way to make that accessible to other people, nobody's going to.
One of the things that I love about him is that he's always creating without even touching one ingredient.
We'll have been at the movies, and we'll walk out of the movies and I'll say, "So, what'd you think about the film?" And he'll say, "I don't know, I just I wasn't really paying attention.
I was thinking about a way of making mozzarella invisible, and if you could drink that and have all the flavor of tomato and mozzarella, how cool would that be?" And I would think, "God, he really didn't watch the movie.
" Lara is so important for what we do.
She'll look at the things from distance so she sees everything very clear.
When you have a relation, you speak the same language.
If you speak the same language, you can share a dialog.
We share the language of creativity and the language of dreams.
Ciao, ciao, ciao.
1998, when his father, Umberto, came to eat in Osteria Francescana, at the end of the meal, he said, "This is very good, but you should start thinking about the aging process.
The aging process is Modena.
The whole area is about slow, slow passing of time.
" There is no shortcut for producing Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and this is the reason that we not taste the cheese, but we listen, okay? The sound for us is like to have an X-ray machine and to see what you have inside.
- No, it's no good.
- Okay.
No.
It's perfect.
Okay, Carlo, let's open it.
The smell is amazing.
The smell is amazing.
But every time I open a cheese like this, I get emotion, you know.
It's unbelievable.
When I say, in my blood there is balsamic vinegar, and my muscles are made by Parmigiano it is true.
It is true.
VoilÃÂ ! Who wants to taste? Dear God! Vecchio.
Tom Here, taste some.
Parmigiano is The taste of Parmigiano is the perfect umami, the perfect balance between sweet, savory, acidic and bitterness.
You don't feel anything, but there's everything there, so your palate is like, "Wow! Can I have some more, please?" If you buy the best ingredients, you have to help the ingredients to express themself.
Massimo knows Parmigiano intimately.
This is a guy who has respect for not only the cheese, but for the crust.
That's so typical of what he's about, because he's about using all of the ingredient to its greatest advantage.
One of the first dishes that I ever had at Osteria Francescana was Five Ages of Parmigiano.
This is a dish that shows the maximum respect for an ingredient of this area.
You're seeing somebody who is taking five completely different ages of Parmigiano and puts them on the same plate but treats each one individually, showing you that it's not just one thing, it could be five different things.
You learn something about an ingredient and you learn something about Massimo from that dish.
Should I finish this dough? No, look, look.
- I'll see if it's okay.
- It's good, isn't it? No, it's a little thick.
A little more.
Okay.
Lidia, see if this one feels right.
No.
It's still, it's still yes, a little thick.
Now, check if the dough is all right.
You want to move this there? Yes, there is good.
Okay, roll it a little more.
It's a little uneven.
You have to straighten it out.
You know anyone can make it round? When you do it this way, it doesn't come out as good.
When I start my first restaurant, Campazzo, I was younger, I had just left from university.
I wasn't ready.
In the first three, four months, I lost so much weight, because I was so stressed out.
One day, a woman knock at the door.
Knock, knock.
"Permesso, permesso.
" That lady is Lidia, and Lidia was like an angel that was coming down from the sky.
She said, "If you need some help, I live on the other side of the street, so I can help you, and I have a lot of experience.
My only problem is my eyes.
I don't see very well.
That's why I'm home right now.
" She was talking and talking and explaining and like a classic mama Modenese, "Blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah.
" I said, "Lidia, I'm sorry.
Why you keep talking? If you wanna show me and you want this job, put this apron on and show me what you can do.
" And she did.
Lidia was the one who teach me traditional plates.
She was helping me making and rolling pasta.
The most important lesson, she said, "Half an hour before the service, everybody have to stop to sit down and have a proper meal.
" She gave a sense of family.
People felt that, and was the most important thing.
Who's going to start singing? Who's singing? Well, the tradition is No, when you come the first When you make tortellini for the first time, you have to sing a song.
Right, Lidia? I'll sing now.
That little bouquet of flowers That come from the mountains I want to give it to my sweetheart when he comes tonight Brava, Lidia! After a couple of years, Campazzo was successful, so I said, "Lidia, I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna spend time living in New York, away from Campazzo," and I left.
One day, I was walking in Soho and I wanted to get a great coffee.
So I saw this restaurant.
I walk in to have an espresso.
I had to wait 20 minutes.
So I said, "Mmm, maybe they have some problems.
" And so I said, "If you need some help, I can help you.
" I went back home.
The owner left a message, "Uh, Massimo, please, if you can come tomorrow for the shift 2:00 to closing time, would be great.
" I was in New York, living in the East Village, and one day I stopped at this little café called Caffé di Nonna.
I had an interview with the owner and told him that I spoke Italian and knew how to make a cappuccino.
By the time I got back to my apartment in the East Village, I had a message on my answering machine that said, "Could you please come in tomorrow and do a trial shift?" So we both walk in in the same schedule from 2:00 to closing time.
We literally walked in the door at the same time.
I remember Massimo says to me We walk in the door and I said, "Oh, hi, I'm just starting today, and my name's Lara.
" And he looked at me and said, "Hi, I'm Massimo.
I'm an Italian chef.
" - Really? I can't believe - And he used that - "I'm an Italian chef.
" - "I'm an Italian chef.
" Caffé di Nonna was a one-room restaurant, and there was this beautiful walnut bar, very long bar, which I was behind making the cappuccinos and I had the wine and the drinks and the whole thing.
Massimo was behind this open kitchen diagonal from me, and I sort of got to watch the kitchen.
He had lots of hair back then, lots of curly hair.
And he had this kind of turn-of-the-century, 1890s look going with these vests and men's jackets and then jeans and kind of motorcycle boots going on.
So he was a very cool dude.
I had never encountered that kind of stylish, Italian guy.
I had never really had any interaction with a chef before.
And so, there he was, this chef, and he was doing, you know He was being funny.
The first dish, the first thing that I ever ate that Massimo made this velvet artichoke soup was so simple and so direct in the flavor.
It went right for the heart.
That was the thing that won me over.
And then, out of the blue Out of the blue as it yeah.
I received a phone call.
I need to go back to reality because I left the restaurant, left everything down there.
I had to go back to Modena.
As soon as I went back, I realized I need to talk to Lara.
I was missing her so much.
We didn't have cell phones back then, so I started sending faxes to Massimo.
Little drawings about what was going on in New York, and every once in a while, I'd get a call from Massimo of what was going on and what was happening, and finally, I got a fax, "When are you coming to Modena?" And I thought, "You know maybe I should go.
" I hadn't worked out any of the details in my mind.
I was just there.
Obviously, you know, desperately in love with this guy.
After about a week that I was in Modena, Massimo got this crazy call from Alain Ducasse.
Massimo was like, "Oh, my God! Alain Ducasse!" It was end of 1993.
Everyone was talking about the big, famous chef.
Ducasse said, "Would you like to come to Hotel de Paris? It would be an honor for us to have you there to teach my staff how to make homemade pasta, how to make tortellini.
" That was a very, very incredible opportunity.
Massimo was over the moon.
But his main objective before leaving was, "I have to sell Trattoria del Campazzo.
" Me, on the other hand, I had just arrived.
Ten days had gone by and all of a sudden, Massimo's world was being turned around, and he was leaving.
We had one of those long, horrible conversations.
I wanted to know, "Should I stay or should I go?" And he said, "Lara, I've dated a girl for so many years before I met you, and how can I make a choice like this now?" And I thought, "Oh That's great.
That sucks.
" So, he sold Campazzo and he left.
I looked around and said, "You've got to get on with your life.
" So, I got a flight back to New York.
One day, me and Taka, my sous-chef, were serving the last two lemon tart.
Taka, suddenly, he dropped one of the two tart, and we were ready to serve.
I wanted to run from the kitchen.
And that tart was on the counter, in the middle, between the plate and the counter.
Half was there on the counter and half was there in the plate.
Taka was just like that.
He was He was white as the most He was He wants to kill himself.
I wanted to, you know, hara kiri, go like that.
I said, "Taka, stop, stop.
Look through my fingers.
That is beautiful.
Let's re-build as it's a broken stuff.
" Immediately, he didn't understand, but he trusts me so much and he said, "Okay, let's try.
" So, we get the lemon sabayon and we spread it on the plate.
We just Like this, like And then we rebuild on the other plate with all this single precision to make them feel we did that for purpose.
That was the moment in which we create Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart.
That day I learned something.
That in life, to move forward you learn from mistakes.
Maybe I did something wrong, but you learn from it.
When I was in Monte Carlo, I realized the mistakes I made with Lara.
I had to go, to be there.
He said, "Chef Ducasse, I have things I have to take care of.
I have some personal business and it's been a great experience, but I need to go.
" Massimo flew straight to New York and he just showed up.
He said, "I surrender.
This is it.
Let's make this our life.
Where do you want You want to be in New York, Lara? Do you wanna go back to Modena? Do you wanna open a restaurant? Do you wanna spend the rest of your life with me?" I caved in pretty quickly, and we decided to go back to Modena and look for a restaurant.
By chance, we found Osteria Francescana, but we didn't have the money to do it.
I sold everything, you know.
Everything.
And we put everything in this small space.
After all the time with Ducasse, I felt I need to do something different.
For Massimo, "Yeah, okay, once I learned how to make those recipes and they were delicious, and people came to my restaurant, Trattoria del Campazzo, now that was too easy, so we've gotta challenge it.
" It was so important to me to learn, to evolve.
So I decide to create a new cuisine out of the classic, traditional food of Modena.
People don't want the Italian kitchen to change because it's so delicious, because there is this element of comfort.
And so, all of a sudden, you've opened a window for something unexpected to happen.
The day I was open Osteria Francescana, 19th of March, 1995, Lara left for U.
S.
because her dad was He had an operation.
We were ready to open, and I was missing her.
So, I call Lara.
So he called me, and of course, back then we didn't have kids, so 8:00 in the morning was early, and I come to the phone and hadn't had my coffee and Massimo says, "So, we're opening the restaurant this afternoon, and I just wanted to make sure that it was clear.
We're getting married, right?" And I thought, "Who is this guy? He's asking me to marry him over the phone? Who does that?" I didn't hear anything, except for "Let me have my coffee before and then I'm gonna call you back.
Bye.
" That was crazy.
That was crazy.
Yeah, but that was the reality.
And then she called me back.
She said, "Okay.
" Yeah.
The day that Lara decided to come with us something changed, because Massimo was free to open his mind.
One of the things that's so great about Lara is she took Massimo out of provincial Modena and showed him a world, showed him art, showed him other aspects of life that if he was just here in Modena, he wouldn't have understood.
I think that Lara is the most important part of the success of the Osteria Francescana.
Once I met Massimo and we became friends and started hanging out, I would say, on a Saturday, "Hey, do you wanna go see some galleries with me?" And he said, "What do you mean, 'go see galleries'? What are we gonna do?" I would take him to see a Richter show and he would look at these paintings and he had no context for what they were or what they meant, and often times, he would leave saying, "Well, I could do that.
What is that about?" I wanted to bring him into this world because I thought that there might be something that he found interesting and liked and something that we could actually have in common.
It was 1997, we were at the Venice Biennial.
Walked into the Italian pavilion where you have all these great Italian artists, but mostly from an older generation and in the rafters, there are all these taxidermy stuffed pigeons, and Massimo says, "What are these pigeons doing here?" And we looked closer and I said, "Actually, that's an artist who made that installation of the pigeons.
" And the closer we looked, you could see that he had also painted them, literally, pooping on the walls and on some of the other artists' artwork.
Massimo was like, "That is genius! That guy is amazing! Those pigeons, that's like me.
I'm trying to change the Italian kitchen, but the only way I'm going to get noticed is if I kind of go up in the rafters and look from above and, in a way, deface the generation that came before me.
Only with that kind of sensationalism and that kind of provocative attitude am I gonna be able to break through and open up the doors for another generation of Italian kitchen.
" So, he felt part pigeon in his own defiance and his own wanting to break through and do something different.
He said, "I'm gonna be that pigeon.
I'm gonna be up there.
I'm gonna be going against the grain and swimming up the Po river and going against the current.
" That's when art started to have real value for him.
The artwork, over the years, somehow kind of made its way through the back door into the kitchen and really had a great influence on the way he thought through the recipes.
When we open Francescana, I would start serving tortellini in broth, the classic.
But people, they were eating that tortellino just like this, "I'm eating tortellini.
Yeah, I can go to the Trattoria or to Osteria, whatever, and I'm eating tortellini.
" So I said, "Why don't we serve something very provocative?" I serve tortellini only with six tortellini in one line.
They were walking into the broth.
Can you imagine what the locals, they were thinking about us? They want me dead.
You know, "You cannot mess with Grandmother recipe!" True tortellino is ten to a spoonful.
He wasn't even giving them a spoonful of food.
But at the same time, he was saying, "Here are six tortellini.
You have to respect each one.
" They didn't understand what I was doing.
If you eat a tortellino, most of the time, you lose yourself in the process of eating.
With this dish, I was saying that tradition, most of the time, doesn't respect the ingredients.
At one point, the rumors of the six tortellini, they spread in Modena.
The most important local critic came to our our Francescana, and he was asking for that plate.
The day after, on the local newspaper, was the photograph of me presenting this plate that was like, "But can you believe he was serving six tortellini with this gelatin?" It was like the most horrible, horrible description.
I was like, "Okay, you like provocation and you'll respond like that, I'm gonna make your life worse.
" I started thinking about that could be very interesting, to rebuild a lasagna.
Create a lasagna without the dough, without the pasta.
That kind of crunchiness and flavor and burning, it's the best part of the lasagna, the surface of lasagna.
My idea is to serve this and make everyone who comes to taste that corner, to live the experience of me, my brothers, every single child in Emilia-Romagna that loves that corner.
The best corner of a pan of lasagna.
So they tried to kill the name of Osteria Francescana, because, I think I was poisoning ideas, I was poisoning the new generation, I was poisoning the Grandmother recipes.
What he was looking for, more than anything, was to initiate a dialog and that was met with a lot of resistance.
The first five, six years was really, really, really tough.
Massimo's customers from Trattoria del Campazzo came to Osteria Francescana, but no one really wanted the plates that Massimo was serving.
In a town like Modena, people weren't ready and people didn't necessarily want that kind of kitchen.
That interaction created a lot of energy.
The friction, complaining, or even asking questions, or leaving the restaurant and laughing, "Oh, Bottura, look what he's doing," it was actually the fuel that he needed to keep going deeper into the Italian kitchen.
The idea that their recipes, meaning traditional Emilian and Modenese recipes, could be different than the ones they had eaten at home was threatening.
We were struggling, were really struggling.
I was ready to close the restaurant because it was totally empty.
He had got this really bad restaurant review from one of the most important restaurant magazines called Gambero Rosso, and they came out with this scathing review that said, "If you don't look at the ugly red Ferrari painting, the decor is acceptable.
But if we start talking about the food" And, "Massimo was too overeager in trying to be original at every cost," and, "There is no soul in this food," and, "Where was the Italian kitchen?" Massimo came back with his head in his hands and said, "Do you think that we really should keep doing this? They're not interested in eating this kind of food.
" It wasn't like closing that restaurant was going to close down his desire to bring the Italian kitchen into the 21st century.
If he left at that moment he would be surrendering, and surrendering a battle that would continue within him.
Lara, she was the one who pushed me to stay.
"Just one more year, then you can leave.
" She saw the beauty of the ideas before everyone else.
She said, "Massimo, if you leave now, you're gonna regret for the rest of your life.
" One night in April, 2001, the most important food critic in Italy was driving from Milan to Florence, and there was an accident in Bologna, so there was a very long line.
He decided to stop in Modena.
He detour and he had dinner in Osteria.
Two days later, most important magazine, Espresso, came out this article.
"Tagliatella postmodern.
" He was writing about how sorry he was not to be in my restaurant before, and how sorry for the Modenese, they didn't understand that kind of tagliatella.
That article opened the whole scene of gastronomic critics.
Word was going out and those under-the-radar gastronomy journalists from Italy, the better journalists were coming and saying, "Hey, something's going on here.
" They started seeing in Massimo something that they hadn't seen for a while in Italy, which was someone who was willing to take risks.
It really meant, "We're going to accept what you're doing, Massimo Bottura.
" It was a message to the Italian community, Modena, Parma, Bologna, Milan, these concentric circles moving outward, that there was something happening here.
In November, we got the prize as the best performance from Espresso Guide.
The prize as Best Chef, Young Chef in Italy, and the first star Michelin.
The food world woke up to the importance of what he was doing.
That's the moment when his rating in the 50 Best went way up.
Now, the restaurant is full all the time.
The Modenesi are also back with him, if they can get in.
Do you remember this? But this Yes.
Oh, my gosh! Look at this picture.
That's cool.
- Look at this one.
- I'm getting old.
- I took those pictures.
- Yeah.
No, that was you.
That was me.
That's crazy.
Look at this.
With the Kangol hat.
I know, you were cool.
Come on, Lara.
Oh, my God.
Lara, she understand me so well, and she's maybe the only person in the world, she can make me change perspective of the things.
With Lara, I became a better person, you know deeper, and, uh, you know, she opened doors.
Years later, looking back on it, asking me to marry him on the same day we opened the restaurant was his subtle way of saying, "Are you ready to marry a restaurant?" Yes, the chef comes with it, the husband comes with it, the family comes with it, but basically, I married a restaurant.
Sì.
So the restaurant to me has never been this something that took my husband away from me.
The restaurant has always been our family, and a big family.
My kids grew up celebrating their birthdays with big birthday parties in Osteria Francescana.
We opened the restaurant in 1995 and Alexa was born a year and a half after that, so she grew up hiding under the restaurant tables.
The way Massimo tells stories about growing up under his kitchen table, there was Alexa growing up under the restaurant tables and running into the kitchen, asking, "So, is there anything new on the menu?" And maybe she was three years old.
And my son, Charlie, has this sense of love in the restaurant where there are lots of people around who care about him and want him to have fun.
I love that, the fact that the restaurant was our home, and we lived just down the street, and when it was closing time, we were there, and between services, and I was constantly trying to fix things and make the paintings straight and put some flowers in a vase and You know, it's our baby.
If you have success, if you are If you live an incredible moment of happiness, the happiness is much, much more deep and big if you share with others, and you get to the point together, is like the happiness and the feeling is exploding.
It's double.
This is the point.