Massimo Bottura is presently the world’s most celebrated chef. He grew up and lives in Modena, near Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy’s Adriatic Riviera.
Modena, the birthplace of balsamic vinegar, is a short drive from Parma, home to authentic Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. And with Lambrusco being bottled in such a food paradise, it is no wonder Bottura became a brilliant chef.
But Bottura’s story is not that simple – neither is he. Bottura, at age 62, is an art-lover and culinary artist, car collector, philosopher, philanthropist, and an ambassador for the Emilia Romagna Region.
Massimo is On the Move, But Modena is Home
If you embark upon a sacred foodie version of Spain’s Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, you must globetrot to follow Chef Bottura to some of the world’s most exciting, historic and glamorous places.
But first, you will spend a few days in Emilia Romagna’s Modena area, where you should attempt to book a reservation at Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy—Bottura’s three-Michelin-starred flagship.
Casa Maria Luigia, Modena, Italy
Casa Maria Luigia is Bottura’s pastoral, luxurious countryside guesthouse, at which he and his American wife and business partner, Lara Gilmore, have “redefined” hospitality. Together, they authored “Slow Food, Fast Cars,” a book documenting this place where classic cooking exists with high-performance cars.
Al Gatto Verde is located at Casa Maria Luigia, steered by chef Jessica Rosval, which is Michelin-starred and now, like Francescana, is named among the world’s top-50 restaurants.
Cavallino, 15 kilometers from Modena in the “company town” of Maranello, was Enzo Ferrari’s corporate dining room on the campus of the headquarters, the “Villaggio Ferrari,” of the legendary supercar company.
Gucci Osteria Locations
Next, by train, car, or plane, to experience Bottura’s vibrant, unique dishes you would journey to Gucci Osteria, in Firenze, Beverly Hills, Tokyo, and Seoul – where haute couture meets haute cuisine.
The rooftop Beverly Hills location is above a large Gucci store on Rodeo Drive. The historically significant Piazza della Signoria is Bottura’s location in Florence, which is adjacent to a wildly creative Gucci Museum.
Torno Subito, in Miami and Singapore (a Dubai edition recently closed.)
It is worth noting that Bottura also studied at Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo under French Chef Alain Ducasse and Catalan cuisine in collaboration with Chef Ferran Adria at El Bulli, a “world’s best,” which is now a museum.
The Gala in the Gatto Verde Glow
Tuxedoed-up as the sun was setting, I was wandering Casa Maria Luigia’s grounds near Al Gatto Verde’s kitchen. The culinary team was preparing to serve the attendees of the Opening Night Gala Dinner of the seventh annual Motor Valley Fest, a Modena-based-bash celebrating the Emilia Romagna Region’s history as the birthplace of speed.
My sneak peek at the evening’s menu, featuring local ingredients and customs, was pointless because Bottura’s creative remaking of even traditional recipes is entirely unpredictable.
I paraphrase:
“Iberian Pil Pil reinterpreted with a Modenese flair using smoked baccala…
Risotto which mimics the flavors of Borlengo, a thin crepe served in the Emilian Apennines…
Psychedelic, Spin Painted Cotechino – a tribute at artist Damien Hirst. Cotechino coated in vegetable charcoal…
A dessert celebrating cherry blossom season in Vignola with a cake named after Renaissance architect. Jacopo Barozzi…”
Executives from Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani, Dallara, and Ducati, plus local elected officials, including Roberta Frisoni, the stylishly bespectacled economist who is Regional Assessor for Tourism and Sport, were there mingling on the lawn of the enclave.
I met Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna and asked him what it is like to be a corporate celebrity.
“I work with talented people who make certain I do not have to be,” he joked.
Meeting Massimo
Barbara Candolfini, the Rimini and Bologna-based Emilia Romagna Tourism Board official, told me I would likely get the opportunity to meet Chef Bottura, but she could not have predicted how.
In the evening’s golden light, as I turned the corner to peer into the door of the kitchen, a man popped out of the door and almost ran into me.
“Hello,” he said.
“Buona sera,” I responded.
“Buona sera,” he smiled back.
“Chef Massimo Bottura?” I asked, noticing his white chef coat.
“Si. Yes,” he answered humbly, unbothered that I had to ask. Then he displayed to me the waistband of his custom, designer denim jeans with his name embroidered on it…similar, as he also showed me, to his logoed shoes.
“I believe you now,” I joked.
“I want to show you something,” he said, and started to walk inside toward the restaurant’s “back of the house.” Bottura gestured when he noticed I was unsure whether I should follow. “Yes. Come with me!”
The Playroom
Chef led me, like the Pied Piper, and a few other attendees along his way, into a big garage that is best described as his “playroom.”
The space was decorated with everything from neon script signs, automotive company posters and logos, a painting of a Budweiser bottle and stylish, African artwork.
There was a desk and work area in the far corner next to a wall that comprised a giant glass closet in which hung racing uniforms, jackets and shirts, plus and autographed helmets and sports memorabilia.
Otherwise, the playroom was loaded with slip-covered vehicles: Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Ducati racing bikes, and assorted other supercars.
“Pick one. Old or new? What kind of car do you want to see?” asked Chef Bottura while he was walking between the sports cars. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled off the red slip covers like he was a magician tugging a tablecloth out from under the dishes. Each time he unveiled a candy-colored custom car, Bottura told its’ story.
“This is a GT 250 Spyder…1962,” before he moved on to the next. “Enzo Ferrari thought his cars should be red, but he always wanted the one he drove to be grey so he could spot any imperfections. He always felt the next car he produced would be his best.”
Shop Talk
While we admired his eye-candy-cars, Bottura would squeeze in a little shop talk with some business stories about some of his restaurant locations.
“My partners know, I do not ever cut quality…I better not say anything more about that,” he then demurred. Two of the men with us were Lebanese automotive bloggers from Dubai. The innovative Bottura mentioned to them that he liked Middle Eastern food.
“Chef, how would you reimagine falafel? What would that dish come out like?” I asked him.
Bottura smiled at the idea and got the light of battle in his eyes and gestured with both hands, “I don’t know, but just give me some falafel and I will go at it and we will find out!”
I asked him about the possibility of opening restaurants in Las Vegas or Monaco. He did not dismiss either, especially due to F1 Racing in both locations, but he seemed to favor Monaco. “It is much closer.”
Race Cars and Motorbikes
Then it was back to the cars, as Bottura uncovered a blazing red Ferrari.
“This one has an incredible sound. When you drive it – ‘wow’ what a sound. It’s like it is killing your ears!” He said.
Bottura then walked over and treated our ears to the loud, rumbling sound of his Ducati racing bike, the engine ignition for which he was able to fire up and rev for us because the motorcycle’s wheels were bolted to the floor.
When I asked him why the rocket-ship-of-a-bike was anchored, Bottura grinned and shrugged: “Because I don’t want to have a few gin-and-tonics one evening and then decide it’s a good time to climb on and take a ride!”
Bottura was not afraid, though, to have driven his tangerine-colored Pantera, which he led us to see. It was still on the driveway with the hood opened and emblazoned, like a race car, with the #62 in a white circle.
“This is the ‘GT Competition,’ the racing one. This is very dangerous. I drove this all around today going 225 kilometers an hour. I realized I was going too fast so I pushed the brake, but there is no brake control. The car was all over the place. You have to control the car,” he explained.
Oops…Massimo and Modena are One of a Kind
We then strolled into yet another room, where I noticed a white Lamborghini with the stylishly labeled word “oops” on it. Massimo explained the car, gifted to him, was also designed with an upside-down logo as a way for the car to be recognized as one of a kind.
In addition to the “oops,” bright yellow-colored paint “splashes” on the Lambo make the car a salute to Chef Bottura’s famed dessert named “Oops I Dropped the Lemon Tart,” which is on the menu at Osteria Francescana as a result of a confectionary accident in the kitchen.
Massimo liked the visual of what resulted on the floor more than the way the tart had been plated. (Massimo digs “messes” – his Paciugo di mascarpone dolce at Cavallino is described on the menu as “a delicious mess.”)
“When I was named one of the top-50 chefs in the world, the CEO of Lamborghini phoned me and asked where I was. When I told him where I was, he said, ‘Stay there.’”
Shortly after the call, the executive pulled up to present Chef Bottura with the new Lamborghini. “He felt it was the perfect way to mark the achievement of becoming a top-50 chef. He told me, ‘Massimo, now you will always have something by which to remember this day!’”
As for his Ferraris, Bottura rotates his various models to be displayed for periods at Modena’s Ferrari Museum.
Benvenuto! The Massimo Interview
For being an international celebrity, I found the excitable Chef Massimo Bottura to be remarkably hospitable, friendly, and genuinely welcoming. When I asked him if we could take a photo together, he laughed and answered, “C’mon… you don’t even have to ask!”
And then he extended his hospitality even further by asking me if I would like to conduct an interview with him.
We stood in the playroom next to his work desk, on which I noticed a magazine featuring the Pope on the cover. Also on his desk: a thank you card I’d presented him, which contained, ironically, a Matchbox race car that, at least for the moment, had joined his priceless collection.
This discussion was moments before he would take the stage at the Motor Valley Fest Opening Gala:
MPS: “Chef, I am not Stanley Tucci, but will you still deign to speak with me?”
CHEF: “Ha! I love that. Yeah, it’s a big, big pleasure, you know, when I feel there is someone who understands passion. You know, I’m always open to discussion. Always.”
MPS: “That’s a big compliment – grazie mille. You, of course, are successful in the culinary world, but you are also an art lover. You collect and drive cars and you are a poet on your menus. How many things can you be passionate about effectively? And which thing do we not know you are passionate about?
CHEF: “It is all a passion. Passion you cannot teach. I keep saying to the young generation, ‘Always go deep into your interest,’ because they are probably going to have passion and through passion can transfer emotions. When, if you ask me what I do in the kitchen every day, I could answer ‘I compress into edible bites of my passion sitting on centuries of history,’ because my cuisine is deeply Italian and filtered by my contemporary mind. My mind is always projecting into the future. I use my past, but I look at my past in a very critical way, never in a nostalgic one, to get the best from the past into the future. It is a way to renew tradition. It is exactly as a Ferrari or Lamborghini or Maserati they are doing these days. You know, they look at the past: the 250 GTO, 1964, transformed into the new Competizione Aperta with technology, but reminds of the 250 GTO.”
MPS: People come to Modena and try to get a table at Gatto Verde, but there is breaking news today?
CHEF: “Today is a big breaking news. Gatto Verde has been rated as one of the 100 best restaurants in the world. We just opened one and a half years ago, so it’s just an incredible achievement. This team is extremely passionate about what they do. Jessica Rosval is working with me – she’s the chef. She was working with me at Osteria Francescana for eight years and then she moved to Casa Maria Luigia and received the Michelin “three keys” award. One year later – one green and red star for sustainability and quality – and now in the Best 100 in the World. This is a big deal.
MPS: Complimenti!
CHEF: “Grazie!”
MPS: How did that “ragazzo,” that little boy Massimo, go from sitting under his mother’s table while she was making ravioli to being aligned and partnered with extreme luxury brands such as Gucci, Ferrari, Monaco and the Academy Awards?
CHEF: “Heh, I know…it’s just a dream. I never sold myself to you know, cheap stuff. I’m always obsessed about quality. The quality for me are details in the moments when I design a motorcycle, or when I plate a dish, or when I wear a pair of jeans with my name embroidered on them. It’s just an obsession about quality that really makes the difference. I don’t believe in big numbers. I always believe in quality. That’s why my balsamic vinegar is like that. That’s why my restaurants are successful. Because it’s all about relation between the chefs, the manager and our guests so we can have a chat-chat. But also, it’s about details. Details: they make the difference.”
Image by Harrison Shiels
MPS: When we see chefs in movies, the chef always seems like a maniac…
(At this point Chef Massimo Bottura pulled out his phone to show me actor Bradley Cooper, who starred as a manic chef in “Burnt,” is listed in his speed dial contacts.)
CHEF: “I told Bradley, ‘You know acting like that is an older way to represent chefs, because right now the world has changed.’”
MPS: You do not seem wild that way. You seem likable – and are number one in the world.”
CHEF: “When people talk about sustainability, it’s not just sustainability for your environment. Sustainability is also the human sustainability: how you treat your people, how you treat your team. How you involve women, for example, in the kitchen. When you come to Gatto Verde, there are 75-percent and 25-percent men. So, where what is the problem? The problem is the people don’t look at the real talent, but they look at gender stuff like that. That’s bad because talent is what guides me. You’re a woman, you’re a, you know, whatever. I look just at the talent of each one of my team. And second, it’s the way everyone is playing. If they play for the team, we win. If they play for themselves, we lose. So that’s another very important way of picking the people they are working with.”
MPS: We know that you love cars because of your collection. I won’t ask you for the number, but it is a lot of toys. But if you were in Hollywood, because I know you did the food for the Oscars one year – another great brand to be aligned with, of course – but if you were to walk out the door of your Gucci Osteria on Rodeo Drive and wander a couple blocks over to Spago, and Chef Wolfgang Puck happened to be there…
CHEF: “Wolfgang is a friend! Yeah, it’s a good friend of mine!”
MPS: No fighting?
CHEF: “No, no come on! It’s no more like twenty years ago, you know. And we don’t look at each other in such a crazy way, you know. We look at each other as with a lot of respect. And that’s why the contemporary cuisine has grown so much: because there’s an interchange between us. We go on stage; we share techniques; we share ideas, because a contemporary cuisine is not just about the quality of the ingredients, but the quality of the ideas. So, once you share the idea, as Picasso was always saying: ‘copying yourself is a very sterile exercise, but stealing from the others is necessary.’ So, I let everyone steal my ideas and make them ideas because for me, there’s no problem because I’m already on another planet.
I’m always very contemporary. I know that everything is changing. One day I look at a 2007 movie about Bob Dylan, and I got inspired to create an “I’m Not There” tasting menu. When I am sharing the “I’m Not There” tasting menu, I’m already thinking on another menu that is called “Misery No More.”
MPS: I do not want to take too much of your time, because the CEOs of Ferrari and Lamborghini and Maserati are on your front lawn here waiting for you. Your charity is called “Food for Soul.” Have you cooked for a pope or met any of the Pontiffs?
CHEF: “Of course, of course. When I had the idea in 2015 to open, at the Universal Exposition, the first soup kitchen, I presented the idea to the church, to the Archbishop Angelo Scola in Milan. He said, ‘Massimo, thank you, it’s an amazing idea, but come back in one week.’
One week later, I went back there, and Pope Francis said, ‘Thank you for your passion and your energy. The idea is amazing, but instead of doing the project in the center of the city, we’ll do it in the periphery, because it’s there where there’s “darkness” that needs light. And your project is all about light…bringing light. Once you bring light in the darkness, everything around shines.’ These were the words of Pope Francis.
We met just before the Pope was dying…at the G-7 Summit in Puglia – the government asked me to cook there. Five minutes before the opening, our President said, ‘Probably we have to add one place at the table, because there’s a new guest: Pope Francis!’”
Actually there is the picture here, at the G-7, with our Prime Minister.
Pope Francis asked, ‘Massimo, how are you?’
And I answered, ‘Francisco, I’m pretty good.’
‘What about your referttorios?’
‘Refettorio’ is the name of our soup kitchens because I got inspired by the refettorio where Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ is displayed in Milan. So I answered, ‘It’s not one, now, Francisco – it’s 13, because for every restaurant we open, we want to open a soup kitchen. We have now thirteen restaurants and thirteen soup kitchens.’
Pope Francis looked at me and said, “We need more people like you in the world.’
These are the last words that he told me.”
MPS: That is humbling.
CHEF: “The Pope tasted my tortellini, and the Prime Minister went crazy about those tortellini, so he invited me to cook in the Vatican, and to bring the kids from the other social project I have for kids with autism: ‘Tortellante.’ But then he died.”
MPS: “If you had one meal left, and you knew it, what would it be?”
CHEF: “That’s a big question. I would ask my mom…to come back here on earth and cook for me. Because probably what I regret is I didn’t spend enough time with her. I was too busy trying to be successful, or to survive at that time, in order to show my father that she was right and he was wrong. They fought about me becoming a chef in 1984. My father wanted me to be a lawyer, and I said to my mom, ‘Please convince him to let me go and do whatever I want to do.’ And I became a chef.
I promised my father and my mom that, as a chef, I would bring three Michelin stars to Emilia-Romagna, which no restaurant here had ever done. In 2011, I got the three Michelin Stars here in Emilia-Romagna, in Modena, and my father was happy, but my mother even more. But that dedication, that obsession about work, brought me sometimes far from my mom.
MPS: “She understood.”
CHEF: “No, she understood, but the point is that I would love to have to have dinner with my mom.”
MPS: “Dolce.”
CHEF: “Ha. I like ‘dolce.’”
MPS: “You could live anywhere. You’re a great ambassador for Modena.”
CHEF: “Yeah, I know, I know everyone is asking why Moderna. I like Modena. There’s everything in 35 kilometers. You have Ferrari, Ducati, Lamborghini, Pagani, Maserati…”,
MPS: “And that’s just in your garage!”
CHEF: “Heh – and you have all the best food and the best ingredients that you have in Italy. It is called the ‘Food Valley,’ but also the ‘Motor Valley.’ It is the land of slow food and fast cars. It’s a small town of 180,000 people, but you know with the international airport in Bologna is only thirty minutes away. You can go anywhere in the world, so I think it’s a beautiful place to stay. And la Provincia, if you know how to manage la Provincia like the locals, they can protect you.”
MPS: “This is very selfish of me. But I have a “windmill tilt.” Just as you said you were going to bring three Michelin stars to Emilia-Romagna, could you possibly arrange for me to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni?”
CHEF: “Whoa. You really will?”
MPS: “I really will. I want to meet her. Posso?”
CHEF: “I can, but where?”
MPS: “Anywhere. I will go anywhere, any time.”
CHEF: “In Rome. But…I need to connect through her secretary because…”
MPS: “You can do this.”
CHEF: “I can. I can. But I am not sure of the answer, you know…”
MPS: “Si. Si.”
CHEF: “She is extremely busy, especially with Trump. It’s just…every day there is news.”
MPS: “Si. Si. Maybe we can meet here at Gatto Verde?”
CHEF: “I hope so.”
MPS: “Moderna was known for “The Maestro” Luciano Pavarotti. In terms of an icon representing this town, you are the next Luciano Pavarotti.”
CHEF: “I don’t know, I don’t know. But to Piero Ferrari (son of Ferrari’s founder Enzo) I said, ‘Oh, Piero, Piero, grazie, grazie to bring such an important crowd to the gala here in Modena.’
He looked at me and said, ‘Listen, Massimo, they’re here for you, not for me. It’s for one simple reason: because they can’t get a table at your restaurant. So, when they saw that you were cooking for them, they said, “yes.” And they never say “yes,” you know? They say, “Ah, we are busy. Ah, it’s complicated.” But they said “yes.” One day, a long time ago, they were coming for my dad…and now they’re coming for you.’
That gives me a lot of goosebumps. To listen to the humbleness of Piero Ferrari say that to me is…..wow!”
MPS: “Piacere di conoscerti.”
CHEF: “Il piacere è tutto mio.”
MPS: “La pace sia con tutti voi.”
CHEF: “La pace sia con tutti voi. Grazie.”
Read more of Michael Patrick’s work at The Travel Tattler and contact him at [email protected] Order his book Travel Tattler – Less Than Torrid Tales at https://amzn.to/3Qm9FjN
