Learn this beautiful monograph Alberto Capatti, undoubtedly the most authoritative historian of Italian cuisine, a rigorous scholar certainly not inclined to empty celebrations, writes: "Gualtiero Marchesi was the most versatile and unpredictable investigator of consolidated knowledge, wearing a white uniform and with a professional qualification. Today his ghost still haunts kitchens and dining rooms, inspiring his former students with new hypotheses, new dishes, suggesting to those who passionately read his works, his recipes, the desire to have him at their side, to re-study nutrition itself. To those who knew him, he appeared a cautious and unpredictable character, capable of suddenly quoting Seneca and avoiding any allusion to his own recipes, strange but authoritative for having reformulated cuisine, not only his own, since 1980 with My new great Italian cuisine, but also that practiced by modest establishments, by trattorias... The rules must be the result of study, and not the other way around, Gualtiero seems to teach us, before opening the kitchen to all the arts, combining it not only with painting and sculpture, but with an intangible knowledge, such as music».
Gualtiero Marchesi was born in Milan on March 19, 1930, into a family of hoteliers and restaurateurs originally from Pavia. "At seventeen," he recalls, "I grew tired of studying, and my mother sent me to work in St. Moritz, a resort frequented at the time by royalty and noblemen from around the world. I was struck by the culture of those great figures, and I decided to resume my studies." Between 1948 and 1950, he attended the Lucerne Hotel School, where he furthered his culinary knowledge. Upon returning to Italy, he began working in the family hotel, quickly realizing that he was passionate about researching and studying dishes, as well as music. He therefore decided to take piano lessons and fell in love with his teacher, Antonietta Cassisa, whom he married in 1962 and with whom he had two daughters, Simona and Paola, both accomplished musicians.
The desire to learn, explore, and continually broaden his knowledge soon proved to be one of the hallmarks of his character, and he decided to broaden his horizons by leaving for Paris, to explore the French cuisine that was setting the standard at the time and representing an absolute benchmark. Crucial to his evolution was, in particular, the experience he gained in Roanne, with the Troisgros brothers, inventors of the nouvelle cuisine.
1977 marked a historic date in the life of Gualtiero Marchesi, with the opening of his first restaurant on Via Bonvesin de la Riva in Milan, which within a few months immediately earned a Michelin star. His attention to detail was almost obsessive: from the tables to the lighting, from the shape and color of the plates to the glasses, nothing was left to chance. It's no coincidence, then, that during his long career he also created several innovative lines of cutlery, plates, and glasses, firmly convinced that the "pursuit of beauty" should permeate every aspect of the kitchen, the dining room, and hospitality in general. And then, another absolutely original element: colors burst forth in his cuisine, the dishes almost seeming to light up, opening a new path that stimulated curiosity, educating customers and promoting the new Italian cuisine. Marchesi's cuisine soon captivated a Milan where food culture was flourishing again, in 1982, thanks to the monthly magazine The throat, laid out and edited by Gianni Sassi, and which made innovation a specific objective: no “gastronomic” journalists, but writers determined to learn, attentive to what was unusual.
In 1985, his restaurant, the first in Italy, earned three Michelin stars, but in 1992 he left Via Bonvesin de la Riva to move to Erbusco (BS), in Franciacorta, where he opened the restaurant "L'Albereta." In 2008, he returned to Milan, where he opened "Il Marchesino" in the former "Biffi Scala" restaurant. But that year, in a dramatic turn of events, he also gave up his Michelin stars because he disagreed with the concept and the scoring criteria.
Alongside his profession as a "cook," as he always chose to call himself, rejecting the label of "chef," Marchesi played a fundamental educational role, welcoming young people from all backgrounds into his kitchens and creating new artists, free to express themselves. The names of his students, however, are not those of a disciplined and authoritative school, but of a new generation striving for free, always individual, self-expression, with the most diverse and unique outcomes. In 2004, he was appointed president of ALMA, the new, large International School of Italian Cuisine, located in the splendid Reggia di Colorno (Parma), but here too his role was that of a tutelary deity, not a rector.
In 2015, on the occasion of Expo 2015 in Milan, I had the opportunity to participate in the organization of the exhibition Luigi Veronelli: walking the earth, dedicated to the celebrated journalist and writer, a pioneer of food and wine criticism in Italy, who shared a deep mutual respect with Gualtiero Marchesi. During some collateral events, a dinner was organized in honor of the celebrated chef at the Astino Monastery, at the foot of the Bergamo hills, and on that occasion Marchesi asked me to accompany him to a beautiful masterclass held in that very city, dedicated to the painter Kazimir Malevich and the artists of the Russian avant-garde. It was a deeply enriching experience that gave me a firsthand insight into the cultural expertise and spiritual depth of a man who could seamlessly explore art, music, literature, and, of course, cuisine, but always understood as an expression of human creativity. That evening at dinner, the "Prince" of chefs once again reaffirmed some of the cornerstones of his approach to cooking: "A chef is someone who studies, focused on respecting the ingredients and mastering techniques, and who never stops learning, because this is a tough, demanding profession, where curiosity is essential. First, you thoroughly learn the techniques needed to understand food, to respect different cooking methods, then you choose your own path and follow it consistently." And, again, "A chef shouldn't consider himself an artist of food, but rather a custodian. A chef must be a chef first and foremost, he must maintain health. I've always been around painters and sculptors, and I loved music. Art has clearly become part of me. We shouldn't think that on one side there is science with its laws and on the other art made of chaos and instinct. Art, unless you confuse it with a pure, unrestrained stream of consciousness, is always the result of an ideal tension, controlled down to the smallest detail, rendered intelligible. You don't transgress technique; you transgress clichés. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's exaggeration that masks the true nature of things. My cuisine loves the truth of the ingredients, obviously top-quality, which must allow their essential flavors to shine through. Always "subtracting" rather than "adding." Consistent with this, in life as at the table, for me luxury means indulging in simplicity, which is very difficult to achieve and should not be confused with banality.
Finally, regarding one of his undoubtedly most iconic dishes, Riso oro e zafferano (Gold and Saffron Rice), he emphasized: "My risotto may be 'copied,' but it will never be the same as the one I make. Not even the one I make is always identical; something changes every time; you can feel the 'hand,' just like in the performance of music. The score is always the same, but the difference between one performer and another is definitely noticeable. That's why, like Paganini, I don't repeat, but remake. In today's society, the issue of intellectual property rights is more relevant than ever, even though copyright literally concerns works of the mind that belong to literature, music, the figurative arts, architecture, theater, and cinema. I've made the copyright of my dish Riso e Zafferano my mission since the mid-1980s, even though the protection of food as copyright, unfortunately, has barely reached legal status."
On March 19, 2010, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, the Gualtiero Marchesi Foundation was established with the aim of commemorating and reconstructing the Maestro's work. The aim, according to the concept that "beauty is goodness," is to make cuisine an object of study and memory, attracting students from every country, great chefs, and workmates.
