Seven years after his death, the memory of the great Gualtiero Marchesi is fading. Many young people do not even know who he was and what he did for Italian cuisine.
True, it is not about the Beatles as in the Stadio song written by Roberto Roversi with music by Gaetano Curreri. However, in the case of Gualtiero Marchesi to the younger generation of chefs I would advise them to ask that question.
Recently, footage has surfaced on the web in which Marchesi was cooking dishes. Videos from 20 years ago at least, and I remember that he passed away on December 26, 2017, seven years ago, so. Open sky.
Haters went wild, criticizing in a very harsh and sometimes vulgar way. Cheap cooks correcting his recipes, insulting him for the gold leaf on the risotto. For the amounts of butter, for cooking techniques they said were improper.
Who was Gualtiero Marchesi?
Then perhaps it is time to say who Marchesi was and to shed some light. The first piece of news to be given is that in his legendary Milanese restaurant on Via Bonvesin della Riva, in 1985 won for the first time in Italy the “three stars” of the Michelin guide.
Then that some of his dishes, such as the open raviolo, a cuttlefish in its black, and the panettone soufflé, became icons of world haute cuisine. Not to mention his reinterpretations of some classics of Italian cuisine. His saffron risotto with a pure gold sheet, his cotoletta alla milanese, even his pasta carbonara. Again, the fish dripping dedicated to Jackson Pollock, an incredible dish that brought him closer than any other to an artistic, as well as gastronomic, intention.
Because Marchesi was an educated man, an intellectual lent to cooking., just as Veronelli and Soldati were for food and wine literature and Brera, Mura and Emanuela Audisio were for sports literature.
And to remember him properly, I borrow what Stefano Bonilli wrote in his blog Papero Giallo to comment on his seventy-ninth birthday, which was celebrated at La Scala Theater. Thus one can better understand who Marchesi was. And on those who insult him let an icy silence fall.
(In the opening photo: Gualtiero Marchesi on the right. Ermenegildo Muzzulini, then chef at the Pergola at the Cavalieri Hilton, in the center. On the left Michel Guerard, one of the fathers of nouvelle cuisine).
Birthday of friend Gualtiero, by Stefano Bonilli
Papero Giallo – March 2009
Gualtiero Marchesi will be 79 years old on March 19.
He was the cook who changed the state of affairs in Italian cuisine.
It was 1977 and the Gualtiero Marchesi restaurant opened its doors on Via Bonvesin de la Riva, a side street of Corso XXII Marzo, in Milan, and from that moment both the figure of the chef and the kitchen have changed.
The first Italian restaurant to have the three Michelin stars, in 1985, the first Italian chef to have international fame, Marchesi changed, as we said, from the ground up the figure of the chef, until then more a caricature than a true image.
An educated man, a lover of music, with a concert pianist wife and a large number of artists as friends, Marchesi brings to Italy the Nouvelle Cuisine but soon knew how to adapt it to Italian tastes.
However, his business is not easy because the Milanese bourgeoisie, which used to crowd the tables at Trattoria del Mercato, the family’s place, in his new experience in Bonvesin, drops him.
Amidst ups and downs and in the meantime leaving a deep mark with his new cuisine, examples of which are the Open Raviolo and the Rice and Gold, two dishes symbolic of that period, in the public’s imagination and palates, Marchesi goes through all the 1980s in Milan amidst ups and downs in business then, in 1993, he closes the city experience and moved to Erbusco, to the Albereta, where the Gualtiero Marchesi restaurant is still open.
Loved and loathed, with a not bad temper, Marchesi is still today a symbol of intelligent, quality cuisine.
Oldani, Cracco, Berton, Crippa, Lopriore, among others, have worked with him. It can be said that his was a real school that trained dozens of young chefs.
His thought can be summarized in these words:
“The French gastronome journalist known as Curnonsky wrote that one must give foods the taste they have. And this is the principle that guides my cooking. Degreasing a soffritto, eliminating the heavy béchamel that hides, burying it, a food does not mean “bringing to light” its “true” taste by freeing it from layers of erroneous gastronomic customs accumulated over time?”
This is not a biography, it is not meant to be a reconstruction of a career but just a tribute to a dear friend with whom much I have discussed but whom I greatly admire.
Stefano Bonilli
