Massimo Bottura: “Enjoy the Ride”

TRANSCRIPT

Massimo Bottura: I don’t have to use excuses for anything. If I cannot teach the volunteers is my fault, not their fault.

Hi, I’m Dan Rubinstein and this is The Grand Tourist. I’ve been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food, and travel, all the elements of a well-lived life. And welcome to the finale of Season 11. On today’s episode, we’re meeting one of the most respected and perhaps the most rock and roll chefs on the international scene today. Massimo Bottura, the Italian impresario, has been a force in the world of food for decades. He originally worked for his family in the petroleum business before switching to cooking. And to me, you can truly tell he appreciates the humanistic cultural elements that surround the discipline of being a top-tier chef.

In the ’90s, after training under some of the biggest names in the business at the time, he opened his now-famous Osteria Francescana, and after an early struggle to gain respect in the business, which we’ll get into, it became a massive success. Even today in 2024, it has three Michelin stars with a green star to boot. In 2019, Massimo took a huge leap and opened Casa Maria Luigia, a B&B of sorts, that’s one of the toughest bookings around. He runs the getaway that’s in the countryside of Italy’s Emilia-Romano region where he’s from with his wife Lara Gilmore, whom he met in New York while he worked as a young chef. Casa Maria Luigia is also the center of his latest book that he wrote with his wife, Lara, Slow Food, Fast Cars, out now from Phaidon.

Aside from being a celebrity in the cooking world, a philanthropist, restaurateur, he also runs his own label of aged balsamic called Villa Manodori, keeping alive a key Italian tradition. On top of it all, Massimo knows that being a famous chef isn’t just about cooking. He collects art that he infuses into his locales, is an avid music lover car and motorcycle collector and more. I caught up with an exhausted Massimo after returning for cooking for the G7. Apparently one of his guests, the Holy Father himself, was quite impressed to chat about his new book where he goes to escape all of the drama, his advice for young chefs and what the key is to an amazing bottle of balsamic.

I’d love to just start at the beginning for people that may not be familiar with your story. You were born in Modena, correct?

Yes, yes. I was born in Modena and I grew up here very close with my family, very large family, brother, sister, and grandmothers. And food was a very, very important part of our life because we have the brother of my grandmother, well, he had a very small cheese company, Parmigiano company, up on the hills. And my grandmother from my father’s side, they own land close to the Po river. And so every once in a while, my father was coming back from the countryside with a car full of watermelon, chestnut truffle salami, prosciutto, everything that the farmers that we are making for them, for us.

So when you grow up in a family like this, food has the major influence, especially because at the table you were not allowed to talk about business, but we were talking about our passion, fast cars, paintings, music, stuff like that. And growing up in a family like this, I was the younger one, always very close to my mom. I was always in the kitchen and I was always helping them to make whatever they had to make. And that’s what probably brought me here 60 years later here in Osteria Francescana.

And I read that you worked for your father and for your family before getting into cooking. Tell me about that. What kind of business was he in?

Yeah, my father owns an important oil company, and it was very successful, actually, the company was found by the mother of my mom, but he brought the company on another level. And as soon as it got success, those were like those days, 50, 60, and my father was deciding also what my older brother had to do. So he was an engineer, the second one, a doctor, third one, an accountant. I had to be the lawyer of the family, but I wasn’t happy. I was good on study, but I wasn’t happy studying to become a lawyer. And my mom, that she knew me better than anyone else, convinced my father to let me go and become a chef. This was the ’80s, so the chef at that time, they were like just those people, they didn’t want to study.

And, “Okay, what are you going to do? You’re going to be…” “I want to be in the kitchen.” And once my mom convinced my father to let me go, one week later, I bought a very small trattoria, 10 kilometers from Modena outside of Modena, where I was cooking, following the music that was already being written by other chefs. So tradition, but buying the most amazing products. So I brought tradition, the French, they usually say [foreign language 00:07:00]. We brought to a different level tradition using the most amazing ingredient you could find. Then I met a French chef called George Coney that he had two Michelin star in Piazenza. And he had dinner in my place and he loved it. And he said, “Okay, I can help you to improve.”

So I was going up there and to learn the classic French cuisine. And what I was learning, I was learning technique that I transfer into the classic Italian traditional food. So it was very interesting matching. From there, I remember one autumn, Alain Ducasse arrived, at that time, he just got the three Michelin star in Hôtel de Paris at Louis XV and was very known for his farm to table. So imagine in France he was getting vegetables directly from the market, getting into the pan, extra virgin olive oil, no butter, no cream, and serve these vegetables, farm to table. They’re contemporary now. And he was extremely impressed. And he said at the end of the meal, “Massimo, if you want, you can come to the Hôtel de Paris and you can stay with me whenever you want and improve.” This was October, and in January I left. I left everything, and I went to the Hôtel de Paris, and the things that immediately blew my mind was that he let me do whatever I want.

So I was working 13, 14 hours a day, tried to learn as much as I could, and I was waking up very early in the morning to make bread, to make sourdough, and then moving to the chocolate room and learn how to work with chocolate, breakfast. Then the whole preparation for lunch, I was everywhere. And that was an incredible intense school. I was extremely impressed by the obsession, about quality. That was not just the quality of the ingredients, was the quality of every single details from the moment you were fixing the table, talking with people, buying the ingredients, using technique, organization, getting down with Mr. Jérénis, Monsieur Jérénis, get down in the wine cellar and match all the cognac from 1880, 1890, and 1900. It was insane.

And at what point did you then move to New York briefly? I believe you met your wife there, correct?

Yes, yes, yes. I met my wife there. At one point there were the opportunity to move to New York because Monsieur Porter needs some help, and it was the chef at Le Cirque at that time. And so I moved to New York, but Le Cirque was like too many covers, too much confusion, stress, and starting from the obsession about quality that we had the Hôtel de Paris, and moving to New York, and the quality wasn’t the same. And so I decide to quit and leave New York. That was incredible time in New York because I was like 1992, 1993, and there was the moment in which all the movement of Jazzmatazz, the DJ, mixing with the jazz musician, then all the new grand generations. So all these Pearl Jam and Soul Asylum and Nirvana, Wall Flowers, they were all there. So for me, music is another very, very passion and as food, as art. But at that time, art to me was over after Duchamp till I met my wife.

And she teach me how to look at contemporary art in a much deeper way. And that was something that really changed the perspective of my life. But the things that was meant to be was the moment in which we met for the first time because we both were, she was acting at Worcester Theater in Worcester and Grand. And I was just leaving New York as a tourist and enjoy myself. And I was walking around Seoul, I saw a big ELI’S cafe sign, yeah, at that time was before Starbucks, before Espresso was everywhere. And I said, “Oh, finally I can get a good espresso.” So I walk into this place called Caffè Di Nonna, beautiful, charming Italian restaurant in Seoul, Grand and Mercer. And I asked for a coffee as I wanted, like macchiato in a big cup with foamy milk, and it took like 20 minutes to have that coffee.

So I said, “Guys, you need some help. If you want, this is my number, I can help you.” I went back home and in the answer machine, there was this message, “This is Ray Costantini, I am the man behind Caffè Di Nonna, and if you want to come tomorrow, we will be very happy.” So I said, “Okay, let’s try.” The same message, because Lara, thanks to one of the waiters that he was acting with Lara at the Worcester Theater received the same message because they went the time, the same afternoon to look for a job. Because in New York, it’s like this, everyone is a writer, as an actor, is like… but at the end everyone does bartending and waiting table and stuff like that because they have to cover the expenses. And so Lara received the same message. And we met at 2:00 PM 8th of April 1993 in Caffè di Nonna, the same schedule.

Oh, okay.

Actually, the first cappuccino behind the desk, she was behind the desk that I asked was her cappuccino. But I saw her, that she wasn’t able to make a cappuccino because cappuccino is a very difficult things to make in the right way. It’s like pizza is exactly that. Everybody thinks they know how to make pizza or to make a cappuccino, but no one knows. All right? So I said, “Listen, can I teach you how to make a cappuccino?” So I show her how to whip the milk without getting eye in temperature, and the moving the milk, foam, getting on top of the espresso and create the perfect foamy that was like drink in one sip. And that was my first moment with Lara behind the desk, behind the bar at Caffè di Nonna.

So eventually you returned to Modena and you open your Osteria, correct?

Yeah, that was late in the year. They call me to go back to Modena because I had to take a decision about what I was doing with the old restaurant, but my brother also told me that was Osteria Francescana for sale, that we always loved it. So first of all, I bought Osteria Francescana, and then I sold the small restaurant there and I start rethinking about what I had to do, how to evolve. And the 8th of March 1995 we opened Osteria Francescana.

And what was that first year like in the restaurant? If I could go back in time and join you for dinner?

The first year was like first, immediately, the second day we opened one of the most important journalists in the world, Mr. Viz Burger, the creator of Good Man Magazine, German guy. He came, he was so impressed that he dedicate 10 pages on Gourmet about my food/ the day after we were empty. Then all the modernists, they start coming to understand what I was doing. Because the rumors was that we were serving very small portion and charge a lot of money. And it was a little bit crazy. I thought, Osteria, after the success I had with Campazzo Di Nonantola, I said, “Oh, it’s going to be easy. But Osteria was empty because of those, the local food critics, they really want to have big plates of pasta and gnocco fritto and traditional food. But I was too influenced by what I’ve learned in Ducas with George. And my cuisine was already on another level. So it was struggling for six years, ’95 till end of 2000.

What changed?

It was like part for few amazing food critics that still are coming to Osteria Francescana like Andrea Grignaffini, Andrea Petrini, Luigi Cremona, few Americans, Annie Von Brisman, Faith Willinger. And they were writing about us because they were saying, “I can’t believe this restaurant is empty. The food is amazing. Why?” And one night in April 2000, there was a car accident in A1, the highway close to Modena, pass through Modena. And we received a phone call from Mr. Vizu, actually his name was Enzo Vizzari. And he arrive and he show up late in the evening because he was stuck in the traffic. And at the end of the dinner, he said, “This was one of the most amazing dinner. You’re going to read on the magazine Friday when it’s going to come out.” It’s the most important magazine in Italy. Espresso.

So the old article was about, sorry, “I’m sorry. Sorry for my readers, sorry for the restaurant because I didn’t come earlier.” At the end of the year, we won Dinner of the Year, Young Chef of the Year and the First Michelin Star. So everything changed. But those days in the ’90s they were extremely, extremely tough. And when we were shooting… What’s the name of the Netflix show? Chef’s Table. Immediately the director said to me, “We need to talk about the struggling time before getting successful.” And because every single young chef who’s struggling, you have to learn and believe in yourself and keep evolving, keep fighting for your ideas. That was a very important message.

Then those first years, the first six years that you struggled, was the food similar to what you would serve today?

Absolutely. All the plates that we were serving were the same plates that now are in Casa Maria Luigi, the Osteria Francescana iconic dishes menu. So the five different-age Parmigiano, they’re walking around the poor river, the beautiful psychedelic spin painting, Villa, ice cream bar of wagra with hazelnut and almond from Noto, hazelnut from Piemonte, balsamic vinegar in the art. All these dishes, they’re extremely iconic now. They were too avant-garde at that time. Actually in ’93 when I create for the first time the five different-age Parmigiano in five different texture and temperature, I received the first phone call from the Consortium of Parmigiano, from the president himself saying, “Please, Signor Bottura, stop cooking that dish because you ruined the image of Parmigiano Reggiano.”

Why? Oh my God.

Because in Modena, they were all talking about that dish. And to me it was just amazing to pick one ingredient and show the slowly aging process in Emilia Romagna. And I picked Parmigiano, but I could pick balsamic vinegar or prosciutto culattello. But 20 years later, for the 150 anniversary of Italian cuisine, there was a book, and came out a book and Five Different Age of Parmigiano was the plate of the decade. And I received a second phone call from the consortium from another director saying, “Maestro, Maestro, Maestro, Maestro is Pavarotti.” I said, “But yes, you can use the image of the dish for your website.”

(SPONSOR BREAK)

Tell me about a customary Luigi. How did that begin?

I don’t know.

I mean, it’s a major undertaking. If you were to say, I’m going to do this in the future, I would say, “Wow, that’s a really big job.” Hospitality and a grounds, and not just a restaurant in a city. Why do it?

One of the most important people in Modena, the CEO of Ferrari at time, Sergio Marchione was keep pushing me to do something at the same level of Osteria Francescana in hospitality. Because a lot of our guests, they were leaving Modena after the experience in Francescana. And I didn’t know what to do, but I’ll always leave the door open for the unexpected. And for me, the unexpected was to find a beautiful property in the right place that was unexpected, because it was confiscated by the court.

And so I went there with Sergio to check the property, but the property was closed. So he said, “No problem. It’s very private.” Five minutes Modena South, 25 minutes from Maranello and the airport in Bologna, it’s private, buy it. I did it. I put an offer, very low, for what I could. And two years later I was in New York with Aziz Ansari doing the party for the second season of Master of None.

I receive a message from the court here in Modena saying, “The bank accept your offer and the property is yours.” Oh my God. No, no, no, no. That was a nightmare. I had a very strange… I was there with Laura. And Laura, “Who was this guy? I said, “Laura, we had Casa Maria Luigi, we have the properties there.” And they said, “Okay, let’s do it. Come on, let’s do it.” And we start with the garden because the property was built on top of a source of water. So this incredible park, 250 years old, was absolutely perfect, overgrown. So we had to clean it and rebuild it, reshape it as we wanted. Then we start restoring the carriage space and create a space for events. But as soon as in Osteria Francescana, we have a waiting list of 232,000 males and people there where they are waiting to come and experience Osteria Francescana’s meal.

I said, why don’t we create this amazing space and give a different experience to all our guests, move all the iconic dishes from the classic here in Viestella, the classic restaurant, but in a very unusual context. And we create the Osteria experience as in our refectorial. And we broke the wall, we opened the kitchen, and every night we cook in front of all our guests. We invite to share tables and be part of the show.

And it’s like going on stage. It’s like being in theater. And so since then I didn’t know what to expect. But since then, we are fully booked. And the guests are coming from all over the world they want to share this experience. And most of the time they do. One day in Modena, in Casa Maria Luigi for dinner and the iconic dishes, and the other day they try contemporary food at Osteria Francescana. So this is how everything starts. Actually just one month ago, we are the only established that we have been prized with seven Michelin stars. Three red plus one green sustainability in Viestella, three red in Casa Maria Luigi.

Amazing. And your wife also works with you and sort of runs-

Yeah, she’s very good on communication. So she’s the one who conceptualize everything we do in our restaurants.

And I would love to talk about the book, Slow Food, Fast Cars. How did the idea of where this book come about?

So the idea of the book. 24 years ago, 25 years ago, there was a big, probably the first event, about the fast cars, the Motor Valley. So where the region, Emilia Romagna, the City of Modena, and the Maserati, Lamborghini, Ducati, Pagani, and Ferrari all together, because all this company are in 35 kilometers, so it’s like 20 miles. At that time, I gave an interview talking about the dinner, the opening dinner, and I was using all the ingredients, classic DOP protected from Emilia.

So Parmigiano, Aceto Balsamico, Brocuto, Mortadella, a dessert with pear cacio and pear, cheese and pear. And when I had to explain in front of everyone, I said, “What is Emilia Romagna?” I don’t know why I did that, but what is Emilia Romagna? Emilia Romagna is the land of slow food and fast cars. And since then, I love that idea. And everyone in the Motor Valley decided to use that expression and became an icon. When you had to talk about Emilia, it’s very easy, is the land of slow food and fast cars.

Amazing. And so you have a car collection, correct? This I’ve seen pictures.

Yes, I have a car collection.

How many?

No, it’s easy because with all these companies in the back, they understood immediately the value of Casa Maria Luigia as Sergio Marchione did in the beginning. So they held me to put together a group of cars that stay there as a permanent collection, and they switch it, of course, but it’s just incredible the reaction of all our guests. When they come to Casa Maria Luigia, they go to this playground, enormous playground, to get fit to work out with the gym, etc. You have enormous painting all around and all these Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, they create for us. The company, they create for us and unique in the world. And they’re there to decorate, to show, and you have no idea how many guests that are coming to Casa Maria Luigia. At the end, they left and I would love this, I would love that because there are cars for anyone. There’s also the Lancia Delta, the 500 Fiat. But beautiful, beautiful like Fiat 500 Riva, so like the motorboat. So all wood inside the classic blue Riva with the super elegant. So you see all these different approach from 500 to the most expensive Ferrari of all.

And also some motorbikes too.

Yeah, of course. Because Ducati is… If you ask me what I really like to do when I’m down and out is putting my helmet, disappear inside my helmet, get my Ducati and go up on the Apennine south of Modena and drive up there and enjoy the ride. This is the way I clean my mind.

And what have you learned from running Casa Maria Luigia? Because it is this new hospitality adventure. After these years, what have you learned from this experience?

First of all, the difficulty to, as you said before, the difficult to manage in a best, best way. The experience that is not those two, three hours, but 24 hours, that’s very difficult. But the format that we create, because I’m not happy to do what everyone else does. I always go to the opposite side. And what I did, I said to Laura, reflect what we are missing the most when we are traveling everywhere. We are missing home. And that’s why we call Casa, home. It’s not a hotel, it is not luxury, it’s not a bed and breakfast, it’s not, it’s home. So we want to treat everyone like home, like it was their home. And Maria Luigia is my mom. My mom was Maria Luigia, we name it under my mom, because my mom, she was an amazing, amazing host. She’s always had the refrigerator full for all the friends, the friends of the friends, girlfriends, and whatever. The door of the house was always open for the unexpected guests. There was always a chair that was free. And my brothers, they renamed our home, Hotel California. So that’s what we want.

And we said, okay, so these are home. They have to reflect the place where we are because every single guest, they have to understand they are in Modena. So on the counter of the kitchen, there’s some cheese and Lambrusco for snack in the middle of the afternoon or after breakfast. The refrigerator is always open, full of amazing things that our chefs, they’re preparing during the day. There’s a spirit room for your gin and tonic before dinner or grappa at the end of the dinner. There’s a beautiful music room as I have home to decompress with 8,000 vinyls. And in every room, there’s a coffee machine. Because as I do when I travel, I want to have my coffee before talking with people. So that’s important. Those are very important steps.

And all that is free. So I don’t want to sign any documents. To me, it’s free. So whatever water you want to need, San Pellegrino or whatever, Aranciata, Lambrusco, Parmigiano, everything is free because it’s your own. That’s how we did it. And the experience, you go into the kitchen and you make your own espresso at 5:00 the afternoon and no one is asking to sign anything. So that’s why we recreate the homey experience in a very upscale restoration of an old villa in Modena, the countryside and the power of hospitality. So this is the secret of our success.

And if you think that the guide, Michelin, that is most serious guide in the world, they prize us with three Michelin stars. Actually, they’re called keys because they don’t care about the multinational of hospitality. They care about the experience. And that was the experience that we want every one of our guests that have.

(SPONSOR BREAK)

Right behind you, you have this beautiful painting. You’ve always had a connection with the art world. And I’m wondering, you mentioned it a little bit before, how did that passion for art begin?

The passion for art starts when I was a kid because my mom, she was very into more than art, classic music, especially opera because this is the place for… That’s why all our tasting menu are like operas. So we open with an overture, then you have the adagio, very mild, then you have in crescendo, the allegro, then the minuetto up, up, up, up. And then the grand finale.

So because my mom teach me how to listen the opera, but art was like for my mom and my father, more my mom, was all about 19th century paintings, local paintings. So very countryside, the city, development of the city, the first tram, those kinds of local painters. There were not without any value till I met one of the most important gallerists and one of the most important people in my life, that’s Emilio Mazzoli, he’s the owner of a very, very important contemporary gallery. And that he really teach me deeply, the concept behind the creative process behind contemporary art. And between Laura, that was showing me the historic steps from the abstract American painters till the British Revolution of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman. In the middle, everything between Warhol and all the others.

It was like a revelation for me. And since the beginning, I start buying what I could buy because I’m not born a millionaire. So I had to buy the right pieces. It teached me how to buy the right pieces that I could afford. But in the moment you could afford it was like, “Please stay close to your generations.” So don’t go deep in the past because you cannot buy the masterpieces of the past. So stay focused on your generation and you’ll see one day, you’re going to have lot of satisfaction. So I was listening and I started doing that even when I didn’t have space for these enormous paintings, I was using Emilio Mazzoli’s storage to leave the painting there. And you stay there, we take care of you one day.

Who were some of the people you were collecting from your generation?

From the beginning of the ’80s, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Philip Taft, Ross Bleckner, the old Transavantgarde, Italian Transavanguardia, Cucchi, Clemente, Paladino, de Maria, Sandro Chia, all painters, artists. They were living in New York at that time. They were like the East Village generation, Christopher Wall, David Salle, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you can pick them really well then.

Yeah, it was very, very good.

Wow.

If you come to Maria Luigia, you see masterpieces of the right years for those people. There’s Peter Halley, incredible, like five meters long by three meters high called Somewhere. That was one of the most published Peter Halley of all time. There’s a 1982 Schnabel that he was doing the portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Venice Biennial. No one want it because it was too big. I said, “Okay, I’m going to buy it and leave it there.” So it stayed there for more than 10 years and even more. And when we did Casa Maria Luigia and the new playground, we had enormous walls to be able to show all these paintings. So we decide to share with all our guests. If you come to Casa Maria Luigia, it’s like you’re going to be mind blown because they say, “Oh my God, where this painting comes from?” Yeah. They come from a collection of 40 years that we were putting together and now we can share with all our guests.

I saw in a photo shoot at Casa Maria, that you had a tattoo that says, no more excuses. And I was wondering, are you prone to make yes on your shoulder? Are you prone to making excuses and that’s why you needed it? Or where did that idea come from?

No, that was like, okay, you know that we have a lot of social project. We talk about Tortellante, but we also have Food for Soul. That is a project which we try. The focus is fighting food waste and social isolation through beauty. And in the first, we call these places, Refectorio, as Leonardo da Vinci did 500 years ago. And Refectorio is from the word, the refectory, to restore. Restore the soul of the guests that are coming into your place as the restaurant. So in the Refectorio in Milan, during the Universal Exposition, we decide to involve, to create beauty, architects, designers, and artist. They create incredible pieces to share with everyone. And one of the pieces was a Neon, is a Neon because it’s still there. 22 meters long in which in Helvetica, Maurizio Nannucci wrote, no more excuses. And to me, it was like genius because when you talk about food waste, social isolation, and during the Universal Exposition in which the theme was feed the planet, there are no excuses. You waste 33% of what you produce, no excuses, you’re going to share with the people in need. So this is the idea.

And then this was in the beginning, was the beginning of a Universal Exposition was June. In December, I thought everything was over. We left the key of our Refectorio to the volunteers and the Caritas Ambrosiana. They were running there every day. But I receive a phone call from the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, thanks to also Alessandra Forbes, a journalist, and David Hertz, an activist in Brazil. They want to do another project, another Refectorio in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics. So we did it, we raised enough money, we restored and we open during the Olympics. When I arrived there one week before the whole opening, all these volunteers, actually they didn’t know. Imagine coming from Modena, three Michelin star, focus all about quality organization, et cetera. Arrived in Rio de Janeiro working with volunteers. It’s like, oh, my God. I was starting to teach them how to taste, how to work, how to not waste bananas, tomatoes. All the fruit and vegetable, they were rescue from destroying.

And at one point, one morning, I realized I was always too strong, too aggressive with these volunteers, so I said to my daughter, “Alexa, let’s take a walk. I have to decompress.” We took a walk around Rio, we arrive at Copacabana and we turn around, the hotel Copacabana Palace, and we found this tattoo place. And I said, “You know what? I have to change something. I have to do something. I want to go inside and tattoo, ’no more excuses’ because I’m never going to forget, in the morning when I take a shower, looking at my arm, that I don’t have to use excuses for anything. If I cannot teach the volunteers, is my fault, not their fault.” I tattoo no more excuses. And is with me since then.

Wow, amazing. And of course, I have to ask you also about your vinyl collection because it seems like you not only collect art and not only collect cars and motorcycles, but a lot of vinyl. And you mentioned music earlier. What is your go-to? If you want to just relax, what are you going to listen to from your collection?

In Casa Maria Luigia, there’s the old vinyl collection from my mom, all the classic and opera, but also lots of jazz. Lots of jazz and-

Do you like jazz?

Yeah, I love jazz because, my older brothers, they grew up… The older one was pro-Beatles, the second one was pro-Rolling Stones. They were fighting 24 hours a day. And the third brother, that was in the middle between the two older and me and my sister, was crazy about country and blues. I don’t know why, in Italy, at that time. And he was importing country and blues from United States. Vinyl.

And I was very close with Paolo. Actually, was the one who suggests me to buy Osteria Francescana when I was living in New York. And Paolo introduced me to the blues. The serious blues, like Lightin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. And then, step by step, between blues and jazz, the step is very short. You listen to Billie Holiday and you don’t know what it is. It’s blues or jazz?

And then I start listening to these bluesmen, connected with the jazz players of the same era. Then, getting back to the classics and… I start like this and once you start listening to jazz, you can’t step back and going back to where it was. But I personally love music in general, starting from Bob Dylan until Michael Stipe. But jazz is my favorite. When you listen to Thelonious Monk or whatever, it’s just insane.

And you also age your own balsamic, correct, Villa Manodori. How did that happen and why go through all of that to rescue this place.

Villa Manodori is the name of the house where my sister lives and was where I kept all my barrels before moving to Casa Maria Luigi, and is the name of our company, that probably saved Osteria Francescana because I create this company in ’95, when I opened Osteria Francescana, and Villa Manodori was the reason because I could pay the bills at the end of the month selling balsamic vinegar.

And, since when we were kids, me and my sister, we were very close to my grandmother and we were always working upstairs in our home because she was the only one where had the keys of the upstairs, where we were keeping the barrels. And I start getting all the barrels from the batteries, the group of barrels to my sister house, and buying new barrels to enlarge the products and the production and, actually, step by step, one step at the time, we grow in quantity and quality.

And we become very successful, especially Germany, USA, Holland, all Europe and US. And that’s how I could pay the bills. And, at the moment I bought out the people in Casa Maria Luigia, the third or fourth step to restore Casa Maria Luigia was the Acetaia. I put together all the batteries from Villa Manodori. And the one that I found in the old villa, one barrel at the time we restore and we recreate the feeling of the balsamic vinegar. Actually, we are the only vinegar place with two gold medals in the competition of balsamic vinegar.

What makes good balsamic vinegar? How do you… Especially to an American, it’s all the same.

Time and love. Time and love. Time and love. Focus, focus, focus. But it’s not about the age, how old it is. No, it’s not about that. How good it is. We have balsamic vinegar from 1908 that needs at least 10 years before coming back and be amazing. We have a 40-year-old balsamico that is to die for. It’s incredible. So deep and intense and balanced. The acidity is like touch, in the perfect way.

That was the moment in which I said, “Okay, let’s do it. At this point, let’s put together everything together and organize and keep tradition alive.” As I did with breakfast at Casa Maria Luigia. The breakfast at Casa Maria Luigia is becoming mythic. There are modernist people, like two friends, two girlfriends, they live in Modena, they made a reservation Saturday night to wake up Sunday morning and have breakfast at Casa Maria Luigia. Imagine?

What was the breakfast? What is the breakfast?

Breakfast is the same breakfast that my grandmother was preparing Christmas Day. I said to our chef, Jessica, she is a Canadian, she managed the fire very well, I explained, my grandmother, she wasn’t a great cook because she didn’t love to cook, but she had to cook. My mom, she was an amazing cook because she loved to cook. But Christmas Day, she was incredible because she was waking up very early in the morning and she was prepare breakfast for the whole family and breakfast was incredible.

I would love to have all our guests to experience Christmas Day every day in Casa Maria Luigia. And so, they’re all super classic flavors from Modena, has the fried dough with Mortadella, with the fresh daily ricotta, touchable balsamic vinegar, the cotechino sausage cooked under the ashes in the wood-burn oven with the zabaglione and the almond cake called sbrisolona or the frittatine. Everything is cooked in a wood-burn oven, so the smokiness, the flavor, the intensity is… It’s incredible. Incredible.

And I’d love to ask you a question I ask a lot of my chef guests. If you had to plan a dinner for your family, at the last minute, on a Sunday afternoon, for an early dinner, what would be on the menu?

For the family? For sure, I would serve something traditional because family and Sunday, family, it’s all about emotions. And when you feed the people with emotions, the emotion stays forever. Good food is just good food. The next experience, you already forget about the one before, but when you feed people with emotions, that’s your goal and it is going to stay with them forever. That’s what it is.

And to me, there’s nothing more emotional than those traditional flavors that I share with everyone, like the crunchy part of the lasagna. We were fighting over that crunchy part, me and my older brothers, so I know what I’m talking about. As the breakfast in Casa Maria Luigia, that’s a unique breakfast in the world because, if you want to serve that breakfast and you want to copy that breakfast, it’s just a copy. Because it’s my breakfast when I was a kid. Those kind of flavors, I think they’re going to be the one that I would serve to my family.

If you had to describe your philosophy on life in three words, what would you say those words might be?

I would say what I do every day. I compress my passion into edible bites, sitting on centuries of history, filtered by a contemporary mind, is what I do because everything is very Italian and so is heritage. My passions are music, art, poetry, fast cars, motorcycle. Everything is stimulate my mind, but in a very critic way, never in a nostalgic one. If I am critic on those things, I get the best from the past into the future.

And if a young chef comes to you and stops you somewhere, briefly, and says, “I’d love a piece of advice from you,” what piece of advice do you give young chefs?

I would say travel as much as you can. Keep study as much as you can because culture is the most important ingredients for the chef of the future. And travel with your eyes and your ears open to absorb different culture, but never forget who you are and where you come from.

Thank you to my guest Massimo Bottura, as well as to Alex Coumbis for making this episode happen. The editor of The Grand Tourist is Stan Hall To keep this going, don’t forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, The Grand Tourist Curator at thegrandtourist.net and follow me on Instagram @danrubinstein. And don’t forget to follow The Grand Tourist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen and leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Til next season!

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