For Chef Massimo Bottura food is all about art and poetry
Financial Times about Casa Maria Luigia, an 18th-century house that has been converted into a guesthouse by Bottura and his wife, Lara Gilmore, in Modena, he likened his creative process to that of artist Ai WeiWei, whose triptych adorns the main hall and shows the artist dropping a Han Dynasty urn. “I think Ai WeiWei stole my idea," Bottura joked with the Financial Times. Also read: Warm breads, strawberry sloffen hearts at a Dutch bakery in Kochi “[Bottura] has been breaking with tradition in his kitchen for almost 30 years. Dining at Francescana at Maria Luigia offers guests the chance to try iconoclastic dishes such as ‘Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart’ that made Bottura famous," states the piece about the parallels between the chef and the artist.
To help newer chefs to find their own style of edible poetry, both Casa Maria Luigia and Osteria Francescana offer small laboratories, where ideas can be tested. It is this experimented language, which can be seen at his new restaurant, Al Gatto Verde, launched last year in Modena. Helmed by Canadian chef Jessica Rosval, the seasonal wood-fired menu—tasting and a la carte—features dishes such as ‘Pasta Arsa’, or pasta burned on flames and served with duck leg, maple syrup and pistachio, and ‘Mare e Melone’, which is seaweed smokes white melon, sea water and marine herbs.
To him, this is part of shaping a sense of culture for his team, whom he calls his family. “Culture is the most important ingredient for the chef of the future," he says. “Future is not a place, it is a state of mind, and to arrive at that, you have to be very creative.
People might not always understand what you are doing at the time you are doing it. 25 years ago, no one was listening to me. Now, of
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