An exciting restaurant

 

We Italians eat very well at home, so having a restaurant is not a necessity but a luxury, a vice. Nowadays, if you want to go out to eat you have to do an experience something unusual, to enjoy something you can’t prepare. So, bring with you an emotion from the restaurant.

These words contain the philosophy of Terry Giacomello’s cuisine, born in Friuli in 1969, considered one of the most innovative chefs in Italy.
Since 2015, Terry Giacomello is a chef of the Inkiostro of Parma where he confirmed and maintained the Michelin star and where we met him for a short interview.

A definition of your cuisine: modern, molecular or creative?
Modern and contemporary.

You guide a restaurant in the capital of the Italian food valley, how were you welcomed?
It wasn’t easy at first. We had many foreign people, but from a couple of years we are also very appreciated by the Parmesans, especially young customers 28/30 years old.

A kitchen as innovative as yours takes into account tradition?
You see, I always start from what is traditional and I develop a dish with local products: we made products with ham fat, ham marrow, ham bones, balsamic vinegar and many local herbs. I think the latter are important because we have lost the culture of looking for herbs.

Do you think that Italian cuisine is the best in the world or in times of globalization there are no more charts?
The Italian cuisine one of the best in the world but in my opinion excellent cuisine are the French, Spanish, Japanese. I would still say that Italian cuisine is one of the best, but not the best .

So what do you choose between a good sushi and a good plate of tortelli d'erbetta?
Sushi.

When did you find out you were going to be a chef?
I started at 14 years old in my family restaurant where I learned from my mother how to make fresh pasta, tortelli, ravioli, lasagne, tiramisu and then I was very intrigued by what there was outside of our country, because here more or less things were always the same. I met the weirdest chefs who made special dishes and so I discovered my calling.

His dishes are called culinary masterpieces: what is the first quality of a chef?
Humility. I consider myself an apprentice. Every day I learn from the people who work with me. In the kitchen I am not alone but I have a good team. We put our knowledge into play: the idea maybe starts from me, or Mirko, or Leonardo, or Alex and after all of us do the pot and criticize the disches to know if the result obtained is what we were looking for.

So a chef like a coach?
This is what the chef must do: team up, stimulate the guys and involve the brigade in what they do.

When you walk into a restaurant, what’s your first judgment?
The emotion, the creativity, the fact of doing new things and the taste for research.

In conclusion, what advice would you give to a young people approaching the cuisine?
Be humble, look around, spin around as much as you can.