Mandarino after the oranges that came from Sicilia. They spoke a dialect that sounded foreign to us, and the father was loud and dramatic when he talked; tragic, comical…so different from my father, who never raised his voice.
Almost everything we ate and drank was produced locally. We even picked up the milk every evening from the window of the house of Napoleone, who kept a few cows. Each family had their own bottles and he would fill them up and leave them for us to collect – in winter outside the window, in summer in the courtyard under a fountain. Later, when I was a young boy and I was working in restaurants abroad, when I came home for the holidays, people would always open their windows to lean out and say hello. They still do. Whenever we go to Corgeno, my wife Plaxy complains that it takes an hour to walk through the village, because someone will always shout, ‘Hey, Giorgio’ – and it always seems to be an ex-girlfriend.
I remember coming back home after one summer when I was a teenager. I stopped in at the tobacconist to buy cigarettes, and by the time I got to our house, my grandmother already knew that I had changed from Camel to Marlboro. That is how small our village was.
My auntie, uncle and my father and mother all worked in the hotel and my uncle ran the restaurant where I worked, too, as soon I was big enough. Later we had a Michelin star, but then we just served good, honest Italian food and on Saturdays we did banqueting and wedding receptions in a big beautiful room at the top of the hotel, looking out over the lake. We used to feed around 180 people and when we were at our busiest, we would make 20 kilos of dough for the gnocchi and everyone, from the waiters to the women who did the rooms, would come into the kitchen to help shape them. In summer, our guests could sit out on the terrace under big umbrellas. If it was raining they gathered inside around a big table in the corridor, and no one ever complained.
There are ten rooms in La Cinzianella, and we would send food to the rooms, too. Every Sunday a well-known gentleman from the village, Luciano, would come to the hotel in his Mercedes, with a woman called Rosetta. Everyone knew that his wife had been ill for a long time and that Rosetta was his mistress. So on Sundays his room would be ready for him from about two o’clock, and by six, six-thirty, he would call us and order a bottle of champagne. I remember my mother would put it on a tray and, of course, somebody had to take it up – all of us young boys wanted to do it, because we wanted to catch a glimpse of Rosetta.
I still remember her – warm and round and womanly, like my auntie Maria Luisa, who was beautiful too, the nearest thing to royalty. Maria Luisa was the only one who had any power over me when I was wayward, and could tell me off without ever losing her temper, unlike my mother, who is quite a nervous woman. When my grandfather died, we sat down for our first meal all together without him, and we all expected that my father would take his place at the head of the table, but Maria Luisa came in and sat down in the place of my granddad and she has been there ever since.
My auntie and Rosetta – for me they represented sexuality, but all bound up with good food and wine and generosity, because by seven-thirty, showered and beautifully dressed, Rosetta and her gentleman friend would come down to eat dinner and we would welcome them warmly; we were part of their lives, and they were part of ours. There was a complicity between restaurateur and guest, which is one of the things I have tried to create in my own restaurant.
Even in the heart of London, I feel we have a special bond with our customers. Eating is not just about fuelling up to get through the day; it is about conviviality, friendship and celebration. I like the fact that people come to us again and again for an anniversary, or a birthday. I want them to bring their kids, so I can take them into the kitchen, and they can help prepare the dessert for their mums and dads. I like to feel that I can come and sit down and chat with them in between cooking; and if I see them on the street one morning, I can invite them into the restaurant for coffee. Sometimes people who have eaten at Locanda, and before that at Zafferano, whom we have known for many years, come to see us after a husband or wife has died, or they have split up, because in a strange, poignant way, we have become part of their lives. For my wife, Plaxy, and for me that is so special; because this is our restaurant, an extension of our family; and everything that happens in it is personal to us. I know how important it is to have that intimacy, because the memories of our relationship with the local gentleman and Rosetta at La Cinzianella have stayed with me all my life.
‘It is true that man does not live by bread alone; he must eat something with it.’
Italians are very impatient people. We can’t sit for more than a minute in traffic and we hate to wait for our food. That is why we invented antipasti, which literally means ‘before the meal [pasto]’. When I first came to England, I thought it so strange to see people at parties and weddings standing about having drinks before they ate. Italians just want to get around the table as soon as possible, so the bread can arrive. Not just bread – we also want salami, prosciutto, maybe some marinated artichokes, some olives…We want to enjoy a glass of wine, to talk and argue, because everything we do in a day is a small drama and everyone has an opinion on it – but we need to eat while we are discussing it. Once the antipasti are on the table, that is the signal to relax, get into the mood and interact, because you have to pass the plates and everyone is saying, ‘Oh what is this?’ and, ‘Can I have some of that?’ It is all about conviviality and sharing and generosity.
A few miles from my home in Corgeno, in Lombardia, on the way to nowhere, is the village of Cuirone, with its pale, yellow-washed houses; a place that has hardly changed since I was a child. In the middle of the village is the Societa Mutuo Soccorso, the cooperative shop and restaurant with a bakery attached, where they make fantastic chestnut and pumpkin bread, as well as the big pane bianchi, which is the everyday bread. Inside the bakery, they have a basket that is full of drawstring bags, some gingham, some flowery. Each family makes their own bag, and the bakers know which bread they have, so in the morning when the loaves come out of the oven, the bags get filled up and delivered by scooter.
At one time in our region of Italy, most of the villages had a cooperativa, run by the locals, where everyone could bring their produce to sell and where you could get a simple lunch for not much money. Everything you ate would be produced locally. You have to remember that Italy has only been a united country for not much more than a hundred years. Before that it was made up of different kingdoms, dukedoms, republics etc., each influenced by different neighbours and invading armies throughout its history.
Also in Italy you have a massive geographical change from mountains to coastlines, from the colder North with its plains full of cows giving beef, and milk for cheese, to the hot South, on the same parallel as Africa, where they grow a profusion of lemons, tomatoes, capers and peppers. So in every region, town, and village, they have their own particular ingredients and style of cooking, which of course they will insist is absolutely the right way – and that what everyone else does is wrong.