Over 50 guests at the Italian fine dining restaurant, Le Cirque at The Leela Palace New Delhi, are eagerly waiting to greet, meet and click selfies with him. The lounge area is brimming with their energy and overflowing with joy. But there’s certainly more to meeting this culinary and celebrated icon than creating just memorable food. We even hear one say, “I’m lucky to meet him in India,” as we welcome him with a thunderous applause.
Massimo Bottura needs no introduction. Using top-notch ingredients to create culinary masterpieces, transforming leftovers into ground-breaking and ‘extraordinary’ meals for the homeless and making impactful and successful changes to society through his food, Bottura is a force to reckon with.
“For me, success is having an incredible team, and my team is my family. If you want to be successful, you have to treat everyone like family. I am lucky to keep doing what I love every day. I love reading poetry, see art, listen to music. They teach you a lot, as you travel, and get exposed to the best in the world.And I tell this to all youngsters, keep your eyes and ears open because you observe different cultures and you can learn so many things,” says the world-renowned Italian chef of three-Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, who was in New Delhi in collaboration with The Leela Palaces Hotels and Resorts for two exclusive dinners this week.
Cooking for the well-heeled diners, at arguably the most famous restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, which is No. 1 on the World’s 50 Best list, is no mean feat. The guests fly for lunches and dinners from Japan, Australia, and the US and all over the world at his coveted outlet with only 12 intimate tables, which is sold out most times of the year.
Rightly so, Bottura has earned a celebrity status not just for his charity cooking and sustainable practices but also for cooking and exchanging ideas with partners, chefs, artists and architects to reduce food waste on many occasions, one such being at the World Expo in Milan in 2015, where the event’s theme was on ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. He has had training and collaborations with renowned chef Alain Ducasse. English artist Damien Hirst admires Bottura’s work and his creations include the ‘Beautiful Psychedelic Veal, Not Flame Grilled’, a dish inspired by Damien Hirst’s spin paintings.
Football player David Beckham, too, created the spin painting on Bottura’s plate at one culinary creation in Modena and in fact, a successful collaboration culminated into cooking tortellini with puppets on Michelle Obama’s show, Waffles + Mochi, on Netflix.
For all that Bottura prepares as an extraordinary meal from ordinary and sometimes ‘wasted’ ingredients which he calls “surplus” has been a major inspiration for chefs and his loyalists to eat well while living well. “I always prefer to call it ‘food surplus’ and not ‘food waste’, as all food and ingredients must be utilised,” he says.
Reflecting on his trip to India, he finds a common thread between India and Italy and finding a solution to one pressing problem all over the world and that is how sustainable eating is the only solution to food problems. “Like India, we in Italy believe in not wasting food and finishing what’s on our plate,” he says.
Some of the great ‘Botturaisms’ that best define his cuisine, such as ‘bread is gold’, ‘cooking is an act of love’ and ‘live your life as a dream’, have made this 60-year-old genius believe in going beyond cooking. No wonder he is known for cooking with deep thoughts, emotions and culture, so much so that many a times, people have cried after eating his food, for not many chefs in the world are known to create dishes that pamper guests with soul-stirring food.
His plates are reflections on philosophy, philanthropy, history, jazz, and art finely woven into his exotic dishes with as much ease as his understanding of locally grown ingredients and recipes. “Cooking is an act of love, and as we cook, we transfer emotions and feelings through our food,” says the maverick chef, whose one such culinary creation ‘The Crunchy Part of Lasagne’ features a torched tri-coloured pasta sheet reminiscent of the Italian flag inspired by artistic concepts.
Serendipity has been part of his culinary journey, and he admits that, “One can make mistakes in the kitchen,” as for his signature dessert, ‘Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart’ has ingredients like salty capers, lemongrass, candied bergamot, and mint sauce, and was accidentally dropped by Bottura’s pastry chef in the kitchen where the dish is served on a plate with a deliberate crack.
As for what the future holds for Bottura, he is introducing the Italian concept restaurant Torno Subito to South Florida, sometime soon, and starting a new menu inspired from Bob Dylan’s music in Italy. And the rest, as he says, “is all about filling emotions in every bite.”
