2017 ended on a mournful note for the world of Italian cuisine, which lost one of its most beloved fathers, Gualtiero Marchesi, on Saint Stephen’s Day. The 87 year old succumbed to a bout of bronchitis that proved fatal to his body, already debilitated by a lasting fight against cancer. Because of the illness, Marchesi had been shying away for the public eye in recent times, yet had remained very much active, as his son in law and president of the Gualtiero Marchesi Foundation, Enrico Dandolo, declared to La Repubblica: “he was rewriting all of his most popular and innovative recipes. His last was a fully photographic book, pictures of his dishes… but you know the way it is, chefs tend to reinterpret and personalize recipes, so he had decided to codify all of his own masterpieces once and for all. It was important for him they could be made in the future the way he had conceived them.”
The career of Gualtiero Marchesi started in Milan, where he was born on the 19th of March 1930, in the kitchen of his own parents’ hotel, the Albergo Mercato. His culinary education, however, had a distinctively Swiss flavor, created by the experience at the Kulm of St Moritz and the studies followed at the culinary school of Lucerne.
Back in Italy, it was once again in the Mercato’s kitchen he began to experiment, laying the foundations for a style that was to make him a pioneer in the world of nouvelle cuisine in his country. It was in France, however, he honed his skills – Paris, Dijon, Roanne – before travelling back to Milan in 1977 to open his first restaurant: within 12 months, he would get his first Michelin star.
In 1985, the French culinary institution awarded Marchesi’s eatery with three stars, a never-seen-before feat in the Bel Paese. These are the years of his “total cuisine,” where food was only a part of a culinary experience made of flavors and textures, but also of the way they were delivered on the plate and table; an experience where everything, from plates and cutlery to table setting brought something special and unique to dining. He became Cavaliere della Repubblica in 1986 and Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres, the title’s French version, in 1990, an award that inaugurated a decade of further innovation and international recognition. It was, indeed, in the 1990s that Marchesi delved into the emerging culinary trends offered by bistrot and café food, opening brunch-style venues in Milan, along with a new Gualtiero Marchesi restaurant at the Halkin Hotel in London.
The noughties carried along yet another breath of fresh air and creativity in the work and life of Marchesi, with the opening of a Michelin starred restaurant in Place Vendôme, in Paris, and the revamping of Rome’s own oldest osteria, the Hostaria dell’Orso, rewarded with a Michelin star within a year from its inauguration. In 2002, the International Academy of Gastronomy awarded him with the Grand Prix Mémoire et Gratitude, its most prestigious recognition. In 2008, Marchesi returned to Milan, in one of his city’s most quintessential corners, near La Scala: here, he opened Il Marchesino, a restaurant-cum-caffetteria conceived, in its nature and culinary offerings, for the people working and going to the theatre.
Aware of the importance of education, in 2004 Marchesi founded Alma, his international school of Italian cuisine, in Colorno near Parma, a city in itself synonym with Italy’s best culinary traditions. Back in Milan, in 2014, he inaugurated the Accademia Gualtiero Marchesi and, a year later, he was nominated Chef Ambassador for EXPO 2015. Even his last announced project, a retirement home for chefs which will open this year in Varese, somehow placed Marchesi up there, in the Olympus of Italy’s great creative geniuses: Giuseppe Verdi, one of Italy’s purest musical minds, strongly desired the creation of a similar place for aging musicians and opera singers.
And as deserved by all great artists and creative minds, Marchesi also became protagonist of a docu-film, Marchesi, the Great Italian, pre-screened at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, which will be officially presented on the 19th of March this year, on the anniversary of his birth. And as all artists, Marchesi let sometimes his “genio” take the lead over the established rule, just like when, 10 years ago, he returned to the sender his Michelin stars, saying that good food didn’t need to be judged by anyone.
His inheritance remains, immense and cherished, not only in his own restaurants, projects and recipes, but also in the work of the many chefs, Italian and non-Italians, who trained with him: Enrico Crippa, three Michelin stars chef of Piazza Duomo in Alba, Carlo Cracco of Ristorante Cracco in Milan -one of the best 50 in the world, and Ernst Knam, pasticcere and chocolate expert with a renowned store in Milan, are only some among them. It is in their words, perhaps, that Italy should try to voice its very own moment of mourning for such an icon of its culinary tradition and culture: “He’s been the greatest, a par excellence innovator. Milan should dedicate a museum to him,” Knam said to La Repubblica, embodying an idea, that of dedicating a place to the Maestro in his city, also proposed by others.
It is, however, in the simple words of Carlo Cracco that, hermetically and with touching emotion, Italy’s heart finds the way to say goodbye to a man who gave a shape to the idea of food as art, without ever forgetting the flavorsome – and often humble – roots of his country’s cuisine.
“Ciao Maestro. E grazie.”
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