Massimo Bottura is a Man of Taste
Chef Massimo Bottura’s mission goes beyond the plate, seeing food as a recipe for social change.
This feature was originally published in May 2023 in Mastermind 13 – buy all issues here.
Massimo Bottura is the maestro of Italian food. Known around the world for his avant-garde cuisine (one signature dessert is evocatively titled “Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart”), Bottura runs the Osteria Francescana in his native Modena, which has three Michelin stars and was twice named the world’s best restaurant. Bottura uses traditional Italian ingredients in unexpected and subversive ways. His dish “Tortellini Walking into Broth” comprises six tortellini plated in a row on a thin layer of broth – far from the tortellini-filled bowls Modena locals were used to. Such dishes earned negative reviews at first, and Bottura was criticized as a traitor for disrespecting long-held traditions, but his inventive instincts proved correct, and today Bottura is credited with modernizing Italian cuisine.
His culinary vision goes beyond the kitchen and extends into the community. With his wife, Lara Gilmore, Bottura founded the Food for Soul project, a worldwide network of canteens, called refettorios, that prepare free meals for the needy using unsold food. And his Tortellante project, founded in 2018, sees Modenese grandmothers who are expert pasta-makers passing their skills on to young adults with special needs.
Through his work inside and outside the kitchen, Bottura demonstrates that food is cultural heritage and a tool for social change. “Culture generates knowledge, knowledge brings awareness, and awareness creates a sense of responsibility – toward yourself, toward others, toward what surrounds you and consequently toward the planet,” says Bottura.
You have, by virtue of your success, become a global ambassador for Italian cuisine. In your mind, what distinguishes Italian gastronomy?
MB Italian tradition is based on the philosophy of using everything: nothing is thrown away. The Italian cucina povera [kitchen of the poor] is the original “no-waste kitchen”: it is a legacy passed down from our mothers and grandmothers. I learned everything I know about not wasting food from my grandmother, Ancella. I still remember one of my favorite meals as a child. For breakfast or as an evening snack, she served me a cup of hot milk with sugar, in which I would soak pieces of stale bread. This was one of the simplest and most memorable flavors for me. Food recovery and the use of food in its entirety are something that Italians have in their D.N.A. – in their roots, history and culture. A piece of day-old bread can become gold if you are able to ask the right questions.
Our work is not about forgetting the past but about finding the most appropriate way to bring the best of the past into the future. Massimo Bottura
You are credited with reinventing Italian food and acting as a caretaker of this tradition. When you conceptualize a dish, how much of the process involves subverting past traditions, and how much is paying homage to them?
MB “Tradition in evolution” is the idea that has led my work and that of my team for more than 30 years, even before I opened Osteria Francescana. Osteria Francescana is a laboratory where we look at tradition from 10 kilometers [six miles] away – we look at the past in a critical way, not a nostalgic one. This doesn’t mean we disrespect our culinary traditions or throw them away; instead, it implies a deep knowledge of these traditions. Our work is not about forgetting the past but about finding the most appropriate way to bring the best of the past into the future, with evolution and resilience. Recipes are not meant to be followed literally. They are stories or watercolors of a feeling, a mood, a way of seeing the light fall onto a plate. I take recipes as a starting point, from which I begin the path of creation. Then inspiration comes from what’s around me. Being a chef means being able to find inspiration in everything, in simple things as well as expensive ones. It means leaving the door open for poetry, for imagination, for the unexpected. It means making a pesto with breadcrumbs when you look around and can’t find pine nuts. It means using all you have in the fridge, giving new value to humble ingredients. This is how you make the invisible visible.
What was your favorite dish as a child?
MB I was born and raised in Modena, where tortellini are a religion. If you don’t believe in God, you can always believe in tortellini. As a kid, I was always under the kitchen table. It was my refuge from my three older brothers. I found peace under the table, at my grandmother’s feet, as she rolled out the pasta dough. There was the constant chatting of my grandmother, mother and aunt who prepared meals for the 12 of us, for lunch and dinner. The flour fell around me, and I would steal the tortellini they were making when they weren’t looking. I would pop them into my mouth raw and chew for a very long time, until all the flavor was drawn out. This is where appetite began for me. The tortellini tradition dates back to the 16th century, and the recipe leaves no room for improvisation. Making tortellini requires technique and lots of practice. It’s an art that has to be kept safe and passed on. And making tortellini is never a solitary act – it is a communal one. Tortellini are always made with a group of people around a table. This is what inspired my wife, Lara, and I to launch the Tortellante project in 2018, a unique social project where young adults with special needs master the art of tortellini-making with the expert help of a group of Modenese grandmothers and pasta-makers, also known as rezdore. These women and men are the gatekeepers of the secular knowledge of this culinary tradition. We wanted to transfer this knowledge, skill and tradition to these young adults to help give them an identity and a future.
Tell me about some of the mentors you’ve had in your career and the lessons they shared that you retain today.
MB The women in my life have had the greatest influence over me. First my grandmother, when she convinced me to stop playing soccer because it took time away from studying. Then my mother, Luisa, who, when I was in my early years of law school, looked me in the eyes one morning and said: “Massimo, you are not happy. You have a lot of energy, but this energy at the moment is stifled. You have to channel it into something positive.” She gave me permission to follow my passions. Then Lidia Cristoni, who walked into my first restaurant, Trattoria del Campazzo, and taught me many things: traditional recipes, humility and the value of teamwork. Then, of course, my wife, Lara, who opened the door to the unexpected and to contemporary art for me. She taught me to go deep into concepts and learn from the world around me.
You have a passion for art and an impressive collection. How does this love of art inform your approach to food?
MB Before I met Lara, I thought art ended with Marcel Duchamp. I had read about the Impressionists, the Fauvists, the Cubists, the Futurists, but I had never explored the contemporary world. Lara made the invisible visible to me. Since then, contemporary art has been a part of my life and has deeply influenced my cooking. Because the artist is not the one who amazes with technique, but the one who knows how to reveal a different aspect of reality, to grasp the poetry in the everyday. This is what I love about art.
Music, especially jazz, is also very important in your life. What do you love about it?
MB I was 14 when my brother introduced me to music – real music. From that moment, I started collecting jazz. And when you’re into jazz, you never get out of it. Jazz musicians are like great chefs. They improvise, but it’s a controlled improvisation because to improvise, you have to know everything and forget everything. In cooking, it’s the same thing. Picasso said, “When I was 12, I painted like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.” You have to know the past, analyze it critically and not nostalgically, to take the best and bring it into the future, reworking it through your own experience, in a contemporary key. Billie Holiday was jazz. With all her imperfections, she could convey the deepest emotions. She sang her life: what she lived at night, she sang the next day. In jazz, it is the dissonance that makes the melody harmonic, the silences, the impurities of sound that open new doors. Like a tart that falls on the floor, breaks and gives birth to something unexpected, something magical. It is the poetry of error.
What are the key qualities needed to be a great chef?
MB My advice to everyone who wants to become a chef is the same that my father-in-law gave me nearly 20 years ago: “Be like a tree – grow slowly.” I suggest they seek out their true motivations, passions and inspirations, and that they keep a small window open for poetry: read, travel, look at art, listen to music and dig as deep as they can into their culture to understand who they are and where they come from. And never forget that talent is only 10 percent – the remaining 90 percent is all hard work.
There is also a component of social responsibility in your work. Your Food for Soul project targets food waste and builds community through food. How was it born? How did it develop?
MB Food for Soul is a cultural project. Back in 2014, I was feeling the need to give back, to move the spotlight out of the kitchen and the restaurant and to point it to the community. In 2015, we responded to the challenge launched by Milan Expo – “Feed the Planet: Energy for Life” – by raising awareness about food waste and food insecurity. Far from the clamor of events and live television broadcasts, a cultural project arose. It was destined to continue even after the expo ended and to go beyond Italian borders and reach all over the world. We have created 12 projects in nine countries around the world. Refettorios have recovered more than 950 tons of food, served more than two million meals and delivered nearly two million packages of fresh food, with more than 100,000 chefs, apprentices and volunteers taking care of over one million guests. For me, the future is when the opening of a refettorio will not make the news but be considered an everyday event.
Do you sense that these kinds of political and social issues are becoming more central to a chef’s mission?
MB Young people today are more aware and empowered than we were at the same age. I believe in the fight against food waste and social isolation through beauty. As Albert Camus said, “Beauty does not make revolutions, but one day revolutions will need beauty.” I believe that gastronomy can evolve toward this idea. It is only thanks to everyone’s daily gestures that we can truly effect change. Today more than ever, we have the responsibility to act. We have virtual audiences around the world. There are no more excuses.
What is most important to you today?
MB My team. As I always say, a chef cannot be a chef without his team. “We are the revolution,” Joseph Beuys used to say. Change happens when we come together. When we reach out to people with different perspectives and cultures, when we share ideas and knowledge, we grow. My team is my family. We win together, and the joy is doubled. We lose together, and the disappointment is halved. My team is my future.
What does the future hold for you?
MB The future cannot be lived in: it is a dream. You can imagine it, you can prepare it, you can build it. You cannot be aggressive with the future nor can you avoid it. You cannot combat it – you need to learn to love it. “Courage” is the name of the future, and the courageous are its imaginary citizens. The future is so difficult to intuit, and it is almost impossible to anticipate. We need to dream it and prepare a place for it in our souls, like planting a seed in our hearts. It must become a walking companion, with each step the instantaneous anticipation of the next step. And perhaps, in that exact moment, we can accept that the journey will take us far away because the future is not a place – it is a state of mind. In our future, there will always be more future.