Gualtiero Marchesi

He wanted to be a concert pianist. But he ended up being a renowned artiste of a different ilk – a chef, one of the 15 best in the world.

Gualtiero Marchesi was born in Milan, Italy, in the year 1930, into a family that made catering a profession. His parents owned "L'Albergo del Mercato" (The Hotel at the Marketplace) in Via Bezzecca, Milan and it was here that the young Gualtiero had his first experiences with cooking.

Two of his paternal relatives, Luigi Ghisoni, who had been a chef at the Ritz on Madeira before he joined Marchesi Senior as his business partner, and Domenico Bergamaschi, chef at Albergo del Mercato, were major influences on Gualtiero. He admired both for their ability to prepare traditional recipes perfectly, and also for their talent in enhancing the taste of even simple ingredients.

When Gualtiero was 17 years old, he told his mother that he wanted to discontinue his schooling and she sent him off to work at the Hotel Klum in St. Moritz. He went on to study at a hotel school in Lucerne before returning to work at Albergo del Mercato.

At Mercato, he was required to make traditional lunch for the vendors at the market. But come dinner, he was given a free hand to try out the ideas swirling in his head, thanks to the exposure he had got abroad. Slowly, the young chef built up a clientele of his own, dishing up avant-garde cuisine.

In between trying out recipes, Gualtiero indulged his passion for music, taking in all the concerts and shows possible. In the course of his dates with music, he met and subsequently married a young woman of Sicilian origin, a piano soloist and daughter of a famous soprano. In a brief flirtation with his dream of becoming a concert pianist, Gualtiero took lessons from his wife, but the couple soon realized that his calling lay in the kitchen, not on the piano stool.

Gualtiero then went to France -- to “Ledoyen” in Paris, "Le Chapeau Rouge” in Dijon and “Troigros” in Roanne, and had what he once described as his ‘university education’. On his return to Milan, he opened a small hotel with his parents, and that remained his milieu till 1977.

In that year Gualtiero Marchesi opened his first restaurant. It was located on Via Bonvesin de la Riva in Milan. Within a year he earned his first Michelin star, and followed it up with another in the second year. It took another seven years, but then he won the distinction of a third Michelin star – the first time a chef in Italy was so honoured.

So what is so special about Gualtiero Marchesi? His culinary art is a creative process that has evolved with the years. It seeks to combine simplicity and complexity, the traditional with the modern, to achieve a unique whole. Initially heavily influenced by the French connection, Marchesi gradually incorporated a whole new branch of gastronomy – Japanese cuisine – into his art. The two influences coalesced with his strong Italian roots into what he called Marchesian: Japanese cuisine, Italian taste.

He uses regionally typical ingredients to whip up works of art, where no ingredient is suffocated by another, but rather, blend together to produce a divine composite.

Marchesi moved with the times, bowing to the demands of nouvelle cuisine. His cooking remained straightforward, with a distinctively elegant and innovative manner of presentation. Take his risotto alla milanese (rice Milanese-style) for example. It has blossomed into riso, oro, e zafferano, or saffron rice decorated with gold leaf. So highly are the artistic merits of this dish rated that it was given the status of a painting when it was included in a Chicago exhibition.

Or take the case of the humble pasta, which it was thought could never aspire to the level of haute cuisine. That perception was destroyed for good when Gualtiero Marchesi came along. At Bonvesin de la Riva, he set out to scale the heights to which pasta could be raised. Foie gras, asparagus, truffles, caviar and raw seafood were all brought into play. Breaking with tradition, which demanded that pasta be served hot invariably, the non-conformist Marchesi served it cold on occasion, with delectable results.

He was also not afraid to turn the negative into the positive. Once, served overcooked ravioli, which split open on his plate, Marchesi, found himself gripped by the idea that the traditional concept of filled ravioli, a way of using up leftovers, could be modified. The result – the path-breaking open ravioli, two superimposed squares of pasta, filled with scallops. Pasta has never been the same again.

In September 1993, Marchiesa moved out of Milan to Franciacorta, a wonderful territory midway between Bergamo and Brescia. He opened the Ristorante di Erbusco in the Albereta Hotel. Here, his vision of global cuisine took root and is flourishing.

Gualtiero Marchesi di San Pietro all'Orto in Milan, which started functioning in 1998, is a happy marriage between traditional cooking and modern technology. It is also an accredited cooking academy.

He went further afield three years later, opening a restaurant in Paris.

In January 2001, the doors of the Ostaria dell’Orso, the oldest restaurant in Rome, located in a palace dating back to 1400 AD, were flung open again, this time by Marchiese.

Gualtiero Marchesi has been honoured many a time. In 1986, he won the highest award given by the city of Milan, the Ambrogino d’oro. In 1989, he was awarded “Personnalité de l’année” for gastronomy, an honour given for the first time to an Italian chef. In 1990 he was given the “Chevalier des Arts et des lettres” medal by the French government, and in 1991 the Italian Republic conferred on him the title of “Commendatore della Repubblica”. The year 1999 saw him receive the highest honour his native Lombardy can bestow on its sons – the “Longobardo d’Oro”: The Laurea Honoris Causa in Feeding Science by the Universitas Sancti Cyrilli in Rome was another feather in his cap, but perhaps the greatest honour he has received is the Grand Prix ‘Memoire et Gratitude’, awarded by the International Academy of Gatronomy to a chef who has renewed the concepts of classical cuisine and set a milestone on the journey of international gastronomy.

Marchesi is one of the founders of Euro-Toques, an association of some 3000 of the world’s most important chefs, and was its international president during 2000-2002.

As the University Rector of ALMA, which offers the first International Masters degree in Italian cuisine, Marchesi hopes to overcome his country’s lack of a tradition of catering and restaurant management of the highest order.

On a personal front, this man, who is numbered among the world’s greatest cooks, loves Japanese cuisine the best, hates pizza, and dreams of mozzarella!