We are with Chef Antonino Cannavacciuolo, famous for the two-Michelin-starred Villa Crespi, that will answer questions from our editorial staff and some of our Italian Food Ambassadors.
1) What was the episode that gave birth to your passion for food?
Honestly, I can’t say there is a single event that oriented me towards “the kitchen”: I’ve always known, since I was a child, I would become a chef.
I grew up in a family where food was a synonym of aggregation and conviviality.
Cooking for me has always been the highest expression of a general “well-being”, together with my friends and family…the highest expression to achieve a result that brings peace and harmony.
It’s pretty hard to explain, but, may be, cooking has always meant to me being “together”.
2) If you should take a friend out for dinner, who’s coming from abroad and visiting Italy for the first time, which typical dish would you suggest him?
No doubt: I would bring him to my parents’ house and I would made my mother cook her “Parmigiana di melanzane”, (Eggplants Parmigiana), which is famous among friends and relatives for its amazing taste.
3) Which product among those of Made in Italy do you think is not known enough worldwide?
Fortunately, there’s no one I can think of. Fortunately!
I’m really proud of being Italian, I belong to a Country that gets many amazing products and raw materials from every single region, an heritage that makes us unique – I repeat – unique in the world.
4) As for Italian Sounding, which could be the best solutions to fight it?
I’m a chef and honestly this question upsets me a little…I don’t think it should be asked to the professionals of the food sector, but to those that should protect Italian Restaurants and products abroad.
5) In your delicious dishes you manage to mix and harmonize both the cuisine from the South and the one, richer, from the North. How can these different tastes and cultures melt together? (My little Italian kitchen)
This is the secret lying in diversity: it links two opposite poles producing an amazing results!
This said, I enjoy myself by valorizing what the territory offers at its best , I don’t think there’s a better way to do it unless that of uniting the beauty from the North and that from the South to create charismatic dishes.
6) How do you create a new recipe? Is it something you do individually or together with your restaurant team? (Kitchen in the sand)
The creation of each recipe has a story of its own. I never follow the same procedure…sometimes it’s just an explosion I feel inside me, others it takes me ages to work on a recipe; at times I work alone, others I prefer to exchange my ideas with the guys of my team. A recipe is a representation of emotions, in my opinion this cannot be defined once and for all, nor follow a standardized procedure: it must be instinctive.
7) What is (if there has ever been one) the Italian recipe you never managed to cook – either because you didn’t like it, or because you tried to cook it and got it wrong? (Pepe Rosso in Cucina)
It still has to be invented☺ ☺
8) Excluding yours, what is your favorite restaurant in Italy? And abroad? (Kitchen in the sand)
Don’t want to repeat myself, but the place whose cuisine I appreciate the most is my parents’ house. Fresh produce from our garden, fish from our sea, the secrets of recipes handed down through generations, the memory of my childhood…the sincere affection of your family, what’s better than this?
