Have you heard of Massimo Bottura yet? He’s about to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
Massimo, the culinary equivalent of Greg Graffin, has already rocked Europe. He has not only managed to drag your Nonna’s Italian classics into the post-space age, tricking out his Modena restaurant and the two-Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana with all manners of culinary rocket science (he literally spins Parmigiano into air), he’s also deeply committed to the fleeting, visceral joy found in the superficial.
Bottura is avant garde, real where it counts, fake when it’s fun and obsessed with random cultural references (there’s a dish on his menu that refers to Joseph Beuys, everyone’s fave underdog conceptual artist). The music of Thelonius Monk, Bob Dylan and Edith Piaf have been cited as the inspirations that have led Massimo to new levels of cookery creation; he often compares the creation of music and food, saying there are two ways to be a chef today:
“[F]ollow the score as a musician would; being respectful, buying the right ingredients and following the recipe to produce a good cover version. Others are trying to create their own way, their own music.”
Check out a new film he made that’s causing a ruckus in the food geek blogosphere over at Eater, or check out why he chose to sleep next to a sous vide tank of reindeer tongue, below:
TOPICS: Eat to the Beat, Kathleen Willcox