Osteria Francescana in Modena has just been declared the world’s best restaurant.
The annual San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants, unveiled in Bilbao this week, moved legendary Italian chef Massimo Bottura’s restaurant’s back to No 1 (it topped the list in 2016 as well, before moving to No 2 in 2017), displacing last year’s winner, Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park. Besides his iconic restaurant, Chef Massimo founded the non-profit association Food for Soul in 2016, to take on the challenge of food waste.
Which is why I was determined to find a way to work with him. Following short stints at various hotels in India since I was in Class X, and later as part of my Culinary Arts degree, I made up my mind to stage at Osteria Francescana (a stage is an unpaid internship when you work in a chef’s kitchen to learn new techniques). It took nearly a year’s perseverance of studying, working on my skills and applications. I am not sure what worked, but I finally managed to bag a place at the most coveted kitchen in the world.
I spent the summer of 2017 with Osteria Francescana, learning from Chef Massimo. His style is clean and minimal: his philosophy, to make every dish taste better than your grandmother’s cooking. He understands how to respect the past, even while appreciating the present. At the first chance I got, I asked him the secret to his success. He said, ‘I wake up and then go to bed. And in between I do what I love to do.”
A peek at the pinnacle
Osteria Francescana has 12 tables, which can accommodate 28 to 30 people. There is just one service for lunch and one for dinner. (The 10-course tasting menu is €250, almost ₹20,000 per head.) Reservations are done online and guests wait for up to six months for a place at the table.
At Osteria, everyone is an equal, everyone is family. I worked alongside cooks and kitchen staff from Canada, Mexico, Italy, Japan and Bangladesh. And we all participated when it was time to clean up.
I worked at the prep kitchen and quickly learnt that no dish on the menu is easy. There are a lot of components to each, hence the dedicated prep kitchen located right across the street. I was put in all the sections, and taught all the dishes on the menu, including Chef Massimo’s celebrated dessert ‘Oops I dropped the lemon tart’, fresh miniature tortellini and his famous ‘Caesar salad in bloom’.
The prep kitchen made the staff meal: pizza on Fridays and pasta everyday. We always had great music playing in the kitchen, from pop to metal to classical Italian, it changed depending on who was in charge of the playlist. On my day, I made them listen to Hindi music: Guru Randhawa’s ‘Tenu suit, suit karda’ (they loved it!). We played soccer on the street between the main kitchen and the prep kitchen in our spare time. It was especially fun when Chef Massimo joined in: he loves playing soccer. Chef taught us that it is important to work at a place that makes you happy. That helps you absorb everything like a sponge. He’s a genius when he gets down to cooking. Like everyone else on the team, he is in the kitchen at 9.30 am. He likes pin-drop silence when plating a dish; and is like an artist when experimenting with a new menu.
The bigger picture
Massimo says chefs have a responsibility not only to the paying guests, but also to the communities to help improve the food systems for everyone, through education and through action.
“I have a curious mind and I have always been a restless child. I have matured but I will never really grow up,” I remember him telling me, when I asked him for advice for a budding chef. He taught me never to be fearful of ideas. He said it’s okay to be confused when you are thinking of choosing a cuisine or marrying ingredients.
Chef Massimo always says that chefs need to live the everyday routine without getting lost in it.
“That’s the sign of a good chef,” he shared, “Don’t forget to put in your best; your knives should be sharpened at any given time; respect your chef uniform, travel to learn, read, be humble and remember who you are and where you come from, have a sportsman spirit, never forget to help others when you can, and last but not least, be a citizen of the world.”
Twenty-two-year-old Akanksha Dean is a chef and food writer.
