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What drew you
to the industry and why become a
Chef?
It's really
all I ever wanted to do. I came from a southern Italian
family that didn't have a lot of money but all our
riches happened in the kitchen, our socializing- our
pleasure it was at the table. We'd eat for four hours
but that also meant we cooked for four hours. So this
made an impact on me, at a young age all I ever wanted
to do is be a cook, not a fireman, not a policeman, a
cook.
The brother
of the chef at Ernie's in San Francisco was the chef at
the Del Puerto Hotel in Patterson, CA not far from my
hometown of Turlock; mind you I was 13 years old at the
time. He brought me on at the Del Puerto as an
apprentice and I finished my apprenticeship at Ernie's
at fifteen years of age. I worked there until I was 16
and went to the CIA at 17 in 1980. I had never been on
an airplane before I went back East to the CIA. I mean
this was before e-mail. I wrote a letter to the Culinary
Institute, and they sent a catalog. When I got on the
phone with them, my mom held a stop watch to see how
many minutes this expensive long distance call was going
to be- it was a different era for sure! I actually got
accepted to the Cordon Bleu in France but I didn't speak
French so I was off to the CIA. The routine at the CIA
was no problem for me because I came from working stock,
I was used to working hard, I mean my whole family
worked like mules. My chef coat has a white collar but
it should really be blue! I guess the hardest thing
wasn't the work load but getting the technique down at
the speed you needed to have, and to execute it
consistently. But like any craft, you practice it long
enough and you get good at it. I worked in Florida after
culinary school where I opened Toby's restaurant in
Miami. Then I returned to California to open Tra Vigna
in 1986. The rest is history.
TV, Napa
Style, Bottega, cookbooks- how do you find balance in
life?
Well I took
a year off of television to open Bottega. I did
the Top Chef thing but I didn't do a TV series. I did do
a book, but I needed to as we came up on one year at the
restaurant. I wanted to have a book about Bottega that
covered the four seasons. It usually takes about seven
months to put out a book but we did it in three! I
had the whole team involved.
I have
children who are grown now, but I do have a young son
and of course my wife whom I adore. I try to be
home a few times a week for an early supper with my
family before getting back to Bottega for line up or if
I miss line up, for dinner service. It's definitely
challenging to balance everything but one of the keys is
to have a great team, and I do have a great
team.
Three culinary
highlights:
- I met Paul
Bocuse outside of his restaurant in Lyon.
It's
funny; when I was 21 working at the Hotel Negresco in
Nice I took the train on my day off to Lyon. I could
barely afford the fare but I made it just to hang out
behind Bocuse's restaurant and watch the product
coming in, seeing who the purveyors were, I mean this
was the place, right? Well Bocuse came out a couple of
times and each time looked up and saw me. Then he
finally came over and asked what in the world I was
doing there. I said, "Well Chef, I'm a chef from
California doing some work at the Negresco and just
wanted to come and see your place". He asked if I was
coming for lunch and I apologized that I wasn't
because I couldn't really afford it but just wanted to
see the restaurant. He invited me in and treated me to
lunch- unbelievable! It was amazing, the Bresse
chicken, truffles- all wonderful and of course he was
so gracious. At this level, as far as the quality of
the meat and produce, they buy the best then price it
from there. Then of course the execution is
esquisite.
- When we
cured our first big batch of prosciutto at Tra Vigna
and it
turned out spectacular. We had $3000 worth of pork
hanging -that was a lot on the
line.
- When the
introduction of prosciutto de Parma came to America
some 20 years ago, remember
we had no Italian hams here until fairly
recently. Lidia Bastianich invited me
to a prosciutto party in New York. I was on my way to
Italy and I said sure, a nice stop along the way. She
said bring a ham so I brought one that I made wrapped
up in a Safeway bag. It was raining, the bag ripped
and I found out the event was at the Four Seasons
restaurant. I was dressed like a bumpkin with all the
press there and the release panel with Lidia and the
top guys from Italy and here I was with my ham in a
torn Safeway bag, Wranglers and boots. Lidia
introduced me as 'Micalutes' or 'little Mikey' the
Chef from California, Tra Vigna a great restaurant,
yada yada yada, and then 'did you bring a ham with
you'? I had it under my chair in the bag, but I'm
fairly confident as Lidia has had my ham before when
she was out, so I present it to the maestro from Italy
and he sticks the ivory bone into it as is done
traditionally, and I'm standing there in my jeans and
he tastes and gives the thumbs up- he liked it! So
that was pretty cool and redeeming since I seemed to
be so out of place.
What chefs
influenced you the most?
- Chefs
Jacques Maximin
and
Joachim
Splichal at Hotel Negresco in
Nice.
- I have had
multiple chefs that have worked for and with me,
including
Bottega's current chef de cuisine Nick Ritchie. They
have made me a better chef as their talent inspires
me. Sometimes they finish a sentence that I have
started and sometimes they start a sentence that only
I can finish but their influence is
great.
If you could
keep only 3 culinary books, what would they
be?
- The River
Café London series of Italian
cookbooks
- Seven
Fires- Grilling the Argentine Way by Francis
Mallmann
- The Fat
Duck Cookbook -(this is a definite cover to cover
read).
Favorite
kitchen gadget:
Paco
Jet (I actually
got bailed out on Top Chef by Chef Lachlan as I had
never used one before the show and he helped me get it
down. It is a very cool piece of
equipment.)
Culinary
trends that bug you/ trends you
like:
Bug
you: Over using
anything- micro greens, truffle oil, foam, sous-vide.
There needs to be a balance and sometimes cooks get on
kicks and run things into the ground. None of these
things are bad in themselves there just needs to be a
balanced variety.
Like: I like
restaurants that focus on a specific region or cuisine,
Italian or otherwise. I like to see cuisine focused to
reflect where it is from. I'm not a huge fan of fusion.
I guess it resonates to my roots.
An ingredient
that you're attached to:
Zolfino
bean from
outside Florence, there is only an acre of them grown in
the world and it's like the caviar of beans. It is so
exquisite that I pay $8/LB for the bean and we cook it
in a flask over embers in the oven and finish it with
olive oil. It is superb.
Most memorable
dining experience:
A few, but
one was yesterday at SPAGO in
Beverly Hills. My old sous chef is the chef there and he
cooked me an incredible meal.
Another was
at José Andrés' The Bazaar in
L.A where Michael Voltaggio, the last winner of Top
Chef, was chef de cuisine. He did a tasting menu for us
that blew our mind. He did the wack stuff but also some
classics that were just spot on. He is an extraordinary
young talent.
Finally at
Chef
Giaccone's
restaurant
in Piedmont; the guy is just crazy, I mean really
eccentric. He brought a Chianina steer over and
slaughtered it that day and did bistecca cooked on a
rock that he dug up himself, He also salted it with salt
he made himself; guinea hen stuffed with truffles the
size of my fist baked in clay that he made and then he
chiseled it when it came out of the oven, and he did a
charcoal sketch of us while we were eating- all 14 of
us! To finish it off he took a hazelnut branch and put
cups on it where he put hazelnut biscotti dough in and
baked the entire branch in the oven. Then you picked the
biscotti out from where the hazelnuts came from. Crazy?
I mean was over the top!
Favorite
'elbows on the table hole in the
wall':
House of
Nanking in San
Francisco. We used to go there when you sat on veggie
crates, before they had chairs, and the chef would do a
Chinese tasting menu for you that you wouldn't believe.
A food item
you hate to admit to liking:
A had a pork
chop Milanese in Milan once that was crusted in corn
flakes - regardless it was fantastic. I just haven't had
the gumption to do it here yet, though I
might.
Three things
in fridge right now:
We farm
grapes and I grow a varietal called Ribolla Galla
and I have half a dozen bottles or so, house cured
olives, and about 10 cheeses from all over (I'm a cheese
fanatic).
Secret junk
food indulgence:
Only when I
travel and only when I get back late at night and have
to drive home from the airport I stop at an urban
convenience store and I get a cup of coffee and a
Butterfinger for the road, it just does it for
me.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Chef Michael
Chiarello on Preferred
Meats:
"We
appreciate what Preferred Meats does for us and it's
been a pleasure to have them as part of our family for
25 years."
Chef Chiarello turns to Preferred
for his meat needs at Bottega. Why? Like him quality,
sustainability and service matter to us also. Join our
family today!
_____________________________________________________
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