The life of a chef never begins when the stoves are lit. It begins much earlier.
It begins on winter mornings when the city is still asleep, as he walks through the kitchen door when it is still dark outside and inside there is already a smell of burnt coffee and metal. It begins in the markets, in the gestures of the fishermen, in the baker’s hand breaking the first loaf. It begins with an intuition, a family memory, an unforgettable flavor.
For a chef, cooking is not a job: it is a rhythm.
A continuous alternation of speed and stillness, precision and instinct. It is a place where time does not pass as it does for everyone else: it stretches out during the preparation of the service and then, suddenly, it races by without pause. The kitchen becomes a parallel universe where every second counts, and every mistake has a smell.
I wrote a book about it, “A fuoco lento” (Slow Cooking), published by Edizioni We.
The origins: a hot oven and a curious child
Like many, I too started as a child. Not out of vocation, but out of necessity or for fun: someone had to help grandma knead the dough, someone had to stand next to dad when he came home from work and prepared the Sunday sauce.
That’s where you learn the first rule, the one that no school teaches: respect.
Respect for the time it takes to prepare the ingredients, for their history, for the hands that harvested them.
Professional cooking comes later, often like a leap into the unknown.
The first internship, the first burns, the first humiliations which, in hindsight, become the litmus test of the character of those who choose to stay. Because it’s not just the talented who stay in the kitchen: it’s those who persevere.
The brigade: an atypical family
A kitchen is a living organism.
It has its rituals, its hierarchies, its storms.
Every service is a battle, and the only way to win it is to move like an invisible, synchronized team, able to communicate with a nod of the head or a “behind!” said at the right moment.
The chef is the captain, but also the first to arrive and the last to leave.
He is the one who listens to every noise: the water boiling, the knife sliding, the pan sizzling in a different way than usual.
A kitchen always speaks. And a chef learns to understand it more than he understands people’s words.
The dish: when technique and memory meet
The perfect dish is not born of inspiration. It is born of discipline.
From nights spent trying out a sauce, from times when an ingredient fails, from days when the sea is generous and days when it is not.
But it is also born of emotional memory.
From a scent that takes you back.
From a gesture seen in someone who is no longer there.
From an idea that comes in the morning, as you walk towards the kitchen with your apron still in your hand.
Every chef, in their own way, tells a story.
And every dish is a sentence in that story.
Sacrifices and rewards
The life of a chef is full of sacrifices: missed dinners, sacrificed weekends, skipped birthdays.
But there are rewards, and they are silent.
A dining room murmuring with satisfaction.
A customer closing their eyes at the first bite.
A team that smiles after a difficult service.
And that priceless feeling at the end of the evening of having transformed simple ingredients into an experience.
Why does a chef continue?
Because they can’t help it.
Because the kitchen is a place where anything is possible: comfort, risk, poetry, hard work.
Because every day is different from the last.
Because when you choose fire, it chooses you in return.
So all that remains is to return there every morning, before the city wakes up.
Turn on a light.
Touch the ingredients.
Prepare for the next service.
Life in the kitchen isn’t easy, but it’s real.
And for those who live it, it’s the only one that really makes sense.
